Dukovany will be completed in 2036, Prime Minister Andrej Babis told journalists after a meeting of the Standing Committee for Nuclear Energy. Under the plan, a zoning and planning decision for the project will be granted in 2021 and supplier of the unit will be picked by the end of 2022.
"Nuclear energy is clean, it has no emissions ...," Babis said, adding that he advocates this idea, which is objective, in Brussels.
Upper Austria criticises the plan to build new nuclear sources in Czechia, and it filed a complaint with the EC in October asking it to examine the plan.
Daniel Benes, CEO of Dukovany's operator CEZ, said the firm expected up to five bids from potential investors, each of 20,000 to 30,000 pages.
Tender documentation of some 5,000 pages should be ready in June, said Benes.
CEZ plans to declare the tender in the second half of 2020, with bids to be submitted in 2021, he added.
Benes estimated the price of the new unit at between Kc140bn and Kc160bn. The final price will depend on the outcome of the tender process, he said.
The tender will be preceded by a final decision on an investor model, said Benes.
A framework contract between the state and CEZ is almost ready, and will be followed by a contract to implement the first stage. The outcome of the tender and the zoning and planning decision will possibly be available at the end of the first stage, said Benes.
According to earlier information, six companies have been interested in building nuclear units in the country: Russia's Rosatom, France's EDF, South Korean KHNP, China General Nuclear Power, joint venture of Areva and Mitsubishi Atmea, and US company Westinghouse.
Environmentalists have long criticised construction of a new nuclear source in the country.
Nuclear plants generated about a third of Czechia's electricity last year.
An investor model new nuclear units was approved by the cabinet early in July. It counts on CEZ's subsidiaries to be investors in new units. Under certain conditions, CEZ will be able to transfer the subsidiary that will be in charge of the nuclear project to the state.
Stepan Chalupa, chairman of the Chamber of Renewable Energy Sources, described the plan as very optimistic.
"A Finnish reactor is currently delayed by 10 years and a French unit by eight years," Chalupa told CTK.
