Rob Denning When the government of Petr Fiala (ODS) announced in July 2024 that South Korea's KHNP had won the tender to build two new reactors at Dukovany, it put the price at roughly 400 billion crowns. Industry and Trade Minister Karel Havlíček (ANO) now puts the real cost at about 700 billion crowns, according to novinky.cz.
Novinky.cz, which reported the new figure, called Dukovany the largest investment in Czech history. Because the project is state-backed, cost overruns of this size typically land on electricity tariffs or the state budget — the same taxpayers who were told a lower number in 2024.
Why should this worry anyone outside Czechia?
Dukovany is among the first new-build Western reactor contracts signed since Russia's invasion of Ukraine pushed energy security up the EU's agenda. Hypothesis: a near-doubling of costs before construction is fully underway is an early warning sign for Europe's broader nuclear push. Supporting this: the pattern echoes decades of nuclear projects running over budget worldwide, and Czech experts flagged the original estimate as too low from the start, per novinky.cz. Against it: this is a single data point on one contractor, and no cost-overrun pattern for other European reactor programs has been confirmed here — the comparison remains open, not established fact.
What to watch: whether Havlíček's 700-billion figure is final, and whether Prague renegotiates terms with KHNP as construction proceeds.
