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From Bulgaria

05.12.2017 12:16

BAS wants BEH to declassify the full report about NPP Belene

AUTHOR: publics.bg

© publics.bg

Professor Alexander Tassev, head of the Economic Research Institute at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS), informed that BAS wants the Bulgarian Energy Holding (BEH) to declassify the full report about NPP Belene. He expressed hope that BEH will allow the report to be published in the next few days.

BAS held an emergency press conference after website bivol.bg published BAS interim report on the possibilities for the realization of the already bought equipment for NPP Belene. No one has pressured BAS to alter the results of the analysis, he was adamant. According to him, when details are published, everyone would see that the results in the interim report are included in the final report, submitted to BEH on 14 November. “We are not saying that NPP Belene should be built, but rather that there are viable options,” underlined Prof. Tassev. An authorisation for publishing all results, including their justification and related economic, consumption, market development and other forecasts will be also requested, he clarified.

When asked how come there is no economically viable options in the interim report but there are in the final one, he said that nothing from the interim report has been omitted in the final report. Prof. Tassev explained that they started with the most unfavourable options so that they would not be blamed that they did so with the most favourable one. As for the 90 options for the realisation of the Belene project, he said that those are 90 iterations of a single scenario. “There is truly no option of that scenario which envision a viable project… when the relevant parameters are changed and given particular considerations, the project can be viable”, he added.

After that other options were considered through the entire range up to the most optimistic ones. In his words, there are plenty of options where the project can be viable at given parameters. In the optimistic scenario most options are viable and their number is also around 90. When asked why only most unfavourable scenarios were included in the interim report, Prof. Tassev said, that BAS was forced to submit it within a short period.

The head of the Economic Research Institute added that the TPP Maritsa 1 and 3 case cannot repeat itself with NPP Belene because the European Commission would not allow state aid of that kind. “Either the project can be realised on a market basis, or it just cannot be realised at all”, he concluded.

Through all those months there have been statements saying that BAS should not have dealt with that matter implying it has no potential to do so, Prof. Tassev commented. He said that the research team has a huge experience in international consulting projects. In his words, the whole work was carried out by 40 people and 6 other institutes at BAS have taken part, above 90% of the team being from BAS. The potential of BAS should not be neglected and insulted in such a way, he said.