"Reactors 3 and 4 (of 440 megawatts each) will be switched off the energy grid by December 31," the government said.

Bulgaria, which is scheduled to join the EU on January 1, agreed to shut down four of its six Soviet-type reactors at Kozloduy to secure its EU accession.

It already mothballed in 2002 its first two 440-megawatt facilities, reactors 1 and 2, and had until the end of this year to shut down reactors 3 and 4 as well.

The closure will force Bulgaria to halt almost completely its electricity shipments to the Balkans which stood at 7.8 billion kilowatt-hours in 2006.

After the reactors go off the grid on December 31, their fuel will remain inside for three years before being transported to the plant's spent fuel pit over the two following years, Kozloduy production director Kiril Nikolov recently told AFP.

The dismantling of the non-radioactive part of the reactors will take eight years, while 25 years are scheduled for the radioactive installations.

The first two mothballed reactors still contain their fuel as Kozloduy does not have the necessary spent fuel storage capacity.

Nevertheless, dismantling of reactors 3 and 4 will have to start in 2007, reactors' operational chief Vladimir Uruchev said.

Only the plant's most modern two reactors, of 1,000-megawatts each, were estimated by the EU to be safe enough to remain in operation after 2007.

To make up for lost nuclear capacity, the government recently signed a 4-billion-euro deal with the Russian company Atomstroyexport to build a second nuclear plant on the Danube, near Belene, featuring two 1,000-megawatt reactors.

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