Workshop on Westinghouse NPP projects

2024-06-18

The Joint Project organized this workshop on 18 June 2024 in Prague.

The nuclear revival as it is termed by the nuclear lobby is strongly felt in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). A close look however makes clear that this high number of planned nuclear power plants is to be built by three reactor manufacturers only.

They are the French state-owned company Électricité de France (EDF), the state-owned company from South Korea “Korea Hydro Nuclear Power” (KHNP), and finally Westinghouse (WEC), a US company. They all are burdened with the same evils, which is non-existent financing, design deficiences, lack of experience and thus long construction delays resulting in cost explosions.

In our workshop, we focused on Westinghouse, because many of the groups in our Joint Project networks work in countries with governments which intend to throw money and their country’s future out the window by ordering Westinghouse reactors.

This workshop pulled together know-how which we have in our international anti-nuclear network. The intention was to explain how WEC works in the individual countries, what they promise, how they set up the contract of NPP construction in the different countries, how those contracts are financed, who the other suppliers are, how tenders for new NPP work and where they are simply skipped.

Speakers and presentation download:

• Patricia Lorenz, Friends of the Earth Europa and Joint Project: introduction and moderation
• Tim Judson, Director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service NIRS, US
• Tom Clements, Director Savannah River Site Watch, US
• Todor Todorov, Za Zemiata, Bulgaria
• Karel Polanecký, Hnuti Duha, and Edvard Sequens, Calla, CZ
• Marcin Harembski, Civic Nuclear Monitor, Poland