Bulgaria has taken the first steps towards the construction of two additional reactors at its Kozloduy nuclear power plant, which will add combined capacity of 2,300 megawatts (MW), Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov said on Wednesday.

The energy ministry will begin selection of a contractor for the design, construction and commissioning of the seventh new power unit at the site, the government said in a statement, and simultaneously start procedures to build an eighth.

Construction of the seventh unit will be completed by 2033, and the project will be funded with 500 million leva ($270.7 million) in addition to previously allocated funding. The government is to begin negotiating new loans with financial institutions, it said.

Denkov said the eight bloc should be completed at a later stage. He called the decision to press ahead with the unit his cabinet's most important so far.

The Kozloduy facility, on which construction began in the 1970s, is Bulgaria's only nuclear power plant. It currently has two 1,000 MW Soviet-made nuclear reactors in operation, with the previous four closed by 2007.

Denkov said the new reactors' total capacity of 2,300 MW will significantly exceed the 1,760 MW capacity of the four blocks that had been closed.

He said the technology chosen for the construction of the reactors was particularly suited to ensuring "the stable management of the energy system", according to the statement. It did not provide further detail. ($1 = 1.8466 leva) (Reporting by Stoyan Nenov; Writing by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Jan Harvey)