BEIJING - A final
decision on which foreign company will be invited
to build four third-generation nuclear reactors in
Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces might
be postponed until the first half of next year.
According to insiders, the delay is
because of a disagreement about the technology to
be used and the price. "It is unlikely that the
talks will be finalized by the end of this year as
originally planned," Chen Hua, a director from the
China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), told
China Daily December 1.
The Chinese
government has approved the building of two
nuclear plants in Sanmen in East China's Zhejiang
province, and in Yangjiang, in South China's
Guangdong province. Each will have
two
1,000-megawatt (MW) reactors and use advanced
third-generation technology.
Up to now,
bidders involved in the talks include Paris-based
Areva, Pittsburgh-based but United Kingdom-owned
Westinghouse Electric Company and Russia's
AtomStroyExport.
None of these had been
able to reach an agreement with CNNC, which is
behind the building of the plants, said Chen.
"These companies haven't given us satisfactory
proposals on many key technical details, such as
engineering and plant security," the CNNC director
said.
"Their price offers are still much
higher than what we have budgeted for." The final
decision will be delayed, he said, refusing to
disclose the bid prices from these companies. "It
is hard to say exactly when [the talks will be
completed], but we hope to finalize them in the
first half of next year," he said.
Because
of the prolonged negotiations, the construction
schedule will also suffer delays, the director
told China Daily. "It now seems improbable that
construction [of the two nuclear plants] will
start at the end of 2007 as we originally
planned," he said. The company most likely to win
the bid at the moment is Areva or Westinghouse,
Chen said. "We haven't talked much with the
Russians."
An official from the
preparatory office of the State Power Technology
Corporation of China (SNPTC), who refused to be
named, echoed Chen's comments on December 1. He
said the talks were proceeding much slower than
previously expected, with problems over "price and
technology".
SNPTC has been authorized to
hold talks with Areva, Westinghouse and
AtomStroyExport. Both Areva and Westinghouse
declined to comment. CNNC's Chen also denied a
recent media report that the French and US-based
companies would be awarded one project each. "We
will not use different technologies at the two
plants," he said.
China has used nuclear
technologies from France, Canada and Russia in
building its nuclear plants in Guangdong and
Zhejiang. If Westinghouse wins the contract, the
project will be the first in the Chinese nuclear
power sector for the US unit of state-owned
British Nuclear Fuels Plc, which designs half the
world's nuclear reactors.
The country
plans to spend 400 billion yuan (US$48.33 billion)
building new nuclear power plants by 2020. This
will increase the amount of installed nuclear
power capacity from the current 16 gigawatts (GW)
to 40 GW, or 4% of the total installed capacity,
within 15 years, Kang Rixin, president of CNNC,
said in June.
This ambitious goal will
translate into another 30 or so 1,000-MW units in
China by 2020. The country currently has 19
reactors in operation, under construction or
having received central government approval.
