WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's conservative government may further postpone the construction of the country's first nuclear reactor as costs remain unpredictable, Energy Minister Krzysztof Tchorzewski said on Wednesday.
The project was first pushed in 2009 by Poland's previous government as part of a drive to find alternatives to coal-fired power generation.
Since then it has hit numerous delays due to falling power prices and Japan's 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, which drained public support.
Despite those hurdles, the governing Law and Justice party, which won a parliamentary election in October, is likely to stick to the plan.
"The programme will continue, especially because there is research potential in Poland," Tchorzewski said. "But we are facing the dilemma of how fast to do that. This has not been decided yet."
The project's official deadlines were to have the first unit operating by 2025, a delay from the original target of 2020.
The minister added that the cost to build a 6-gigawatt nuclear power plant ranged from 30 billion to 50 billion zlotys ($7.3 billion to $12.2 billion) and could rise further during construction.
Poland, which generates the bulk of its electricity from coal, relies mostly on aging power plants and infrastructure.
Insufficient capacity reserves pose risks to the country's electricity system in extreme weather when power consumption soars. The European Union also expects Poland to reduce reliance on highly polluting coal.
(Reporting by Agnieszka Barteczko; Editing by Michael Kahn and Dale Hudson)
