China gets first foreign orders for locally-developed nuclear reactor

Operators are from South America and Asia.

China expects to sign the first contracts for its self-developed nuclear reactor, the CAP1400, this year. The buyers will most likely be from South America or Asia.

Sun Qin, the chairman of China National Nuclear Corporation, however, refused to reveal the identities of the buyers. He said countries had found it attractive to talk to China because of the favorable and unconditional credit conditions they have been offered to buy the Chinese technology.

Sun noted that most developing countries with nuclear energy ambitions have limited resources available at present.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection said if China could export its nuclear technology, it could help make a huge contribution to global carbon reduction and help the technology’s buyers diversify their energy mix.

China's nuclear power station construction will continue to develop at a stable pace during the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15). Its nuclear station construction program was stopped for 20 months after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan in March 2011, but gradually resumed durig the second half of 2012.

At the height of the previous boom, 11 reactors were built in China in 2011.