Chinese companies may consider bidding on the Temelín nuclear power plant expansion in South Bohemia, China’s deputy prime minister, Chang Kao-Li, said during the Czech-Chinese Investment Forum in Prague. The news comes just weeks after the South Korean company KEPCO announced it intended to place bid. The original tender included bids from US-Japanese consortium Westinghouse, Russian-Czech consortium MIR.1500 and France’s Areva.
Czech Minister of Industry and Trade Jan Mládek said that he foresees adding only one block to the Temelín nuclear plant instead of two. Instead, a second block would be added to the Dukovany nuclear plant. Mládek also said that a decision on Temelín’s expansion plans will be made in 2015. Dana Drábová, head of the National Office for Nuclear Safety, warned, however, that China has little experience in the nuclear energetics as it has only built older reactor models. Chinese companies are only now developing 3G reactors comparable to the ones offered by Rosatom, Areva and Westinghouse.
