IN Brief:
- The EIB board has approved an €800 million loan for the refurbishment of Cernavodă Unit 1.
- Main works between 2027 and 2030 will include reactor retubing, testing, and plant recommissioning.
- Nuclearelectrica must obtain shareholder approval before entering the financing agreement.
Nuclearelectrica has received European Investment Bank board approval for an €800 million loan supporting the refurbishment of Unit 1 at Romania’s Cernavodă nuclear power station.
Before the financing can be contracted, Nuclearelectrica must secure approval from its shareholders. The loan is expected to form part of a wider structure combining company equity with funding and guarantees from international financial institutions, export credit agencies, commercial banks, and other lenders.
A separate €540 million syndicated loan was signed in September 2025 for preliminary work, with a banking group led by JP Morgan SE providing support for the earlier engineering and development phases. The EIB approval adds a further substantial component to the financing required for the main refurbishment period.
Unit 1 is currently progressing through the programme’s second phase, which includes permitting, detailed engineering, contracting, materials and equipment procurement, financial preparation, and preliminary civil works. Construction activity began during 2025 and has continued as the project moves towards the planned reactor shutdown.
The third phase, scheduled between 2027 and 2030, will require Unit 1 to be taken out of service for the principal refurbishment. Reactor retubing will form the centre of the programme, accompanied by equipment replacement, system modification, inspection, testing, acceptance, removal of temporary facilities, and preparation for the unit’s return to operation.
Cernavodă Unit 1 is a CANDU reactor commissioned in 1996. Its pressure-tube design allows major life-extension work to be carried out through the replacement of reactor components and associated systems, with the refurbished unit intended to operate for a further 30 years between 2030 and 2060.
Nuclearelectrica records more than 150 million MWh of generation from Unit 1 since commissioning, together with a capacity factor above 90%. The company expects the refurbished reactor to provide approximately 9% of Romania’s annual electricity supply during the extended operating period.
Maintaining that output requires a tightly controlled outage programme. Replacement components must be manufactured, qualified, delivered, installed, inspected, and tested in sequence, while temporary facilities and specialist tooling have to be available before the reactor enters the main shutdown.
Life extension preserves firm low-carbon capacity
European power systems are adding large volumes of renewable generation while attempting to retain enough dependable capacity for periods of low wind, weak solar output, high demand, or reduced interconnector availability. Nuclear refurbishment offers one route to preserving continuous low-carbon generation without developing an entirely new power station.
Existing sites already possess grid connections, operating organisations, security arrangements, cooling infrastructure, maintenance facilities, and much of the surrounding electrical equipment. The engineering work remains extensive, but the project retains a known generating asset within an established network location.
Refurbishment risk is concentrated around the shutdown and the preparation completed before it begins. If a critical component, specialist team, lifting arrangement, or design approval is unavailable when required, the outage can extend and increase the volume of replacement electricity needed from other generators or imports.
Long-lead procurement therefore sits alongside nuclear safety as a central programme discipline. Specialist components, inspection systems, temporary services, radiation-protection equipment, electrical systems, and qualified contractors must be coordinated around a fixed sequence in a highly regulated working environment.
Major refurbishment can also uncover conditions that differ from historical records or earlier inspection data. The programme must retain sufficient contingency to address additional repairs without weakening technical assurance or allowing uncontrolled schedule pressure to influence safety decisions.
The €800 million approval illustrates the capital required even when an existing reactor is retained. Nuclear assets provide long operating lives, but owners and lenders must carry construction, schedule, and performance risk before the additional generation period begins. Institutional finance can support maturities better aligned with infrastructure that will operate for several decades.
Romania is pursuing several nuclear pathways, including additional CANDU capacity and proposals involving small modular reactors. Elsewhere in central Europe, developers in Poland are seeking state support for an SMR fleet. Although the technologies and project structures differ, each programme requires stable financing, long-term policy support, and a sufficiently deep nuclear supply chain.
The planned outage and return of Unit 1 must also be incorporated into network and generation planning. A large synchronous generator contributes continuous output, inertia, voltage support, reactive power, and fault current, while its temporary absence changes both adequacy and system-operability requirements.
EIB approval does not complete the project’s financial or delivery arrangements. Shareholder consent, contracts, permits, manufacturing, construction preparation, and outage execution remain ahead. It does, however, establish a major part of the funding required to retain one of Romania’s principal generating units until 2060.
