The eight huge cooling towers of the Dukovany power plant overlook a construction site for two more reactors as the Czech Republic pushes ahead with plans to expand its reliance on nuclear energy.
Mobile drilling rigs have been extracting samples 140 meters below ground for a geological survey to make sure the site is suitable for a $19 billion project as part of the expansion that should eventually at least double the country’s nuclear output and cement its place among Europe’s most nuclear-dependent nations.
South Korea’s KHNP beat France’s EDF in a tender to construct a new plant whose two reactors will have an output of over 1,000 megawatts each. After becoming operational in the second half 2030s, they will complement Dukovany’s four 512-MW reactors that date from the 1980s.
The KHNP deal gives the Czechs an option to have two more units built at the other nuclear plant in Temelín, which currently has two 1,000-megawatt reactors.
Then, they are set to follow up with small modular nuclear reactors.
The Czech expansion comes at a time when surging energy demand and looming deadlines by countries and companies to sharply cut carbon pollution are helping to revive interest in nuclear technology.
The European Union has accepted nuclear by including it in the classification system for environmentally sustainable economic activities, opening the door to financing. That has been a boost for the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and France — the continent’s nuclear leader — that have heavily relied on nuclear.
