Enel wants more money, says Fico

ITALIAN energy giant Enel, owner of a 66-percent stake in the power utility Slovenské elektrárne (SE), is reportedly demanding more funds for the completion of the third and fourth units of the Mochovce nuclear power plant.

ITALIAN energy giant Enel, owner of a 66-percent stake in the power utility Slovenské elektrárne (SE), is reportedly demanding more funds for the completion of the third and fourth units of the Mochovce nuclear power plant.

“We are getting into a situation where Italian representatives are starting to ask for more money,” Prime Minister Robert Fico said on December 4, as quoted by the SITA newswire. “We will have to react to some things in a very tough manner.”

The completion of the blocks in Mochovce was supposed to cost around €3 billion. For this reason the government gave up its dividends from SE until 2014.

The prime minister confirmed that the two nuclear units will be completed behind schedule.

“I am concerned that we have had losses for a year and a half because nobody from the previous government had devoted attention to it, nobody had visited the facility, nobody had asked the Italians anything,” Fico said.

Under the original schedule the third reactor of the Mochovce nuclear power plant should have been put into operation at the end of this year while the fourth block was to start generating energy eight months later. At the start of 2012, CEO of the Italian investor Enel, Fulvio Conti, announced a roughly one-year delay in the Mochovce plant’s completion, reportedly caused also by SE plans to apply new safety standards to nuclear units, SITA wrote.

“It was a crucial mistake that this investor, the Italian company Enel, embarked on the project while, according to me, it does not have the experience that it should have,” Fico said, adding that Enel has never been involved in the construction of such a huge complex.

The new units will have an installed capacity of 880 megawatts. Construction of the third and fourth units was officially launched on November 3, 2008. Up to January 1, 2008, €347 million was spent on construction works.

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