The Czech government needs to support a robust tendering process for planned new reactors at the Dukovany nuclear site while also establishing a roadmap to identify the potential role of small modular reactors in the energy system, the International Energy Agency said.

In a report on the country’s energy policies, the Paris-based agency said the tendering process for new-build at Dukovany must have “clear technological and economic selection criteria” while ensuring the essential security interests of the state.

The report said that over the last few years, the Czech Republic has expressed interest in investigating the potential to deploy SMRs in parallel with large nuclear reactors. State power company ČEZ has recently signed a number of memoranda of understanding with several SMR vendors including GE Hitachi, NuScale and Rolls-Royce.