UAE awards 20-billion-dollar nuclear contract to S.Korea - Summary

Cairo - Abu Dhabi awarded a South Korean consortium on Sunday a 20-billion-dollar contract to build four nuclear power reactors in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), media reports said. South Korean President Lee Myung Bak, who was in the UAE capital emirate to support the bid to build the first nuclear power plant in the Gulf state, thanked UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan for the contract, the official UAE news agency WAM said.

The presidential visit also saw Seoul and Abu Dhabi pledge to increase economic cooperation and establish a high-level committee for cooperation on nuclear energy, renewable and sustainable energy, ship-building and human resources development.

Lee said his government would "exert effort towards moving the bilateral cooperation between our two countries to the next level," according to WAM.

Sheikh Khalifa was quoted in the report as saying bilateral relations had "entered a new stage of strategic partnership for the benefit of both countries."

The first of the four 1.4-kilowatt nuclear units, by the consortium - which includes the Korea Electric Power Corp., Hyundai Engineering and Construction, Samsung C&T Corp. and Doosan Heavy Industries - is scheduled to be completed by 2017, with the remaining three to be built by 2020.

Officials in the Gulf have speculated that as the region's need for energy increases, the number of reactors could also rise beyond the original four.

The Republic of Korea's first nuclear power reactor started operations in 1972 and the country now has 20 plants, generating 36 per cent of the nation's electricity.

Prior to the completion of the bilateral deal, analysts said that the UAE was highly concerned with issues of safety, and had estimated that South Korea's positive record would add to its appeal as a bidder.

The nuclear deal is considered an important element for the national economic and trade strategy of South Korea, and overall is one of the largest agreements of its kind in the world.

Over the 60 year initial lifetime of the plants, along with the initial contract, the agreement is expected to bring in a total of some 40 billion dollars for the South Korean companies in the consortium.

Initial estimates say the UAE project will also lead to the creation of 110,000 jobs.

The Gulf Cooperation Council, an economic and trade grouping of six states in the region, reached a deal at their last summit earlier this month on a 1.6-billion-dollar power grid linking the Kuwaiti, Saudi, Qatari and Bahraini networks.

Oman and the UAE are expected to join in 2011, a year ahead of the scheduled completion of the grid.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/301134,uae-awards-20-billion-dollar-nuclear-contract-to-skorea--summary.html.