Mochovce is dead. Someone needs to start saying it; it might as well be the
people who worked hard for it to come true. If you call the EBRD (the
multilateral bank which was to finance this nuclear power plant) offically
they will tell you the project is on hold, but after only a small amount of
discussion they will admit the project is almost certainly out of the picture.
The project manager, Allan Pillioux, has been reasigned to work in Poland.
Electricite de France (EdF), which was supposed to build the project, is
admitting that they lost over 100 million DM on the deal. They can't sue the
Slovaks; they did not have a contract - most of their engineers have returned
to France. Four of the five directors of SE (the Slovak energy utility), the
four who favored Western support for the completion of Mochovce, have been
fired. The two most senior Ministry of Economy officials in Slovakia, who
supported EBRD funding, have also been quietly fired.

The implications reach far beyond Slovakia. At the EBRD annual meeting,
shortly after the Slovaks requested to indefinitely delay the project, EBRD
President de Larosiere, who had placed much of his personal reputation on
pushing the Mochovce project, was asked about the Bank's possible role in
funding nuclear power station completion in Bulgaria or Romania. His short,
angry answer was "Don't ask me about nuclear".

A more formal retreat from nuclear lending can be seen in the evolution of
EBRD's statements about the significance of the Mochovce project. At first,
Mochovce was being held up as a precedent: if the Bank could do it in
Slovakia, then Western nuclear vendors could look forward to a bright future
of additional contracts to complete reactors in other East European countries.
But as the battle against Mochovce ran long, the Bank retreated from this
position. It announced in its final document on the topic, in answer to the
question "Are there other nuclear projects of this sort [like Mochovce] in the
pipeline?", "No, because Mochovce presents a unique combination of positive
aspects which cannot be found in other countries..."

No multilateral development bank (MDB) lends for nuclear power; the EBRD was
going to be the first to try. But just in time they learned what the World
Bank has believed for years: "Nuclear power plants are ... uneconomic because
at present and projected costs they are unlikely to be the least-cost
alternative. There is also evidence that the cost figures usually cited by
suppliers are substantially underestimated and often fail to take into account
waste disposal, decommissioning and other environmental costs. Furthermore,
the large size of many plants relative to developing countries' systems leads
to risks of substantial excess capacity should demand fail to increase as
predicted. A nuclear investment strategy lacks flexibility to adapt to
changing circumstances." [World Bank Technical Paper #154, page 85]

And the tide can already be seen to be turning. The Ukraine recently
submitted its US$4 billion request for energy aid to the G-7 and EU countries.
The package included aid for everything from phasing out operating Chernobyl
reactors, to energy efficiency, to new gas-fired plants, to assistance in
managing the deteriorating sarcophogus at the melted-down Chernobyl unit. One
thing it did not include: western nuclear aid. This is a reversal of the
government's position of only 6 months ago, when the government was seeking to
complete 6 unfinished Soviet-designed reactors.

So how did this happen? It would be nice to say that the grassroots
international anti-nuclear campaign we organized succeeded in stopping the
Mochovce project over the desires of some of the largest multinational
corporations and strongest pro-nuclear governments in the world. But this
would only be partially true. An unpredictable mix of forces intervened,
including the Austrian government, the European Parliament, the US Executive
Director of the EBRD, and a number of smaller governments which were willing
to stand up and vote against the project (Denmark, The Netherlands, Luxemborg,
Turkey, Portugal, Norway, Greece and of course Austria). Tremendous press
coverage of the issues (including 4 stories in 10 days in the London Financial
Times) also played a role.

But we must admit that the Slovak government made some terrible mistakes in
trying to push the project forward as well. PM Meciar is famous for his
promises. He promised during his most recent election that he would return
milk to the communist era prices of 2 Crowns per liter (it remains at about 8
Crowns despite his promises). He made similar promises to the EBRD, for
example that electricity prices would increase 29% on April 1 of this year.
But Mr. Meciar is a populist and increasing electricity prices is very
unpopular. He cancelled this promise, and said he was unsure about his
promise to close down the Bohunice nuclear power plant when Mochovce was
finished - and the deal began to fall apart.

So is our work done in Slovakia? No, for two reasons. First, our objective
is not simply to stop nuclear power plants, but to build sensible and
environmentally sustainable energy policy. Stopping Mochovce does not solve
the energy problems in Slovakia. Environmental groups are working with the
countries which opposed the Mochovce plan to help with financing and with
finding companies which can provide non-nuclear energy systems.

Secondly, Mochovce might try to come back to life. In March, the Slovak
government it was considering a new Mochovce package which would include Czech
builders (Skoda Praha) and Russian funders. As one activist said, "Nuclear
power plants are like cats, they have nine lives. By stopping EBRD funding,
we ended seven of them, but there are two left and this Russian deal might be
one of them."

