ANNEX 5
By Radu Marinas, 19 February 2003
Reuters English News Service (C) Reuters Limited 2003.
BUCHAREST, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Romania said on Wednesday it will offer a
Korean-Canadian-Italian group 10-year control of a third planned nuclear
reactor, which it hopes will help turn the European Union aspirant into
a key Balkan power exporter.
In contrast to a Western European trend, Bucharest says it has no choice
but to expand into nuclear energy to compensate for the planned closure
of its ageing coal-burning plants and rely less on energy imports -
mostly gas from Russia.
"We'll grant foreigners control of our third nuclear reactor over a
10-year term. It's the best option we have," Aurel Daraban, a member of
the parliament's industry commission which must approve such major
deals, told Reuters in an interview.
He said a build-operate-transfer (BOT) contract will be the best way to
get badly-needed funds to resume the suspended construction of the
reactor without resorting to long-term, state-guaranteed loans as it has
done so far.
Romania's only nuclear reactor at Cernavoda on the Danube river has a
capacity of 750 megawatts, accounting for 10 percent of the country's
power output.
Work at the plant was suspended after the 1989 collapse of communism due
to financial problems.
GROUP TO BUILD THIRD REACTOR
Earlier this week, Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co, a unit of state-run
giant utility Korea Electric Power Corp (KEPKO), said it planned to
build Cernavoda's third reactor.
It said it was in talks with the Romanian state and two firms already
involved in building the plant's second reactor - Canada's AECL and
Ansaldo Energia of Italy, a unit of Italian defence group
Finmeccanica - over a joint feasibility study on the project.
Daraban said the three companies were ready to invest $1.5 billion to
complete the third reactor, which would operate in 2007. The second
reactor is being built with a $400 million loan from Societe Generale
and Credit Lyonnais.
"The Koreans and our traditional partners (AECL and Ansaldo) are the
only ones who want to invest," Daraban said. "They will emerge as
winners."
An official announcement could be made by April, he said.
Daraban said the third reactor would raise Romania's nuclear power
generation to 35 percent of the country's total energy output from 10
percent now.
He said Romania would then have a competitive advantage against
ex-communist nations like Bulgaria and the Czech Republic where
Soviet-designed power plants, Kozloduy and Temelin, stoked public
opposition after the Chernobyl disaster.
Unlike the Soviet-era Kozloduy, Cernavoda is being built with western
CANDU-technology, he said.
"We'll probably be better positioned than other easterners which must
gradually close their unsafe plants," Daraban said.
The country was also looking at exporting to the EU, which it hopes to
join by 2007.
"It'd be an easy start for us to get into the EU's energy market," said
Daraban. "We will have power in excess."
The EU says Romania must address issues of spent nuclear fuel and
nuclear waste before joining the bloc, problems that appear small
compared to the closure of plants in other candidate countries.