The United States, as well as private and public companies from Japan, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates, announced at the G7 summit in May 2023 their intention to finance Doiceşti’s SMR project with up to $275 million. To finance this project, the US government provides credit support in the amount of up to 3 billion dollars.

Part of the infrastructure of the Doicești thermal power plant was demolishedPhoto: Ceed Machinery

The partnership between Romania and the United States to build the first nuclear power plant with modular mini-reactors of the SMR type in Europe (and in the world, if the Romanians manage to stick to their proposed ambitious calendar, by 2027-2028), has taken the first big concrete step.

The place where the SMR (Small Modular Reactors) technological plant of the American company NuScale Power will be built has been chosen: Dojcesti, Dambovitsa county. It will use what is left of the infrastructure of the former coal-fired thermal power plant, located a stone’s throw from Tirgovishte and now owned by Nova Power&Gas, a company controlled by brothers Simion and Teofil Mureşan from Cluj, old businessmen in the field of energy and energy infrastructure, with a turbulent past in business connections

Romanian officials hope to have the 462MW plant with six modular nuclear mini-reactors ready even earlier than the Americans plan to complete the world’s first such plant at their home in Idaho: by 2028, to synchronize with the expected decommissioning of Reactor 1 in Chernavod in 2027.

READ ON PANORAMA.RO who is behind the “brownfield” from Germany: the Muresan brothers from Cluj and their connections with the past.