The Finnish owners of the Fennovoima Finnish-Russian consortium terminated the contract for the construction of a nuclear power plant with the Russian state-owned nuclear power company Rosatom on Monday, the Reuters news agency reported.
The Hanhikivi nuclear power plant on the peninsula of the same name would have been built by Rosatom on behalf of Fennovoima, in which Finnish shareholders, including Outokompu, Fortum and SSAB, hold two-thirds of the consortium, and Rosatom Energy International’s Finnish subsidiary, RAOS Voima Oy, owns 34 percent.
The plan for the nuclear power plant became uncertain when the Finnish government was forced to revise proposals in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. The government would have originally granted the building permit later this year, according to Reuters.
Finnish Economy Minister Mika Lintila has repeatedly said publicly that given the current situation, it is certain the government will not grant the permit for the construction of the power plant. Nonetheless, the Finnish subsidiary of Rosatom insisted on continuing with the plan.
“Fennovoima’s decision is clear and the owners’ decision must be accepted. It is virtually impossible to continue with the plan,” Lintila wrote on Twitter on Monday in response to Fennovoima’s announcement.
The consortium justified the termination of the contract on the grounds that there were significant delays in the preparation of the plans, saying that RAOS was unable to complete the task.
“In recent years, the contractor has been constantly late a lot, in fact, the delay had grown more and more, and the war in Ukraine has only increased the risks, and RAOS has not been able to avert them,” Fennovoima said in the statement announcing that cooperation with the RAOS project would be terminated immediately.
