Ansaldo Nucleare Supporting LTO at Cernavoda NPP

Last week, Ansaldo Nucleare (ENS Corporate Member), the Italian insurance-financial group SACE, and the Romanian nuclear energy company Societatea Nationala Nuclearelectrica S.A. (SNN) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to secure a financing line of up to €2bn to carry out work to extend the life of Unit 1 at the Cernavodă nuclear power plant in Romania, as part of a consortium with Canada’s Candu Energy and South Korea’s Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power.

Ansaldo Nucleare, which actively participated in the construction of the two units operating in Cernavoda, will be responsible for the engineering and procurement of components for the LTO of Unit 1.

In 2017 Nuclearelectrica began a refurbishment project of Cernavodă-1 worth an estimated €1.85bn to extend its lifespan by 30 years. In parallel, SNN intends the completion Units 3 and 4 of the same power plant.

The Refurbishment of Cernavoda NPP Unit 1 and the completion of Units 3 and 4 will lead after 2031 to generating approximately 66% of Romania’s clean energy with a significant impact on decarbonization by avoiding 15 million tons of CO2 on yearly basis.

Cosmin Ghita, Chief Executive Officer at Nuclearelectrica said.

Read the full Ansaldo Nucleare Press Release.

Romania currently operates the two-unit Cernavoda nuclear power plant.

Each unit has 650MW CANDU reactors and the same technology would likely be deployed for future units, as Romania declared.

In October 2021, Bucharest adopted the Integrated National Plan for Energy and Climate Change, which calls for two new CANDU reactors at Cernavoda by 2031 and the refurbishment of an existing unit there in 2037, so as to double the country’s nuclear power supply in a decade.

Then, on 19th December 2022, the Romanian government adopted a draft law on the agreement to build two new commercial reactors at the Cernavoda NPP.

Ansaldo Nucleare has a longstanding cooperation with Nuclearelectrica and the Romanian nuclear industry.

Beyond Cernavoda, the Italian company is leading the ALFRED (Advanced Lead-cooled Fast Reactor European Demonstrator) project, aimed at developing a Generation IV Lead-cooled Fast Neutron Reactor (LFR) demonstrator.

In November 2021, Ansaldo Nucleare has also been awarded a contract for the design, procurement, installation, and commissioning service of the ATHENA experimental plant.

The ATHENA (Advanced Thermo-Hydraulics Experiment for Nuclear Application) facility will host scale components for testing and demonstration of LFR technology, so playing also a key role to support the abovementioned ALFRED project.