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* Opposition party says Sofia holds talks on Russian loans * Wants parliament interference to stop the talks * Another party says crisis means project should be delayed By Anna Mudeva SOFIA, April 21 (Reuters) - Bulgaria's rightist opposition urged the government on Tuesday to freeze a multi-billion project to build a new nuclear power plant due to problems with funding in times of a global economic crisis. The Socialist-led government and German utility RWE (RWEG.DE) have signed a deal to build Bulgaria's second nuclear power plant of Belene by 2014-2015 as part of Sofia's efforts to recover its position as a major power exporter in the Balkans. But sources close to the project say the state-owned utility NEK, which has a 51 percent stake in the project, has problems raising funding and Belene faces a delay.

Five years after the closing down of Bulgaria's Nuclear Power Plant's 1st and 2nd blocks and two since the closing of 3rd and 4th there isn't a single employee fired from both sections, "Dnevnik" daily writes Monday. There are 1095 people employed in the closed down parts out of the total 4492 in the whole AEC-Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant. The plant currently produces power with its 5th and 6th 1000 MW blocks. The medium salary in the plant is around EUR530, as the money for employee payments is included in the final electricity tax consumers pay. "Dnevnik"'s Calculations show that for 2008 alone EUR6,500,000 have been spent for the employees in the closed blocks.

Bulgaria's planned nuclear power plant at Belene on the Danube River is amongst the most dangerous contemplated projects of its kind in the whole world, Greenpeace nuclear analyst Heinz Smital has said, as quoted by Deutsche Welle. According to Smital's warning, Belene was massive and irresponsible gamble, which would only tarnish the reparation of RWE, the German company picked as the strategic investor in the nuclear power plant. Far worse, the German company was playing Russian roulette with people's lives in the entire region of South-Eastern Europe, he said.

On September 9 Bulgarian and international environmental organisations, including the local coalition BeleNE (No to Belene nuclear power plant) and Greenpeace, sent a letter to the European Union (EU) Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes asking him to investigate the tender procedures for subcontractors in the construction of Bulgaria's Belene nuclear power plant. Subcontracts worth more than one billion euro are to be granted without tender to Bulgarian companies. Under the agreement with Atomstroyexport, the Russian company chosen to construct the power station has to subcontract 30 per cent of the value of the Belene construction contract to Bulgarian companies, which means procurement contracts worth a total of 1.3 billion euro.

It is not yet clear whether the planned Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant will have sufficient capacity to meet the needs of all four partner countries. Eesti Päevaleht writes that the limiting factor is the opposition of local residents to the project and the volume of cooling water that can be extracted from Lake Druksiai.

" Bulgaria's 30-year-old plan to build a nuclear power plant in an earthquake-prone area on the Danube may become the European Union's first atomic project doomed by Japan's disaster, leaving a $2 billion hole in the ground. The EU's poorest member faces a "mission impossible" to finish the Russian-designed plant because the Fukushima accident will require it to borrow an extra $2.1 billion for improved safety measures and insurance, according to a report by the research group Balkans and Black Sea Studies Center of Sofia."