Bulgaria To Hold Nuclear Power Referendum Jan 27
Bulgarian president Rosen Plevneliev set January 27 as the date for a referendum on the future of the country's nuclear energy sector, the president's press office said.
The question will be worded as follows: "Should we develop nuclear energy in the Republic of Bulgaria by building a new nuclear plant," the president's press office said in a statement published on Wednesday.
Last week parliament decided the referendum question would not include a reference to a specific power plant project.
The question was formulated by the parliamentary group of the ruling centre-right party GERB after earlier this year the opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party initiated a sign-in campaign in support of holding a referendum with a question worded "Should the nuclear power industry in Bulgaria develop through the construction of a nuclear power plant at the Belene site?"
A total of 543,639 signatures were collected in the campaign. The minimum number of authentic signatures required for a referendum to be called is 500,000.
Earlier this year, the government decided to abandon the project to build a nuclear power plant in the Danubian town of Belene and instead approved plans to raise the capacity of Bulgaria's existing nuclear station in Kozloduy.