Nuclear power plant construction capacity being swallowed up - UK waits for another Energy review - the 3rd in 4 years.

British Nuclear Fuels sold Westinghouse the American based Nuclear power engineer to Toshiba (77% - US$4.16 Bn.) and the US based Shaw group (20% - US$1 Bn.) and Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co. purchased a 3 percent stake for US$162 million,earlier this year. This will give Toshiba nearly 30% of the world market.

Toshiba / Westinghouse have announced today they have sold 4 of their AP 1000 reactors to China in a US$8Bn. deal for installation by 2013 - two at Sanmen in Zhejiang province, with another two at Yangjiang in Guangdong.

Westinghouse said the deal will create or sustain roughly 5,000 design, engineering and manufacturing jobs in the US with additional jobs being created at US-based suppliers in at least 20 states. On top of this, AP 1000 technology has been selected for 12 projected plants in the US - which are still in the planning, regulatory approval stages.

The French company Areva and Russia's Atomstroiexport were said to be in the bidding.

As part of the deal the US company will transfer technology to the Chinese enabling them to build their own plants eventually with up to a 50% Chinese content.

Areva are experiencing highly publicised problems with the Finnish EPR plant at Olkiluoto (pic) and even though they are one year behind schedule they claim that this, the first of the so called 3rd generation reactors scheduled for completion in about five and a half years. The EPR plant is based (like the AP 1000 on a pressurised water reactor but provides greater efficiencies in using Uranium oxide fuel slightly enriched with up to 5% U235, or a mixed uranium and plutonium oxiderecycled fuel (MOX).

Areva have had to make provisions to allow for the problems at Olkiluoto which they announced last week operating income for 2006 is expected to be sharply down from that of 2005, although it will easily remain well in the black. See Lord Patel's July 13th posting on UK construction capacity and the lessons of Olkiluoto.

Atomstroiexport is currently constructing the US$800 Mn. Iranian Bushehr nuclear power plant for the Iran's Atomic Energy Organization which has been recently re - scheduled to become operational by the second half of 2007. The contract was first placed in 1995

Atomstroiexport has a total of five plants under construction, Bushehr, 2 VVER-1000 reactors at Kudankulam in India . The Chinese Tianwan NPP, which uses 2 improved VVER-1000 reactors and K-100-6/3000 turbo-generators, under the terms of a Russian-Chinese agreement signed in 1992 was successfully tested at 75% load in October 2006.

At the same time they announced this milestone, they also announced that they had successfully tendered for Bulgaria's Belene plant , near the capital, Sofia, for the national Bulgarian National Electric Company (NEK) for two 1,000 MW reactors. The first plant will be operational by 2011 and the second by 2013.

Areva and Germany's Siemens will also be involved in the construction of these plants - Westinghouse and the Czech Republic's Skoda were underbidders on the project.

Meanwhile, having sold off Westinghouse, the people who make the decisions in the UK are twiddling their thumbs for the new Energy Review in the Spring (?) as gas reserves, oil production plummet, energy demand soars and unrealistic expectations are provided about renewable energy - as domestic energy costs soar and empty boasts are made about the EU ETS market - still staggering along at the lowest level ever of €6.65 per tonne.

This is what they call my children, UK energy security.