The Fennovoima Company has offered to start direct negotiations on supply of reactors for the Hanhikivi-1 NPP on the North of the country. What attracted the Finnish side was water-water reactor with the capacity of 1200 MW, used in the AES-2006 project. The possible rivals are Japanese Toshiba and French Areva (most likely in partnership with Mitsubishi).

Conditions Changed
Initially the Finns were looking forward to building an NPP with a reactor of capacity of about 1.6 GW. In 2012 Fennovoima received the letters of interest from Areva and Toshiba. However these days the company has decided to change the conditions, since there were some changes in the company’s ownership. In February E.On (Germany) sold 34% of Fennovoima stock to Voimaosakeyhtio SF, controlling stakeholder. It includes 61 Finnish companies, however its members don’t have anything to do with power engineering, being potential consumers of the power of the new NPP.

After E.On’s discharge from Hanhikivi-1 among the owners there are no more members with NPP experience left. Meanwhile Finnish nuclear safety regulator has a reputation of a very strict controller, which means that the government of the country may require some profile company to take part in the project management. At the same time, the French company was going to take part only as a construction contractor. According to specialists’ assessments, upon these conditions Rosatom has a very good chance to win the tender.

Experienced Partner
The information about Rosatom’s possible return to Finnish market appeared as early as this February. One of the main conditions for taking part in the tender was full modernization of the project according to the newest safety requirements. “It is true that we are starting direct negotiations with our Finnish colleagues, – says Rusatom Overseas representative. – Should we be invited to the tender, we’ll study the conditions and make our decision. High quality of Russian technologies is well known in Finland, the example is “Loviisa” – the NPP having performed excellent and safe work for many years”. Two power units with VVER-440 reactors were introduced at the plant in 1977 and 1980.

Future Plans
Fennovoima is planning to select its supplier during this year. The NPP construction will start in 2015, putting into operation is scheduled for 2020. The total cost of construction is EUR 4-6 billion. Currently there are nuclear power units operating in Finland, the fifth one, with the French EPR-1600 reactor planned to be installed, is now under construction. According to the plan, seven more units are to be built by 2020.