Riyadh – Mubasher: Saudi Arabia has revealed plans to establish two nuclear reactors on the Gulf coast in the coming period, the chairman of the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (K.A.CARE) said.
To this end, the oil-rich kingdom launched a tender to define specifications of sites that will host the two reactors, Khalid Al-Sultan said. He added that K.A.CARE asked the services providers in the US, Russia, France, South Korea and China to present their offers.
The building cost of each nuclear reactor is expected to range between $6 billion to $7 billion, Al Eqtisadiah newspaper reported, citing the chairman as saying on the sidelines of Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
In mid-September 2017, Reuters cited some media sources that Saudi Arabia is expected to launch a tender for its first nuclear reactors in October 2017.
The South Korean ambassador in Saudi Arabia, Kwan Pyung-oh previously said that his country was looking forward to building the first nuclear power station in the kingdom.
Reuters said In October that Saudi Arabia was planning to extract uranium domestically as part of its nuclear power programme.
In December 2017, Russia's State Atomic Energy Corporation (Rosatom) signed a roadmap with Saudi Arabia to collaborate in nuclear power peaceful usage, while the Electricity and Cogeneration Regulatory Authority (ECRA) stated that his nation was looking to begin building nuclear-powered electricity plants in 2018.
The GCC nation said that the US and Saudi negotiations last March to build a nuclear reactor are likely to be unsuccessful, which may open the way for other countries such as China and Russia to be compete for building the reactor.
The US-based Westinghouse’s CEO Jose Gutierrez said last June that his firm is forecast to sell a raft of nuclear reactors in the coming period to Saudi Arabia.
