Romania To Build 2nd Nuclear Pwr Plant In Transylvania, Works To Start In Autumn

"Several European companies are interested in this project, including Russian ones. We will settle its location in the fall," Videanu said during the Europe-Russia economic forum.

Earlier Tuesday, Videanu has said the construction works on a new nuclear plant will start in autumn.

"In autumn, we will start building a third-generation power plant, as the nuclear energy is the cleanest form of energy," Videanu said during an economic seminar.

He didn’t specify the location of the future nuclear power plant, which will be the country’s second.

The Economy Ministry’s secretary of state for energy, Tudor Serban, said earlier this month that the new plant would be located in the center of the country and that some of the largest European power groups had already expressed an interest in its construction.

"We received requests from the largest power companies in Europe, such as Enel SpA (ENEL.MI), E.ON AG (EOAN.XE), CEZ (BAACEZ.PR), Iberdrola SA (IBE.MC), RWE AG (RWE.XE), GDF Suez (GSZ.FR), as well as from some companies in South Korea," Serban said.

The Romanian authorities announced last year their intention to build a new nuclear power plant, with two to four reactors.

Romania’s existing nuclear power plant at Cernavoda has two 700-megawatt reactors, which provide around 18% of the country’s power needs. The authorities plan to build another two reactors at Cernavoda, which are scheduled to become operational by 2015-2016.

EnergoNuclear is a joint-venture company made up of Romanian state-owned nuclear energy company Nuclearelectrica, the operator of Cernavoda nuclear power plant, Czech CEZ, Italy’s Enel, Germany’s RWE, UK-based Arcelor Mittal’s Romanian unit, Electrabel (part of Belgian-French group GDF Suez) and Spain’s Iberdrola, to build nuclear reactors 3 and 4.

Romania, through Nuclearelectrica, will own a 51% stake in EnergoNuclear, while CEZ, Electrabel, RWE and Enel each have a 9.15% stake and Iberdrola and Arcelor Mittal Romanian have each a 6.2% stake.

Initially, the project at Cernavoda was estimated at EUR2.2 billion, but was afterwards recalculated by the Romanian authorities to EUR4 billion.