SOFIA, June 8 (Itar-Tass) — A webpage, www.referendumbelene.com, has been opened in Bulgaria to collect signatures in support of a referendum on the Belene nuclear power plant project, Bulgarian Socialist Party Chairman Sergei Stanishev said on Friday. He is a member of the committee collecting the signatures.
“The referendum may be held if we collect 500,000 signatures. People sign up but many of them fear to indicate their passport data or address. The Belene NPP construction site is ready and works could have had begun if not for the Bulgarian government’s decision,” he said.
The party said that the initiative committee had been registered at the Personal Data Security Committee, which ensured the secrecy of personal data of the signatories.
There have been protests in Bulgaria against the Bulgarian authorities’ decision not to build the Belene Nuclear Power plant.
Stanishev told the protesters that not a single important project had been implemented in Bulgaria in the past 23 years and the country would not recover from the crisis by planting potato and tomato.
Such projects as the Belene NPP can pull Bulgaria out of the crisis, but the construction of the Belene NPP has cancelled to meet private interests, he said.
The Bulgarian government decided in late March that it would not build the nuclear power plant of over 2,000 megawatt. The Belene NPP tender was held in 2005, and Russia’s Atomstroyexport was the winner.