There are problems with the Russian/Czech plan however. First of all, it is
not well developed. The EdF proposal for Mochovce was 3000 pages long, the
Skoda proposal was 3 pages long. Second, the financing for the plant is
extremely uncertain. The proposal still requires an increase in Slovak
electricity prices so that construction loans can be paid back. Also, the
Czech Republic was unwilling to provide sovereign guarantees (a promise to pay
the loan if CEZ cannot) for Temelin; it is unlikely they will provide them for
a nuclear facility in another country.

Without these guarantees from some country other than Slovakia, the Czech
banks will not consider this proposal - it is simply too risky. And finally,
the European Parliament voted 199 to 40 in an emergency resolution to delay
EBRD funding for Mochovce and demanded a higher safety standard than was being
proposed; it is very unlikely to be happy about the completion of Mochovce to
the even lower safety standard represented by the discount price Skoda is
offering for completion. Slovakia must pass through the gates of the European
Parliament if it is ever to join the EU (in fact, the EP dissatisfaction with
Mochovce was one of the reasons cited by the Slovak government for delaying
the decision).

With the Western nuclear lobby's effort to move east apparently halted at the
Slovak border, is there any hope that the Temelin plant will be stopped?
There are reasons to think so. First is a collection of internal struggles
amongst the players building Temelin. The Ministry of Industry wants CEZ and
Skoda to sign contracts saying there will be no more cost overruns (costs
above the originally quoted price) at Temelin. (They have already run more
than 6 billion Crowns greater than they promised last year when the US ExIm
bank granted the loan guarantee). CEZ and Skoda are very unwilling to make
this agreement. Minister Dlouhy has threatened to use the government's
majority ownership in CEZ to force them to agree or he will find a new
director. In essence, the truth is that Temelin is having financial problems
and the government wants to find someone who will lie to them and say this is
not true, and then to put that person at the top of CEZ - it is unlikely this
will make the problems go away.

Temelin also has design problems. The most recent Ministry of Industry report
to the government regarding Temelin shows that the plant's core design is not
finished. At the same time the report says that the planned schedule for the
start of Temelin is mid 1997 (when I first came to the Czech Republic in 1992,
the planned completion date for Temelin was... mid 1995). When I asked my
colleague, Dr. Wolfgang Kromp from the Austrian Chancellor's Nuclear Safety
Institute in Vienna, if it was possible to finish the plant in two years
without a core design, he replied "It is basically impossible", citing the
need to test the design through computer simulations, then time to produce the
custom parts for it, to install and to further test it.

These delays and overruns could play a critical role in stopping Temelin. In
a recent debate between CEZ staff and anti-nuclear activists and experts
before the Czech Youth Congress, I asked the following question: "CEZ reported
the technical parts of Temelin as 60% and 30% completed in November 1992. Yet
CEZ reported the exact same completion levels in February of 1995 - has there
been no progress in the last two years?" There was simply no reply from the
CEZ engineers. [Interestingly, at the end of this debate, only one of the 50
young people attending the conference said that Temelin should be finished and
almost all of the rest said that Temelin should be stopped - it would appear
the young people are wiser than their parents.]

But none of this alone is enough to stop Temelin. If we look at the history
of the anti-nuclear movements in other countries, we can see that there is a
key role to be played by intellectuals in halting nuclear power. In
Bulgaria it was the Academy of Science which went against the communist
government's orders and printed their independent findings that the Belene
plant was unsafe and unneeded. Popular unrest, sparked in part by these
findings, reversed the government's decision and halted construction.

A similar story took place in Poland where years of popular opposition to the
Zarnowiec nuclear power plant was supplemented by intellectuals and the
growing Solidarity movement - the site of the plant has been now converted
into a brewery. In Germany, intellectuals like Nobel rize winner Heinrich Boell
joined those who were locking themselves to nuclear plants under construction
and the debate on nuclear power took an entirely new form.

In these countries and many more, there has been no new nuclear construction
started since before the Chernobyl catastrophe. Finland and the UK have
recently decided not to build additional nuclear plants; Spain just decided to
offically halt construction of three unfinished reactors. The US last year
halted the construction of one reactor in the state of Tennessee that was
further completed than Temelin, and even France has said it will begin no new
nuclear construction before the turn of the century, if ever.

So where are the Czech intellectuals? It appears that almost the entire rest
of the world has figured out that nuclear power is a mistake. The same
strength of character which helped grasp the opportunity of 1989 and placed
reason over demagogic politics is desperately needed now.

Paxus Calta
Int'l Energy Campaigner
Hnuti DUHA - FoE Czech Republic