The Westinghouse Electric Company has signed memorandums of understanding with seven companies in the Czech Republic to support its bid to supply its AP1000 reactor to the Dukovany nuclear power station, as well as other potential sites in central Europe.
The agreements, signed at the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade, begin the process of forming supply chains for future nuclear projects. The main element is Dukovany 5, the fifth reactor at the plant located in the south of the country.
The agreements are with the following companies:
- Královopolská will provide technological steel structures, such as load-bearing equipment structures or platforms.
- Vítkovice will supply the module for a nuclear power plant.
- BC Prague will supply industrial valves.
- I&C Energo will supply command-and-control and industrial information systems.
- NOPO will supply gantry cranes and overhead cranes with lifting capacities of several hundred tonnes.
- Sigma Group to supply medium, heavy and unique centrifuge pumps.
- Infer will supply piping systems, technological assemblies and valves.
Westinghouse is presently one of three finalists in the Dukovany nuclear power plant tender. The others are France’s EDF and South Korea’s KHNP.
The contract with the Czech government, as with Poland’s, is particularly attractive to Western nuclear engineers as they will not face competition from Russian or Chinese companies.
The Czech Republic presently operates six commercial nuclear power units – four Soviet-built VVER-440s at the Dukovany site and two Russian VVER-1000 units at the Temelin nuclear power plant, which together provided about 35% of its electricity production.
The current units at Dukovany, which were commissioned between 1985 and 1987, will be decommissioned no later than 2047.
Westinghouse, originally a British company, is based in the US and owned by Canadian developer Brookfield, which bought it from Toshiba following its 2017 bankruptcy.
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