More than 100 Bulgarian companies expressed their intent to take part in the construction of Bulgaria’s second nuclear plant at Belene, Dnevnik daily said on October 16.

The companies already submitted references for participating in the project as subcontractors to AtomStroyExport, the Russian company that would build the plant. The selection criteria for subcontractors were prepared by the main contractor and the National Electric Company (NEC).

AtomStroyExport and NEC signed late last year an agreement, which secured that at least 30 per cent of all the project implementation activities would be carried out by Bulgarian firms. That meant that local subcontractors would compete for orders totalling at least 1.2 billion euro for the next eight years. The orders would be in engineering services, construction, supply and assembly of equipment and others, Dnevnik said.

The 2006 agreement and the final accord expressly pointed to all the activities that could and those that could not be outsourced by AtomStroyExport without NEC’s prior consent. AtomStroyExport planned to hire the local subcontractors on a competitive basis.

The candidates for the engineering works included Atomenergoremont, Tita Consult and Atomtoploproket.  The assembly operations would be competed for by Energoremont Holding, Inter Pribor Service, Enemona and Euro Sparky among others. Glavbolgarstroy, Minstroy Holding and Enemona were among the candidates for the construction, Dnevnik said.