As part of the programme to bring the Czech plant Dukovany into line with western safety standards, a consortium formed by Framatome and Schneider Electric has signed a contract with the Skoda JS to upgrade the safety systems in all four units.

The consortium will deploy its Spinline 3 digital protection systems. This technology was introduced into the Fessenheim plant in France during its second ten-year outage, and more recently into units 3 and 4 at the Kozloduy plant in Bulgaria.

The contract covers the instrumentation and control systems for reactor protection and operation under accident conditions. The four Russian-designed VVER units, the first of which went into service 15 years ago, will be upgraded between 2005 and 2009.