The Mochovce Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power plant

Nuclear power plant

A nuclear power plant is a thermal power station in which the heat source is one or more nuclear reactors. As in a conventional thermal power station the heat is used to generate steam which drives a steam turbine connected to a generator which produces electricity.Nuclear power plants are usually...

 located between the towns of Nitra

Nitra

Nitra is a city in western Slovakia, situated at the foot of Zobor Mountain in the valley of the river Nitra. With a population of about 83,572, it is the fifth largest city in Slovakia. Nitra is also one of the oldest cities in Slovakia and the country's earliest political and cultural center...

 and Levice

Levice

Levice is a town in western Slovakia. The town lies on the left bank of the lower Hron river. The Old Slavic name of the town was Leva, which means "the Left One"....

, on the site of the former village of Mochovce

Mochovce

Mochovce is a former village in western Slovakia, best known for its nuclear power plant.It is situated in Nitra Region, ca 8 miles northwest of Levice. The village inhabitants were relocated and the village was destroyed to make place for the power plant. A late baroque church and a cemetery are...

. Two up-rated 470 MW (originally 440MW) reactors are presently in operation, with two further reactors of the same type under construction. Generating almost 6,000 GWh of electricity a year, the power plant currently serves approximately 20% of Slovakia's energy needs.

History

A power plant consisting of four Soviet VVER 440/V-213 pressurized water reactor

Pressurized water reactor

Pressurized water reactors constitute a large majority of all western nuclear power plants and are one of three types of light water reactor , the other types being boiling water reactors and supercritical water reactors...

s was proposed in the 1970s. The Czechoslovak

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

 government began with a geological survey to find a suitable seismically stable site. After taking into account all factors the location of the village of Mochovce was chosen. Preparatory work was started on June 1981, and site construction for Mochovce-1 and Mochovce-2 started in November 1982. The reactors in Mochovce use enriched uranium

Enriched uranium

Enriched uranium is a kind of uranium in which the percent composition of uranium-235 has been increased through the process of isotope separation. Natural uranium is 99.284% 238U isotope, with 235U only constituting about 0.711% of its weight...

 as their fuel.

Construction of the remaining two units, Mochovce-3 and Mochovce-4, began in 1985 but work on all four units was halted in 1991 due to a lack of funds. In 1995 the Slovak government approved a plan to finish the first pair with additional Western safety technology. The first two units were commissioned in 1998 and 1999 respectively. Commissioning of the plant has sparked protests in Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, a neighboring country strongly opposed to the use of nuclear energy in general. Installed capacity of units 1 and 2 was up-rated by 7% in 2008. Construction of Units 3 and 4 restarted in November 2008 and is planned to be completed in 2012 and 2013. Owner of the plant is Slovenské elektrárne

Slovenské elektrárne

Slovenské elektrárne, a.s. is a Slovak electric utility company based in Bratislava, Slovak Republic, and successor to the former state monopoly....

, a nationally-owned company with a majority financial interest held by Enel

Enel

Enel may refer to:*Enel SpA, an Italian electricity company*Enel , a fictional villain in the One Piece manga and anime series*Enel, meaning third in the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, cf. Awakening of the Elves...

, an Italian utility company.

Safety

Although the original power plant design featured safety improvements such as seismically resistant attachment of equipment, it did not suit the safety and regulatory environment of the 1990s. To rectify this the German company Siemens

Siemens

Siemens may refer toSiemens, a German family name carried by generations of telecommunications industrialists, including:* Werner von Siemens , inventor, founder of Siemens AG...

 supplied a new control system, and Western and EU safety measures were implemented during the final phases of construction. According to the plant operator Mochovce nuclear power plant was the first Soviet-sourced nuclear plant in Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

 to meet the safety standards of Western nuclear power plants.

Technical data

Station	Reactor type	Net capacity	Commissioned	Grid date	Exp. shutdown
Mochovce 1	VVER VVER The VVER, or WWER, is a series of pressurised water reactors originally developed by the Soviet Union, and now Russia, by OKB Gidropress. Power output ranges from 440 MWe to 1200 MWe with the latest Russian development of the design...  440/213	440 MWe MWE MWE may refer to:*Manufacturer's Weight Empty*McDermott Will & Emery*Midwest Express, an airline*Merowe Airport - IATA code*Multiword expressionMWe may refer to:*Megawatt electrical...	4 July 1998	29 October 1998	2028
Mochovce 2	VVER 440/213	440 MWe	20 December 1999	11 April 2000	2030
Mochovce 3	VVER 440/213	440 MWe	under construction	(2012)
Mochovce 4	VVER 440/213	440 MWe	under construction	(2013)