BELENE, September 3, 2008 (AFP) - Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev led the groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday for a new nuclear plant near the northern town of Belene, following the partial closure of its single nuclear facility at Kozloduy.

'Nuclear energy and the development of Belene will guarantee the country's autonomy in terms of energy supplies,' Stanishev said.

Building work on the first of the plant's two 1,000-megawatt reactors was expected to start in March 2009 and be completed in December 2013, while work on the second reactor was to be launched in March 2010, making it operational in June 2014, Economy and Energy Minister Petar Dimitrov said recently.

The four-billion-euro (5.8-billion-dollar) project, to be built by Russian company Atomstroyexport with France's Areva and Germany's Siemens as subcontractors, will be Bulgaria's second nuclear facility and Atomstroyexport's first ever project in an EU country.

'A unique project, Belene will be the most reliable, safe and efficient power plant,' Atomstroyexport President Leonid Reznikov said at the ceremony Wednesday.

Bulgaria renewed plans in 2005 to build the long-stalled plant, to compensate for an expected downturn in its energy exports after the closure in late 2006 of four out of six operational reactors at Kozloduy.

Formerly one of the Balkans' main energy exporters, supplying 7.8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity abroad in 2006, Bulgaria slashed exports to 4.5 million kilowatt-hours last year after agreeing to close the reactors ahead of its entry into the European Union on January 1, 2007.