Tue Dec 20, 2005 11:24 AM ET
BEIJING (Reuters) - China will miss a year-end deadline for handing out an $8 billion contract to build four nuclear reactors, and plans to postpone its choice indefinitely, an industry source close to the bidding said on Tuesday.
Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse Electric Co., France's Areva and Russia's Atomstroiexport are vying for the contract to build China's first third-generation reactors.
Beijing's original plan was to make a final decision by the end of this year but officials have decided to put it off because of the high price of the foreign reactors, the source said.
Even though China was considering importing only those parts of the plants that could not be produced domestically, the prices offered by the bidders were still considered unreasonably high.
"There will be no new deadline for the decision. When the government announces the result will depend on how the talks are going," he added.
During a visit to France earlier this month, Premier Wen Jiabao indicated Paris would have to improve its offer in terms of both price and transfer of nuclear technology, the source said, adding the same message had been passed to other bidders.
"The ball has been kicked to the foreign side again. We will wait and see how they react," he said.
Industry officials have said both Westinghouse's AP 1000 and Areva's
EPR technology are very competitive, while the Russian offer is less so.
In contrast with the delay in introducing foreign technology, Beijing is accelerating the construction of nuclear reactors that use existing domestic technology.
Work began last week on the second phase of the Ling'ao plant in southern Guangdong province. It will put two 1.0-gigawatt reactors into commercial operation in 2010 and 2011.
"These projects have nothing to do with the third-generation technology and will not be influenced by it," the source said.
The energy-guzzling nation plans to invest some 400 billion yuan ($49.56 billion) in building around 30 new nuclear reactors by 2020, bringing its total installed nuclear capacity to 40 gigawatts.
It currently has nine working reactors that supply around 2.3 percent of its electricity, but aims to boost the amount of power it gets from nuclear plants to 4 percent within 15 years.
($1=8.071 Yuan)
[此贴子已经被作者于2005-12-21 12:00:14编辑过]
发表于 2010-9-13 08:16:50