Why we should take the gorgeous Gabriela Kratochvilova more seriously than Kirill Komarov of Rosatom and Danny Roderick of Westinghouse.



Kirill Komarov of Rosatom was right! The Temelin tender is no mere theatre –it is a beauty contest!

But before we get into the 'Temelin nonsense', as Miroslav Kalousek now calls it, let me first congratulate Gabriela Kratochvilova on her success on Saturday. She is the first Czech beauty queen to win with short hair! And the first who prefers to do the washing-up by hand! This is great news for Audrey Hepburn fans like myself, and for manufacturers of rubber gloves as well!

Was it just me, or were you also struck by the absurdity of yesterday’s ‘news’ that Westinghouse is now the favourite to win the Temelin project, when juxtaposed with yesterday’s comments by the finance minister that the project makes no economic sense?

Never mind that the Czech government “neither knows how much it will cost, nor how it will be financed”, in the words of the very man who will have to pay for it. In all the excitement of the contest itself, it is understandable that the media overlook such minor details. What matters is that Westinghouse received 80 out of 100, compared to 66.5 for Rosatom. (The high score for Westinghouse means that the government is keen to keep the Americans in the game. The last thing Necas wants is for them to walk away from the tender, as they did with the supersonic tender ten years ago.)

Personally, I think we should take Gabriela rather more seriously than Kirill or Danny. At least Miss Česká 2013 is not wasting her time and vast sums of other people’s money.

How on earth can Mr Komarov and Mr Roderick continue to pour their company’s resources into chasing a piece of business when they know that the Czech government has no means of paying them?

The answer, of course, is that this really is a beauty contest, with the difference being that Temelin is a contest between representatives of an industrial technology in its early seventies, rather than between models in their early twenties.

The nuclear industry is showing off its third generation technology, the beauty queen's equivalent of the latest hairstyle.

Given their age, Mr Roderick and his Russian counterpart will certainly recall Tony Curtis in that fabulous movie from 1970 called “Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?” So let us suppose they called a tender for two new nuclear power stations, and nobody entered?

In short, the industry must take the Czech government seriously in order to be taken seriously itself. But that is no reason for the rest of us to do so, at least not as seriously as we should take Gabriela Kratochvilova.


And suppose they called a tender and nobody came?