China offers to build British nuclear reactors

China could invest up to US$55 billion to succor the United Kingdom’s badly delayed nuclear power program.

China is in high-level talks with ministers and officials of the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) about a plan to build five nuclear reactors across the UK.

China National Nuclear Power Company (CNNPC) intends to invest up to US$27 billion in the project.

A team from the Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute (SNERDI), an arm of the huge China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), met senior DECC officials over the last few days, three different sources confirmed. CNNC oversees China’s civilian and nuclear military programs and is also the parent firm of CNNPC.

The first part of the plan involves CNNC and another state-owned firm, China Guangdong Nuclear Power Corporation, bidding in two separate groups against each other for a stake in the Horizon Nuclear Power consortium that intends to build new atomic in Wales and Gloucestershire.

Chinese companies have already invested in or taken over other infrastructure assets in the UK such as Thames Water, the port of Felixstowe and the Grangemouth oil refinery.