Bulgaria to hold referendum on new nuclear power plant construction

Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev on Wednesday scheduled a referendum for January 27, 2013 on the development of nuclear energy in the country through "new nuclear power plant construction." The wording of the referendum question was approved last Wednesday by the ruling GERB party legislators after more than 500,000 people signed a petition for a referendum initiated by the main opposition in the country, Bulgarian Socialist Party. The 2,000-megawatt Belene NPP was approved in 2005. The Russian company Atomstroyexport, an engineering branch of the state-owned Rosatom, won the bid to build this NPP in 2006, but the project was frozen after the GERB party came to power in July 2009. The last two referendums in Bulgaria were conducted in 1971 and 1946 on approval of a new constitution and suspending the monarchy respectively.