Romania’s Energy Sector Strategy clearly states that the equipment in the energy sector is past its use-by date, 31% of the hydropower plants need to be replaced and 60% of the power and gas transmission networks are “obsolete”.
The facilities that have been in service for decades, where generations of specialists were trained, have not been replaced with anything new.
Nuclear power is such an example. Even though the two reactors at Cernavoda (SE Romania) started operating after 1989, both had been in advanced stages of completion even before that date. Therefore, the uncertainty surrounding reactors 3 and 4 is driving people in the industry towards markets like the UK, where things are moving faster.
“Attracting investors to reactors 3 and 4 will be a harder test than making reactors 1 and 2 of the Cernavoda plant operational. We have already lost that expertise,” said Tudor Serban, former state secretary with the Economy Ministry and currently personal advisor to Economy Minister Ion Ariton. “We had 5,000 nuclear experts. We risk losing the people we have left unless we move faster with reactors 3 and 4.”
The construction of Romania’s most ambitious energy project, worth EUR4 billion, should have started last fall, but four of the six interested investors left so that the government is now trying to replace them since it cannot undertake the investment on its own.
Despite the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant incident in Japan, which cast a shadow on the revival of the nuclear power, with Germany’s decision to gradually stop using this type of power by 2022 being the biggest signal in this regard, 13 other European countries have announced they will go ahead with their plans.
Martin Harris, the British ambassador in Bucharest, says that his country is witnessing a rebound of nuclear power because of the goal to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 50% until 2025 and by 80% until 2050. As such, the country plans to build eight new plants and combine both green power and nuclear power.
This makes the United Kingdom one of the destinations for Romanian experts. An important factor beyond the professional challenge is the better pay.
“The world is moving and we have to keep up with it. People choose to go work in other locations. For instance, GDF Suez [a French-Belgian group] and Iberdola [Spain] decided to get involved in nuclear power projects in the United Kingdom after dropping the project in Romania,” says Ionel Bucur, general manager of the nuclear power plant in Cernavoda. “In addition, a specialist makes about EUR5,000 per month abroad, which is five times more than the salary in Romania.”
The Cernavoda reactor 3 and 4 project initially attracted some of the biggest names in the European energy industry. CEZ (Czech Republic), Enel (Italy), RWE (Germany), GDF Suez, Iberdola and ArcelorMittal Romania became shareholders of EnergoNuclear, the project company for the two new reactors along with Nuclearelectrica. CEZ backed out at the end of last year, followed soon afterwards by RWE, GDF Suez and Iberdola.
Nuclearelectrica had to buy their stakes for the project to be able to continue so that it now owns 85%, which is more than Romania can finance. Therefore Nuclearelectrica resumed its search for investors and has found a lot of interest among Asian companies. A Southern Korean company, BKB, which is the leader of the Korea Nuclear consortium, sent a letter of intent to the Economy Ministry saying it wanted to buy a stake in EnergoNuclear. There is also interest from companies in China, which are also looking at other investments in the energy sector such as the one billion euro hydropower plant in Tarnita-Lapusesti.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)