Poland eyes EUR25 bln investments as it goes nuclear

Warsaw (AFP) Jan 25, 2011 Poland hopes to attract 25.8 billion euros (35 billion dollars) in investment in a new nuclear energy sector over the next 20 years, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Tuesday. "When we speak of all the costs involved in nuclear energy, we're talking of sums in the order of 100 billion zloty (25.8 billion euros)," Tusk told reporters following a cabinet meeting focused on developing Poland's nuclear energy sector from scratch.
"We're building the future of a market worth 100 billion zloty, speaking only of direct investments," Hanna Trojanowska, Poland's nuclear energy tsarina said at the joint press conference with Tusk.
The plans call for private enterprise to finance the lion's share of investments, she added.
Meeting 94 percent of its electricity needs from coal-fired plants, coal-rich Poland currently has no nuclear power plants. The first such facility is due to start working in 2020, Tusk said.
The legal framework for nuclear power is to be set up between July 2011 to December 2013, while construction on the first of two power stations is to begin in 2016, the prime minister revealed.
Between 2020-2030, plans call for the capacity of the first reactor to be boosted while a second plant is expected to come online.
Poland's PGE energy group, charged with developing the country's nuclear energy sector, has already inked initial co-operation protocols with the US-Japanese Westinghouse Electric Company LLC and GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Americas as well as France's EDF and Areva.