Korea Wins $40Bln Nuke Plant Bid From UAE

A Korean consortium has won a contract worth 40 billion U.S. dollars to build four nuclear power plants in the United Arab Emirates.

Korea and the UAE signed and announced the deal Sunday evening in Abu Dhabi in a ceremony attended by Korean President Lee Myung-bak and UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Under the deal, the consortium led by the Korea Electric Power Corporation will build the reactors by 2020 for the UAE. Twenty billion dollars will go into their construction and another 20 billion dollars will cover services, such as fuel supply, operations and maintenance.

The project is Korea's biggest-ever overseas order and its first export of a nuclear power plant. The deal will help Korean companies advance into the global market for nuclear power plants, which is worth an estimated one trillion dollars.

The consortium includes Hyundai Engineering and Construction, Samsung C&T, Doosan Heavy Industries of Korea and Westinghouse Electric, a U.S.-based unit of Japan’s Toshiba Corporation. It beat out a consortium comprising General Electric of the U.S. and Hitachi of Japan and the French nuclear group Areva.

Lee visited Abu Dhabi for a summit with Khalifa to help the Korean consortium land the massive project.