Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico will meet US President Donald Trump on Saturday to sign a deal with Washington towards building a new nuclear reactor, his office said.
Fico will meet Trump at 3:30 pm local time (20.30 GMT) at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, the Slovak government office said in a statement Friday. It will their first meeting since Trump returned to office last year.
Slovakia currently operates five nuclear reactors at two plants and plans to build another at its plant in Jaslovske Bohunice, some 70km northeast of the capital Bratislava.
On Friday Fico will meet US Energy Secretary Chris Wright in Washington and attend a ceremony to sign an agreement between both countries “on cooperation in the field of civil nuclear energy”, said the government office.
The deal “is of fundamental importance for the construction of a new nuclear source in Jaslovske Bohunice,” it added.
The Slovak government has previously said the new unit should be operational by 2040 with an expected capacity of up to 1,200 megawatts.
The project is estimated to cost some 15 billion euros, making it the largest in Slovakia’s history. Earlier this week, Fico said a construction contract with US company Westinghouse could be signed in 2027.
Slovakia’s existing reactors are all of Russian design, but Fico has said that his cabinet decided to “diversify and work with a different partner”.
Fico is one of the few EU leaders to have maintained ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin despite Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
In July, the cabinet announced there would be no public tender and so far it has not detailed how it would finance the project, as critics highlight the high costs and question its necessity.
Slovakia currently produces more electricity per year than it consumes.
(cs)