Dramatically back in relation to western Europe is still the energy infrastructure in former “socialist” eastern Europe, which our country’s consumers are “paying” as the problems of eastern European infrastructure especially due to climate change lead to increased demand (and) from Greece and thus increased demand. After , they come As a Bloomberg report reports, while western Europe has focused on upgrading or replacing the old reactors, the Eastern continent has been struggling to find a new potential for decades. The question, however, is who will pay for it and how much of it will come true. From the Czech Republic to Romania, plans are being drawn up for what some have called “the greatest work of the century”. They want to build at least a dozen new nuclear units with a budget of almost 130 billion euros ($139 billion), based on the latest forecasts that Bloomberg has gathered. The first could work within a decade. The former “socialist” states largely inherited the existing facilities from the proliferation that came into operation in the 1970s and 1980s. However, these operate on loan time. Governments have taken advantage of political support for new facilities, as countries are struggling with the pressure of the European Union (EU) on greener energy and after being forced to become independent of the cheapest Russian gas. The challenge is that countries do not have engineering know-how and have difficulty funding the range of their ambitions, officials say. Because no private investor will take the risk of building a new unit alone, governments must intervene. EU subsidies will play a key role, but there will also be competition for this money. “Financing is by far the most important issue,” said Nuclear Energy Agency economist, Jan Horst Kepler (Jan Horst Kepler) in a hall full of Eastern European energy companies executives at a meeting in Prague in June. “He is at the heart of the decision”. The picture in Western Europe, meanwhile, is mixed. Belgium and Spain, for example, plan to phase out nuclear energy, although the timetable has been postponed due to the concern about energy supply after Russia invaded Ukraine. Others are immovable. Austria rejected nuclear power in a 1978 referendum. Germany has gone on to abandon it since the government took the decision after Fukushima was destroyed in Japan in 2011. Belgium, France, Finland and Sweden continue to produce at least one third of their energy needs from reactors for more than 100 million citizens. The newest reactor in the EU – Olkiluoto 3 in Finland – began producing energy last year. France’s last addition will start producing electricity this summer, the Flamanville-3 EPR reactor that has been delayed for a long time. While government subsidies to start new reactors will almost certainly receive EU approval, their scale is intimidating. It is worth seeing Poland, whose energy production has long dominated coal and the new nuclear power stations will be the first in the country. The government remains trapped in negotiations on how to finance Westinghouse Electric reactors intended for its first plant, the cost of which can exceed $30 billion – an amount equivalent to the country’s entire defence budget for 2023 or 3.9% of gross domestic product. “Nuclear energy is different from other sources of electricity,” said Marcin Kaminski, the risk manager who helps build Poland’s first reactors at Polskie Elektrownie Jadrowe. “There is a huge need for state participation,” he adds. Eastern European countries are not expected to make investment decisions soon. They expect the EU to approve assistance under the budget cycle 2028-2034, which will probably be approved next June. EU green energy plans include nuclear energy. Poland could consider a so-called ‘contract versus dispute’ agreement, a form of state subsidy used by Electricite de France SA and the UK Government for their projects. Romania creates a special purpose vehicle and examines the combination of green bonds, government loans and contracts for difference, Vasile Dascalu, head of state Nucleara’s finances. The Czechs, meanwhile, will decide by the end of August which company will become a supplier of at least one reactor. Deputy Minister for Economy and Trade, Thomas Eller (Tomas Ehler), said during the June meeting in Prague that “there is no competitive funding offer” and that state loans are likely to cover 90% of the cost. This industry contrasts with the state model of China and Russia, which manufactures most reactors. European nuclear projects are also notorious for delays in building and ejecting costs. In Slovakia, for example, a new unit at the Mochovce site was delayed by a decade and cost twice as much as planned 2 billion euros. The region’s first reactor was in Slovakia (then Czechoslovakia) and was put into commercial operation in 1972. While neighbouring Austria avoided nuclear power, Slovakia maintained public and political support. There have simply not been enough investments, according to Branislav Strycek, the CEO of Slovakia’s largest utility company. “We entered the crisis because electricity was extremely cheap for 15 years and nobody invested in new sources,” he said. “So when the war suddenly began, we had nothing to turn to, because all the sources were used and nothing new came.” At present, the only new nuclear power plants within the EU built are that in Slovakia and a south in Hungary, where Russia is funding the construction of the Paks II nuclear power plant by Rosatom, the dominant supplier of nuclear fuel in the world. But while Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban is an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Rosatom has been deleted from the list of potential future suppliers elsewhere due to the war in Ukraine. For Strycek in Slovakia, issues also exceed money. There is the narrow supply chain and the lack of experts and contractors. France’s programme for the construction of new reactors will absorb European resources and staff, for example. “Even though you may start” construction, said Strycek, “just press the water”.