The Trouble with Democracy

Since the mid 1980s, the Czech Republic has been trying in vain to find a site to deposit four to nine thousand tonnes of spent nuclear fuel from the Dukovany and Temelín nuclear power plants. The total amount of nuclear waste to be deposited became clear when the electricity company ČEZ, which is owned predominantly by the Czech State, decided to stop its tender for a supplier of equipment for new nuclear reactors at Temelín or Dukovany on April 10, 2014. Besides the official reasons given by the State, namely the instability of the European energy sector, the real reason that the tender was stopped was the economics behind new nuclear reactors, which cannot compete with the market price of electricity at €33.55/MWh (EEX 2015 price by June 3, 2014).