Ansaldo Restates Its Support To Romanian Nuclear Projects

A fruitful institutional visit took place last week at the Cernavoda nuclear power plant, the only NPP in Romania, to strengthen the nuclear cooperation between Italian companies (among them Ansaldo Nucleare, ENS Corporate Member) and the Romanian operator Nuclearelectrica.

Nuclearelectrica, following the visit to Cernavoda-1, presented its future projects and highlighted Ansaldo Nucleare’s great commitment to the construction of the first two units operating in Romania, as well as the involvement in the Plant Life Extension (PLEX) project of Unit 1 and the construction of Units -3 and -4.

Indeed, the Romanian government and Nuclearelectrica recently signed a support agreement which allows the start of the next phase of the project to construct two new units at the Cernavoda nuclear power plant.

Furthermore, the Romanian national operator has expressed its attention to developments in the ALFRED (Advanced Lead-cooled Fast Reactor European Demonstrator) project, aimed at developing a Generation IV Lead-cooled Fast Neutron Reactor (LFR) demonstrator, led by Ansaldo Nucleare, ENEA, RATEN-ICN and other European organizations within the FALCON Consortium.

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.

Read the full Ansaldo Press Release.

Romania currently operates the two-units 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.