Photo credit: notesfrompoland.com
The Polish state-owned company responsible for developing the country’s first nuclear power plant has signed an agreement with a consortium of U.S. firms, Westinghouse and Bechtel, to advance cooperation on the 192 billion zloty ($51 billion) project.
“I am pleased to report that our cooperation with the United States in the field of energy has gained momentum,” declared Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who attended the signing ceremony alongside US energy secretary Chris Wright, News.Az reports citing foreign media.
Tusk said that the new agreement with Westinghouse-Bechtel, who were first chosen as partners under the previous Polish government in 2022, “is better from the point of view of Polish interests”, helping ensure that “the investment is equally profitable for both parties”. The terms of the deal have not yet been made public.
“Polish-American cooperation in the field of nuclear energy is doing better than ever before, and we will not stop at this one investment,” added the prime minister, who revealed he and Wright had also discussed the development of small modular reactors (SMRs) and Polish imports of US liquefied natural gas (LNG).
“This will be a truly joint venture,” said Wright, quoted by news website Interia. “[It] will not only consist of building a large nuclear power plant…but, I believe, will be the beginning of long-term cooperation between Poland and the US in the field of nuclear energy.”
The previous contract with the US consortium expired at the end of March. However, in early April, Tusk announced that the terms of a new agreement had already been negotiated and would shortly be formalised.
The new deal, called an engineering development agreement (EDA), “clarifies provisions that guarantee effective yet legally compliant cooperation with the Westinghouse-Bechtel consortium for nine months”, announced Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe (PEJ), the Polish state firm tasked with building the plant, today.
It will ensure the continuation of engineering work relating to the project, which has so far included geological drilling by Bechtel at the location that has been selected for the nuclear plant on Poland’s northern Baltic Sea coast.
“The agreement signed today is a platform for further cooperation and an example of mutually beneficial compromise…[that] maintains the highest technological and safety standards while ensuring reasonable costs and responsible risk and schedule management,” said PEJ’s acting president, Piotr Piela.
“I am convinced that together with our American partners we are consistently moving closer to concluding a final agreement for the construction of this power plant,” he added.
“This project will not only provide Poland with one of the reliable, basic sources of clean energy at an affordable price, but will also bring billions of zlotys in investments and creat[e] thousands of jobs during the construction and many decades of operation of the plant,” added Dan Lipman, president of Westinghouse Energy Systems.