3 Chinese state firms looking to build nuclear plants abroad
State Nuclear will consider various financing options to help potential customers as it targets opportunities in Brazil, UK and South Africa
State Nuclear Power Technology, one of three Chinese state-owned firms seeking to build nuclear plants overseas, is keen to take a crack at opportunities in Brazil, Britain and South Africa, an official at its finance unit said.
Wang Henghai, deputy general manager of State Nuclear Power Finance, told the Asia Nuclear Business Platform conference last week that the firm would consider a variety of financing options to help its potential customers in those countries.
"We hope to have a mixture of domestic and international funding, a mixture of equity and debt financing, and a mixture of government- and market-based financing," Wang said.
China has all the necessary ingredients for success in global nuclear power expansion
Kim Young-joon, a partner in the Hong Kong office of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy and a member of the US law firm's project finance group, said: "China has all the necessary ingredients for success in global nuclear power expansion. It has relatively strong operational safety records, strong government and deep capital resources."
But Kim said success within China did not guarantee success overseas since, unlike many other industries where the country's economies of scale, huge domestic market and easy access to capital brought huge advantages, building reactors abroad involved the export of not only hardware but an entire "ecosystem", which entailed regulatory knowledge and compliance, human resources and after-construction services.
Set up in 2007, State Nuclear Power Technology is the general contractor for the first four 1.1-gigawatt reactors being built in China based on US nuclear engineering firm Westinghouse's AP1000 design, incorporating third-generation reactor technology with advanced efficiency and safety features.
The firm is the developer of the China Advanced Passive 1400 design. Based on its experience implementing the AP1000 design, it made modifications and came up with its own design, in which each reactor has 1.4GW of generating capacity.
Chinese firms need to build their credibility overseas with regard to the reliability of their plants, given that the country's strength in the construction of nuclear power plants is not widely known overseas outside the industry.