Prague- Three energy firms - France's Areva, Russia's Atomstroyexport and Westinghouse of the US - entered a tender to expand the Czech Republic's controversial Temelin nuclear power plant, the state-controlled Czech power firm CEZ said Tuesday. "All three bidders who publicly declared their interest applied. No one else did so," CEZ spokeswoman Eva Novakova said.
The three were the only countries that had previously publicized their participation in the tender.
The Czech Republic is among the European Union members that have called for an atomic power revival as a means of mitigating climate change and decreasing Europe's dependency on Russian energy supplies. EU members have agreed to increase their share of energy made from renewable sources. CEZ would take around two years to select the winning company to build two additional reactors at Temelin, Novakova said. The new reactors would bring Temelin's total to four. The plant's existing reactors are of Soviet design, updated with Westinghouse technology.
The size of the tender, which includes an option to build additional reactors at other locations, is estimated at as much as 500 billion koruny (27.8 billion dollars), earlier Czech reports said.
"The sum will be a result of the tender," Novakova said.
The existing Temelin plant has caused tensions between the Czech Republic and neighbouring Austria.
Austrian politicians and anti-nuclear activists have opposed the power plant, which is located some 60 kilometres from the Austrian border, as unsafe.
Since being put into operation in 2000, the two existing Temelin units, with the combined capacity of 2,000 megawatts, have experienced frequent glitches. The Czech atomic security authorities classified the problems as trivial.
