ČEZ to invest CZK 3.1 billion in modernising the Temelín plant in Czechia this year, hire 100 people

ČEZ will invest 3.1 billion crowns in modernising the Temelín Nuclear Power Plant this year. Thanks to the move to a longer fuel cycle, technicians are planning only one outage this year. The first unit will be taken offline for two months in the summer, after which it will switch to a new control system. Temelín will hire almost 100 additional technical staff this year. From next year, it will switch to fuel from US company Westinghouse and French company Framatome; until now, it has used Russian fuel. Representatives of ČEZ and the power plant told journalists today.

The aim of this year’s 188 investment projects, among other things, is to ensure the plant can operate for at least another 60 years. Average annual output from Czech nuclear power plants is expected to reach 32 terawatt-hours (TWh), two TWh more than at present. „Annual output will vary from year to year. It will depend mainly on the number of outages. At Temelín, we will alternate between years with one and two outages. This will also be reflected in total annual output,” said Bohdan Zronek, a member of ČEZ’s board of directors and director of its nuclear energy division.

Westinghouse will resume fuel deliveries to Temelín after 15 years. Framatome will be the second supplier. „We expect to use Westinghouse fuel primarily in the first unit and Framatome fuel in the second. Because we have a stockpile of fuel from Russian company TVEL, we will use it this year, but we have already ended our cooperation with the company. We will start loading Westinghouse fuel in 2026,” said Jan Kruml, director of the Temelín power plant.

The power plant will take the first unit offline from June to July, and energy workers will carry out 71 investment projects. The first unit will then switch to a new control system, which has been in preparation since 2022. „During the outage, we will test the system in a live production environment. The first unit should be brought back online after the outage using the new system. The transition will not affect the power plant’s safety. The safety systems run on a different platform, which was not part of the modernisation,” Kruml added.

To prepare for the switch to the new control system, energy workers installed dozens of servers and laid 80 kilometres of cables last year. In the coming months, they will continue preparations, installing the required software and applications. They are gradually testing how the new system works.

Temelín will hire almost 100 new employees this year, including 10 to 12 operators. „There will be opportunities for mechanical engineers, electricians, chemists, physicists and materials engineers. Recruitment was a record last year: we hired 165 people, including ten operators,” Kruml added. The power plant currently employs 1495 people, 193 of them women.

The Temelín Nuclear Power Plant has been in operation since 2000. Since then, it has invested 34 billion crowns in modernisation and development.

Temelín supplies around a fifth of domestic consumption. It generated 14.3 TWh of electricity last year and 1.1 TWh so far this year.