Romania To Start Building Third, Fourth Reactors at Its Nuclear Power Plant in 2010-2011

"The set-up of the [project] company is planned for 2009, while the effective start of construction works [of the reactors] is planned for 2010-2011," the CEO of state-owned Nuclearelectrica, Teodor Chirica, told SeeNews on the sidelines of the Energy in Central and Eastern Europe conference held in Bucharest.

In March, Chirica said the country was going to set up the project company in May 2008 and to start construction works on the two reactors in the second half of 2009.

Romania has said earlier Nuclearelectrica, together with private investors, will set up a project company with a share capital of 30 million euro ($37.6 million), which will build and operate the two new reactors. The launch of the third and the fourth reactors was scheduled for 2014 and 2015, respectively. Their construction is estimated to cost four billion euro.

Nuclearelectrica operates two 700-megawatt (MW) reactors. The first reactor went online in 1996 and the second one was connected to the grid in August 2007.

($ = 0.797 euro)