“You should be very proud of what you have achieved. We have the experience of many inspections in many power plants and I can say that you are among the best,” Marco Gasparini, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission, said after the completion of a 10-day inspection at the Kozloduy nuclear power plant. The follow-up mission was aiming to evaluate whether the Kozloduy Units 5 and 6 (1,000 MW each) Modernisation Programme was in compliance with recommendations made in 2000.

The followup missions are part of the IAEA practices to control achievements in the areas under inspection at the respective power plant for the period since the last mission. The IAEA team included seven nuclear experts from the Czech Republic, France, Germany and Italy. The Modernisation Programme, which consists of 212 separate measures, is a project of unique scale and method of implementation, during which a full set of improvements for units of the WWER 1,000 type has been completed.

It was implemented step by step during the scheduled repair works from 2002 to 2007, without further extensions. The Modernisation Programme has been evaluated by IAEA for completion and adequacy to the measures set in 1995 and 2000.