CONSULTING

wastewater will also add to the already high costs of generating nuclear power. 140 It has been
suggested that “it may well be water, the Middle East’s most precious resource, rather than fiscal
issues that shoves the country’s nuclear hopes farther into the future”. 141
Poland planned the development of a series of nuclear power stations in the 1980s and started
construction of two VVER1000/320 reactors in Żarnowiec on the Baltic coast, but both
construction and further plans were halted following the Chernobyl accident. In 2008, however,
Poland announced that it was going to re-enter the nuclear arena and in November 2010, the
Ministry of Economy put forward a Nuclear Energy Program. On 28 January 2014, the Polish
Government adopted a document with the title “Polish Nuclear Power Programme” outlining the
framework of the plan. 142 The Progamme was subject to a Strategic Environmental Assessment
(SEA), which was also approved in January 2014. In April 2014, Greenpeace started legal
procedures against the Assessment, alleging its public participation process was inadequate. The
SEA drew around 60,000 submissions, a majority coming from neighboring Germany. The plan
includes proposals to build 6 GW of nuclear power with the first reactor starting up by 2024. The
reactor types under consideration include AREVA’s EPR, Westinghouse’s AP1000, and
Hitachi/GE’s ABWR (Advanced Boiling Water Reactor).
In January 2013, the Polish utility PGE (Polska Grupa Energetyczna) selected WorleyParsons to
conduct a five-year, US$81.5 million study, on the siting and development of a nuclear power plant
with a capacity of up to 3 GW. 143 At that time, the project was estimated at US$13–19 billion, site
selection was to have been completed by 2016, and construction was to begin in 2019. 144 A
number of vendors, including AREVA, Westinghouse, and GE-Hitachi, all lobbied Warsaw
aggressively. 145 PGE formed a project company PGE EJ1, which also has a ten percent participation
each of the other large Polish utilities, Tauron Polska Energia and Enea, as well as the state coppermining
firm KGHM. In January 2014, PGE EJ1 received four bids from companies looking to
become the company’s “Owner’s Engineer” to help in the tendering and development of the
project, which was eventually awarded to AMEC Nuclear UK in July 2014. The timetable
demanded that PGE make a final investment decision on the two plants by early 2017. 146 Final
design and permits for the first plant were expected to be ready in 2018, allowing construction
140 Steve Thomas, “Jordan’s Nuclear Power Plans”, Istanbul, 2013.
141 John C.K Daly, “Water shortages may end Jordan’s nuclear power hopes”, oilprice.com, 18 June 2013,
see http://www.mining.com/web/water-shortages-may-end-jordans-nuclear-power-hopes/, accessed
25 June 2016.
142 Ministerstwo Gospodarki, “Polish Nuclear Power Programme”, January 2014. Apparently, an updated
version of the Program was published in the Polish Monitor MP on 24 June 2014.
143 NIW, “Briefs—Poland”, 8 February 2013.
144 Economist, “Polish Energy, Going nuclear”, 31 January 2014, see
http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2014/01/polish-energy, accessed 29 March 2016.
145 NIW, “Potential and Existing Global Nuclear Newbuild Projects”, 25 April 2014.
146 NucNet, “Amec Wins USD 430 Million Contract To Support Polish New-Build”, 9 July 2014, see
http://www.nucnet.org/all-the-news/2014/07/21/amec-wins-usd-430-million-contract-to-support-polish-new-build,
accessed 1 July 2016.
Mycle Schneider, Antony Froggatt et al. 53 World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2016