EDF submits bid for a Czech Dukovany unit; others had also pledged to bid

French company EDF submitted its final bid this morning at the Prague headquarters of energy company ČEZ to build a nuclear unit at Dukovany. Representatives of the French company announced this to journalists today. The other bidders for the project, North American company Westinghouse and South Korea’s KHNP, had also previously said they would submit their bids by today. The new unit is expected to be completed by 2036.

The bidders submitted their initial offers last autumn. ČEZ, the partly state-owned company overseeing the project, did not disclose details of the offers. In the spring, it held clarification talks with the bidders to discuss the tender conditions and their initial offers. ČEZ subsequently invited them to submit final bids. The original deadline was 15 September, but it was postponed twice at the request of some bidders, with today set as the final deadline. Once it has received the final bids, ČEZ will evaluate them and submit its assessment report to the government for approval.

EDF publicly submitted its bid this morning. According to the company, more than 100 representatives of EDF and its industrial partners Framatome, GE Steam Power and Bouygues Travaux Publics took part in meetings with ČEZ to fine-tune the bid. The company’s proposal envisages building a unit using EPR1200 technology. The company said the details of the bid had been tailored to ČEZ’s requirements. It has also drawn up a plan to build three more units in the Czech Republic.

„We believe we will win the tender. Our advantage is that this is a European solution. We are offering a proven design and strong involvement from Czech suppliers,“ said Roman Zdebor, head of EDF’s Czech branch.

He added that he considers the clarity of the solution a competitive advantage over the other bidders. EDF representatives delivered the technical and commercial parts of the bid to ČEZ’s headquarters on nine CDs.

The other bidders had also previously said they would submit their final bids by today. „We will submit our bid at the end of October. We will submit it in the way we believe is best for the investor. We are bringing a solution that is already in operation and proven,“ Petr Brzezina, head of Westinghouse Czech Republic, told the Czech News Agency three weeks ago. According to Minhwan Chang, a representative of the company’s Prague office, KHNP had been ready to submit its bid by the previous deadline, which was set for early October. „KHNP considers new nuclear construction in the Czech Republic a priority among its international projects,“ Chang noted.

Last year, alongside bids for the Dukovany reactor, ČEZ also received non-binding offers for options on another unit at Dukovany and for the construction of a third and fourth unit at Temelín. ČEZ and the state have previously acknowledged that additional nuclear power plant units will probably be needed in the future to meet electricity demand in the Czech Republic.

The Czech Republic currently has six nuclear units at two power plants. Two units, each with a capacity of approximately 1000 megawatts (MW), are at Temelín in South Bohemia. Four smaller units with a capacity of 510 MW are located at Dukovany in the Třebíč region. Alongside new conventional reactors, ČEZ is also preparing to build small modular reactors. The first is expected to be built at Temelín.