Dukovany is one of the largest industrial commitments in modern Czech history, and its economics cannot be understood from the reactor price alone. The government selected Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power as preferred supplier for two new units, indicated an offered price of roughly CZK 200 billion per unit in 2024 prices, and designed a financing structure in which the state would hold 80% of project company Elektrárna Dukovany II and provide construction financing through a state loan.
That structure matters because nuclear projects are unusually sensitive to the cost and duration of capital. A project that takes years longer than expected can become much more expensive even if the engineering contract itself does not change.
The two-unit decision is an attempt to capture scale
The Czech government has argued that building two units at one site reduces the unit cost relative to developing separate projects. Shared site work, engineering, supply-chain mobilisation and project management can create economies of scale, particularly if the second unit follows the first closely enough to retain labour and supplier learning.
The logic is commercially plausible, but it also increases the amount of capital committed to one programme. That makes schedule discipline and contract governance even more important.
The 2025 court delay was a reminder that execution is not linear
In May 2025, the planned contract signature was delayed after a court issued a preliminary injunction during a challenge by EDF. ČEZ's first-quarter reporting recorded the delay, while the government had already approved the contract for signature when legally possible.
The episode is useful because it shows the difference between political approval, procurement selection, contract signature, financing approval, permitting, construction and commissioning. Each is a separate milestone, and none should be collapsed into a single claim that a plant is simply 'being built'.
Our view: track Dukovany like an infrastructure programme, not a political announcement
Czech Business Review's view is that the project should be measured against a stable set of execution indicators: final financing terms, state-aid approval, contract milestones, local-industry participation, site works, first concrete, commissioning and eventual unit economics.
If those milestones stay visible, the project can be debated on evidence rather than on either nuclear optimism or nuclear pessimism. The real question is whether Czechia can convert a strategic energy decision into a project delivered close enough to plan to preserve the economics that justified it.