Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...

currently has 1,400 MW of

nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced ...

capacity by means of one active nuclear power plant with 2 reactors, which constitutes around 18% of the national power generation capacity of the country. This makes

the 24th largest user of nuclear power in the world.

Cernavodă nuclear plant

In 1977 the

Romanian Government , image = , caption=Logo of the Government of Romania , date = 1862 , state = Romania , address = Victoria PalaceBucharest , appointed = President , leader_title = Prime Minister , mai ...

signed a contract with

AECL Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) is a Canadian federal Crown corporation and Canada's largest nuclear science and technology laboratory. AECL developed the CANDU reactor technology starting in the 1950s, and in October 2011 licensed this ...

to build a five unit nuclear power plant in Cernavodă using Canadian

CANDU reactor The CANDU (Canada Deuterium Uranium) is a Canadian pressurized heavy-water reactor design used to generate electric power. The acronym refers to its deuterium oxide ( heavy water) moderator and its use of (originally, natural) uranium fuel. C ...

technology. The

heavy water reactor A pressurized heavy-water reactor (PHWR) is a nuclear reactor that uses heavy water ( deuterium oxide D2O) as its coolant and neutron moderator. PHWRs frequently use natural uranium as fuel, but sometimes also use very low enriched uranium. The ...

design uses heavy water (produced at Drobeta-Turnu Severin) as its neutron moderator and water from the

Danube The Danube ( ; ) is a river that was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire and today connects 10 European countries, running through their territories or being a border. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for , p ...

for cooling. Construction started on the five reactors in 1980. Currently the plant has two fully operational reactors and another three reactors that are partially finished. Unit One took 16 years to build, completed in 1996. It produces 705.6 MW of

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as describ ...

. Unit Two took 27 years to build, achieving initial criticality in 2007 and produces 706 MW of

. Unit Three and Unit Four were expected to be operational by the year 2015 (thirty-five years after the start of construction) and the total

production of the units was to be around 1,500 MW. The total cost of the units is expected to be around US$ 6 billion. On 7 March 2008, Nuclearelectrica,

ArcelorMittal ArcelorMittal S.A. is a Luxembourgian multinational steel manufacturing corporation headquartered in Luxembourg City. It was formed in 2006 from the takeover and merger of Arcelor by Indian-owned Mittal Steel. ArcelorMittal is the second la ...

, CEZ,

Electrabel Electrabel SA is a Belgian energy corporation. It is a subsidiary of French multinational utility company Engie S.A. (formerly GDF Suez). History Electrabel was established in 1905. Its actual name originates from 1990, after the regrouping of t ...

Enel Enel S.p.A. is an Italian multinational manufacturer and distributor of electricity and gas. Enel, which originally stood for Ente nazionale per l'energia elettrica (National Electricity Board), was first established as a public body at the ...

Iberdrola Iberdrola () is a Spanish multinational electric utility company based in Bilbao, Spain. Iberdrola has a workforce of around 34,000 employees serving around 31.67 million customers. Subsidiaries include Scottish Power (United Kingdom) ...

and

RWE RWE AG is a German multinational energy company headquartered in Essen. It generates and trades electricity in Asia-Pacific, Europe and the United States. The company is Europe's most climate threatening Company, the world's number two in offsh ...

agreed to set up a company dedicated to the completion, commissioning and operation of Units 3 and 4. The company is expected to be registered in May 2008. When four of the five reactors were to be fully functional the Cernavodă Nuclear Power Plant would have produced around 40% of

's total

needs.

Expansion of Cernavodă nuclear plant

In 2002 and 2006, Romania made efforts to complete unit 3 and 4, respectively. The cost estimate put completion of both reactors at

EUR The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens ...

2.5 billion, with seven companies investing into the project, including the state run Societatea Nationala Nuclearelectrica. The six other companies include

, CEZ,

ENEL Enel S.p.A. is an Italian multinational manufacturer and distributor of electricity and gas. Enel, which originally stood for Ente nazionale per l'energia elettrica (National Electricity Board), was first established as a public body at the ...

, and

. With investment from all these companies, unit 3 would be completed in 2014 and unit 4 in 2015. In March 2008, the Romanian government suggested that it might build another four-unit power plant by 2020. The company that operates and maintains the power plant is Nuclearelectrica. 20 January 2011,

GDF Suez Engie SA is a French multinational utility company, headquartered in La Défense, Courbevoie, which operates in the fields of energy transition, electricity generation and distribution, natural gas, nuclear, renewable energy and petroleum. It ...

and

pulled out of the project, following ČEZ which had already left in 2010, citing "Economic and market-related uncertainties surrounding this project, related for the most part to the present financial crisis, are not reconcilable now with the capital requirements of a new nuclear power project". In November 2015 Nuclearelectrica and the

China General Nuclear Power Group China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) (), formerly China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group (), is a Chinese state-owned energy corporation under the SASAC of the State Council. In China, CGN operates nuclear plants at Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plan ...

signed an memorandum of understanding regarding the construction, operation and decommissioning of Cernavoda 3 and 4. In February 2020 the prime minister announced that the country would no longer partner with CGN for the project. In October 2020 it was announced that the USA would finance the construction of Cernavoda 3&4, as well as the refurbishment programme of unit 1. In March 2021 Nuclearelectrica said it expects to commission unit 3 by 2031, starting construction in about 2024.The largely-new reactors will be updated versions of the Candu 6, but not the full EC6 version, since the concrete structures are already built. Unit 3 was reported to be 52% completed and 30% for unit 4, though in 2017 the reported figures were 15% and 14%. They would have an operating lifetime of 30 years with the possibility of a 25-year extension. Some 1000 tonnes of heavy water has been produced and is in storage. The partner for Nuclearelectrica in the construction will be from the USA, NuScale Power, rather than China, with a consortium of USA, Canada and France undertaking the construction.

Nuclear waste

Currently,

nuclear waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons ...

is stored at the reactors for up to ten years. Then the waste is transported to dry storage, which is based on the Macstor system designed by

. The government has conducted studies into a permanent geological

repository Repository may refer to: Archives and online databases * Content repository, a database with an associated set of data management tools, allowing application-independent access to the content * Disciplinary repository (or subject repository), an ...

."Nuclear Power in Romania." ''World Nuclear Association.'' March 2008.

Energy production

References

External links