Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) has broken off construction contract talks with a Daewoo Engineering & Construction-led consortium for a $18.6bn (€16.5bn) project to build two new nuclear plants at the Dukovany site in the Czech Republic.
The state-run nuclear operator said on Thursday (29 October) it would move to terminate its cooperation agreement with the consortium, which includes Doosan Enerbility, and launch a new bidding process to find a replacement contractor.
Reports in South Korea said the breakdown followed more than a year of talks over construction costs and who should bear the financial burden of design changes. According to industry sources, KHNP demanded a cut of more than 10% from the consortium’s original bid, equivalent to over $750m.
KHNP said the two sides failed to agree on key contract terms despite prolonged negotiations. The consortium called for talks to resume.
The Dukovany project is for two new large-scale APR1000 plants, supplied by KHNP, at the existing Dukovany nuclear power station site in the southern Czech Republic, about 50 km from the border with Austria.
A deal was signed between Czech state-controlled nuclear project company EDU II and KHNP in June 2025.
Daewoo E&C and Doosan Enerbility were selected as construction partners in 2018 and participated in the bidding process.
In a statement on 29 October, the consortium said the main sticking point was a set of revised contract terms introduced by KHNP on 7 October, giving it only about three weeks to review the changes.
The Korea Herald reported that Choi Il-kyung, KHNP’s vice-president and head of project operations, played down the risk of major disruption to the project.
“While there may be some impact, we believe we can fully recover from it,” the Korea Herald quoted him as saying. “We are communicating closely with the Czech government and the customer.”
Dukovany has four existing units, all Russia-designed VVER V-213 plants with an original net capacity of 420 MW. They began commercial operation between 3 May 1985 and 19 July 1987. Two further units at Temelín, both VVER V-320 plants with an original net capacity of 912 MW, began commercial operation on 10 June 2002 and 18 April 2003.
