A few words about what I'm doing here (or trying to do).
Firstly some background:
Romania has a single nuclear power station at Cernavoda. Five units were planned however only two
were finished. The three others are just shells and will require a lot to complete them (should a few billion Lei ever come available).
The reactor type is CANDU signifying that it uses heavy water as a coolant and moderator and natural uranium fuel. Not surprisingly, the design is Canadian. What is a bit surprising to the foreigner here is why a Canadian design was chosen over the more prelavent VVER design from Russia. Most of the surrounding countries with nuclear power are firmly set in the Russian-designed technology. When one starts to look into why this choice was made, it opens up the whole dialogue of how Ceausescu wasn't one for blindly following the Moscow lead but who was a bit of a renegade 'doing his own thing'. The choice of CANDU reactors is a case in point - he didn't want to be too tightly controlled by Moscow on this technology, preferring to be independant. As no uranium enrichment was required, this simplified fuel manufacture so it could all be done inside Romania (as it has been done so since the programme began). He bucked the trend on a few other issues, notably refusing to sanction the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Ceausescu tried to keep one foot (just) inside the western Europe domain. However, as we know, it didn't do him much good in the end, but that's for another post perhaps.
Cooling water is supplied from a channel off the Danube-Black Sea canal. All waste is currently stored onsite. Unit 1 started in 1996, Unit 2 in 2007. Both are rated at 700 MW output.
Canada is still quite involved in the site, particularly on upgrades, outages, repairs etc. They clearly also built most of the apartment campus where I live (a clue being a large maple leaf embossed into the side of one building...).
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