MIELNO, Poland, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Residents of popular Baltic Sea resort Mielno, one of three sites shortlisted to host Poland's first nuclear plant early in the next decade, on Sunday voted overwhelmingly against the plan.
Some 94 percent of the 2,389 people who took part in the referendum opposed the plant, and only 5 percent supported it, Mielno Mayor Olga Roszak-Pezala told Reuters late on Sunday. Turnout was 57 percent.
Poland's largest power group Polska Grupa Energetyczna said Sunday it had started two tender procedures for its nascent nuclear power program.
PGE said an owner's engineer tender for technological advisory services and another for environmental and site surveying had been launched by its newly created subsidiary PGE EJ 1.
A governmental dispute over the costs of Poland's nuclear power program could delay the country's first nuclear plant, according to a report Monday.
The daily Rzeczpospolita said Poland's finance minister, Jacek Rostowski, has criticized the high cost of the economy ministry's estimated Zloty 840 million ($289 million) nuclear program.
Poland will commission its first nuclear power plant in 2022, two years after the original schedule, Hanna Trojanowska, the government's nuclear energy adviser, said Thursday.
"In effect, in the verified schedule 2022 appears as the date for the start-up of the first unit," Trojanowska told the state news agency PAP.
WARSAW (IDN) - Backed by the U.S. and France, Poland is set to tread the nuclear path and hopes to start generating atomic power by 2021. Presently, coal accounts for over 93 percent of the eastern European country's electricity, demand for which is expected to double by 2025.
A four-stage plan announced by Hanna Trojanowska, the government's Plenipotentiary for Nuclear Energy, envisages appropriate legislation by the end of 2010; site, technology and construction arrangements between 2011 and 2013; technical plans and site works in 2014 and 2015; and construction from 2016 to 2020.
