nuclear-news

Reuters news from Friday had three titles about nuclear shakedowns, without calling them that, of course. Through international litigation, Russia managed to fleece Bulgaria of 620 million euros ($660 million)- forcing it to purchase unwanted nuclear reactor parts for the Belene nuclear power station project, which dates from the late 1980s when Bulgaria was a Russian-Soviet satellite-client state. Bulgaria decided that it did not want the nuclear power station, but is being forced to purchase the parts.

Interesting that a 2009 Wikileaks cable states that NEC (Bulgaria) “has sunk approximately 700 million euros into the project, while the Russians are not out of pocket and could walk away losing nothing. Meanwhile, cost estimates for Belene continue to creep up, running as high as eight billion euros,double the original price.” (See entire cable further down.)

Rarely reported is that Russian state owned Rosatom (including its many subsidiaries under other…