(Reuters) – Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico will visit South Korea at the end of September to discuss plans to build a new nuclear power unit at the Slovak Jaslovske Bohunice plant, news agency TASR reported on Thursday.
Slovakia may be interested in a 1,200-megawatt unit, it said.
In May, government tasked its economy and finance ministers to draw up a plan for a new nuclear power plant by the end of October.
The new plant would be fully state-owned, the government has said, unlike the country’s current two nuclear plants at Bohunice and Mochovce, which are operated by the 33% state-owned Slovenske Elektrarne.
Slovenske Elektrarne last year completed the 472-megawatt Unit 3 at the Mochovce plant and is now completing another at the same site. It also operates two 505-megawatt units at the Jaslovske Bohunice plant.
The government has mentioned French and Korean companies as potential bidders for the new unit. Korea’s KHNP was picked over France’s EDF to last month to build two new units in the Czech Republic.
(Reporting by Jan Lopatka in Prague; editing by David Evans)
