Korea has secured a $213.4 million nuclear facility deal with Romania.
It is Korea’s biggest deal ever for a single nuclear facility, according to its Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, and the second nuclear facility export deal inked by the country under the Yoon Suk Yeol administration following the El-Dabaa project in Egypt.
The Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) on Tuesday signed a deal to build a tritium removal facility for the Cernavoda nuclear power plant, east of Bucharest with Nuclearelectrica (SNN), the country’s partially state-owned nuclear power company.
It submitted a bid for the project in October last year.
The signing ceremony was held in Seoul that day, with Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Lee Chang-yang, KHNP CEO Whang Joo-ho, SNN CEO Cosmin Ghita, and Romanian Ambassador to Korea Cezar Manole Armeanu in attendance.
The project will run from July 2023 to August 2027.
A tritium removal facility extracts and stores tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, from heavy-water moderator water from nuclear reactors.
The Industry Ministry estimates that orders worth 100 billion won– or $77 million– will be placed with the local nuclear part suppliers for the Cernavoda project.
Although the latest deal may not be that big in terms of size, a nuclear equipment export is very high-value-added, and therefore I believe that it will be of practical help for Korean suppliers,” said Whang of the KHNP in an interview after the signing ceremony.
The Yoon administration has focused on boosting the Korean nuclear sector with an aim to export 10 nuclear power plants by 2030, pivoting from the previous Moon Jae-in government’s phase-out policy.
Prime Minister Han Duck-soo visited Romania to further bolster ties in the nuclear, infrastructure, and defense sectors. The two countries celebrated the 15th anniversary of the establishment of the strategic partnership.
