September 20 (SeeNews) - Canada said it will provide 3 billion Canadian dollars ($2.23billion/2.08 billion euro) in federal export finance to Nuclearelectrica [BSE:SNN], the operator of Romania's sole nuclear power plant (NPP) Cernavoda, to build two new CANDU nuclear reactors at the plant, Units 3 and 4.
"The new Cernavoda reactors will leverage Canadian CANDU technology to deliver clean and reliable power to communities while contributing to Canada’s efforts to support European energy security," Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada's minister of energy and natural resources, said in a press release on Tuesday.
The project is essential for strengthening Romania’s energy security, especially in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and will enhance Romania’s potential to become an Eastern European energy hub, providing consumers in Romania and neighbouring countries with safe, clean, zero-greenhouse emissions energy, at a fair price, the Romanian energy ministry said in a separate press release on Tuesday.
"In the 70s, Romania took the historical decision to be the only country behind the Iron Curtain to develop a nuclear program based on Western technology and the only European country to choose CANDU (Canadian deuterium uranium) technology for its nuclear programme. As the current geopolitical context has shown, this was the best decision that Romania could have taken at that time," Romania's minister of energy, Sebastian Burduja, said, according to the Canadian government press release.
The addition of two CANDU reactors with a total capacity of 1,400 MW at Cernavoda will help Romania achieve its goal of phasing out coal from electricity generation by 2032, with CANDU-6 reactors supplying 36% of the country’s total electricity needs, up from the current 21%, the Canadian government said.
Nuclearelectrica said in a separate press release on Wednesday that the construction of reactors 3 and 4 at Cernavoda will provide some 20,000 stable jobs over the next 60 to 70 years.
The export financing offered by Canada will complement funding of up to $50 million (46.6 million euro) from the U.S. export contract for pre-project technical services as part of the Engineering Multiplier Programme (EMP), and up to $3 billion from the U.S. export contract for engineering and project management services, Nuclearelectrica said.
Previously, Canada had provided export financing support to construct and operate the first two CANDU reactors of 700 megawatts each at Cernavoda, which were commissioned in 1996 and 2007, respectively. More than 170 million tonnes of CO2 have been avoided since the two reactors have gone into service, the Canadian government said.
Nuclearelectrica's shares traded 0.97% higher at 47 lei ($10.1/9.4 euro) as of 1503 CET on Wednesday on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.
(1 Canadian dollar = 0.695935 euro)
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