Virgil Popescu, the energy minister, was presented with the letters of intent for financing on Wednesday by the president of Exim Bank USA, ensuring the building of units 3 and 4 at the Cernavodă nuclear power plant, Radio Free Europe reported. The two loans amounting to 50 million and 3 billion dollars, respectively.
The event was held in conjunction with the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.
President of Romania Klaus Iohannis and John Kerry, Special Envoy of the President of the United States of America for Climate, both attended the occasion.
Reactor 4 at the Cernavodă nuclear power station started being built in August 1985, an additional year and a half after construction on Unit 3 got underway. They were expected to each have an installed capacity of 706 MW.
They could currently supply 20% of Romania’s usage as a whole. The first two nuclear reactors in Romania, 1 and 2, which were placed into service in 1996 and 2007 respectively, currently supply a fifth of the country’s energy needs. That would be in addition to the nuclear energy already given by those two reactors.
Reactors 3 and 4 were inaugurated during the Soviet era with much fanfare and went into conservation in 1992.
The two reactors need to be reinvested in more urgently after 30 years. Unit 1 in Cernavodă has a lifetime that expires in 2026 after being established for 30 years. In order to extend its lifespan by a further 30 years, Unit 1 will be decommissioned and renovated.
It will take two years to complete the procedure, which will begin in 2027. There will be a 1.8 billion dollar investment in all. In 2037, Reactor 2’s lifespan will likewise come to an end.
As a pillar of Romania’s energy independence and the achievement of the decarbonization targets assumed by Romania as an EU member state, the project for the technology of CANDU Units 3 and 4 CNE Cernavoda is included in the National Integrated Plan in the field of Energy and Climate Change as well as the Energy Strategy Project of Romania 2019–2030.
An agreement between Romania and the US that called for an investment of $8 billion in the redesign of reactor 1 and the construction of units 3 and 4 marked the beginning of the project in 2020. After a long string of unsuccessful transactions, it is essentially the first attempt that appears to be successful.
The general meeting of shareholders of the state-owned firm Nuclearelectrica officially authorized the continuation of the construction project for units 3 and 4 of the Cernavodă nuclear power plant on August 10.
