Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP), a South Korean state-controlled company, announced on Monday that it had signed an agreement with Canadian group Candu Energy to speed up preparations to submit a bid in the tender to be held to upgrade the reactor 1 from Cernavodă, Yonhap agency informs.

KHNP stated that it signed an engineering services contract with Candu, in accordance with their objective to participate in the modernization of reactor 1 of the Cernavodă nuclear power plant (Romania), according to Agerpres.

The project aims to replace some key components and build the necessary infrastructure that will allow reactor 1 from Cernavodă to operate for another 30 years.

According to the partnership with Candu, KHNP will develop a plan for the construction of the infrastructure.

“Through this project, we expect to strengthen cooperation between South Korea and Romania in the field of nuclear energy,” said KHNP general manager Whang Joo-ho, who added that the company will focus its efforts on winning the contract that will be auctioned this year.

For the same project, last year KHNP signed a tripartite consortium agreement with the Canadian group Candu Energy and the Italian Ansaldo Nucleare S.p.A.

Unit 1 of the Cernavodă Nuclear Power Plant (CNE), with an installed capacity of 700 MW, was put into operation in 1996 and has delivered, until now, 133 million MWh, representing 9% of national consumption, over a period of 26 years. Unit 1 also prevented the release of 130 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.