nuclear-news

Czechs’ nuclear expansion plan goes out with a whimper

Czechs pull plug on nuclear expansion, The Economist Apr 16th 2014 by B.C. | PRAGUE More than five years of international intrigue went out with a whimper on April 10th as Czech utility company ČEZ officially cancelled the planned expansion of the Temelín nuclear power plant (120 km south of Prague in the South Bohemia region)—the project undone by a collapse in market electricity prices and hard-learned lessons from a botched state energy scheme in years past.

The plan had called for adding two reactors to the existing two at Temelín (a second Czech nuclear plant, Dukovany, operates four reactors). The price tag was an estimated $15 billion, and the project made less and less sense as the wholesale price of electricity fell. Prices are now less than half what they were when bidding on the contract began in 2009. For much of that time the tender process was viewed through a cold war lens with the two final bidders being the American firm Westinghouse (now a division of the Japanese conglomerate Toshiba) and a consortium leadby Russia’s state-owned Atomstroyexport. The American and Russian ambassadors openly lobbied on behalf of their favoured firms and the companies themselves tried to outdo one another by signing highly contingent contracts with local suppliers to sweeten their offers…….

“There is absolutely no appetite from the state to get involved in something new like this now,” said David Marek, chief economist with Patria Finance, a Prague-based investment bank……..  the widespread perception that the Temelín project was doomed to be a financial failure, saw ČEZ stock surge on the announcement that the nuclear project was cancelled. Such are power politics. http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2014/04/power-plant-failures

April 17, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, politics