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Friday June 23, 3:25 PM
Hitachi, GE plan to build nuclear plant in USHitachi and General Electric plan to jointly build the first nuclear power plants in the United States since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, a company spokesman said. The Japanese and US electronics giants will construct two nuclear power reactors in the suburbs of Houston at a cost of 5.2 billion dollars if they get US approval, the Hitachi spokesman said.
They will build the two reactors for NRG Energy Inc, which officially informed the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday about the construction plan, he said. If approved, the nuclear power plants would be the first built in the United States since the accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, at which one reactor suffered a partial core meltdown. Hitachi, which has built 23 reactors in Japan and Taiwan, will likely handle the manufacture and installation of core equipment, such as steam turbines, the spokesman said. GE is meanwhile expected to handle regulatory issues, as well as procurement of fuel, among other tasks, he added. President George W. Bush's administration wants to relaunch construction of nuclear reactors in the United States as the cost of crude oil is soaring near record highs due to both geopolitical and supply concerns. The United States turned away from nuclear power after the 1979 meltdown in Pennsylvania. No new reactor has been put into service in the United States since 1996. Hitachi's rival Toshiba, a key manufacturer of nuclear power facilities in Japan, announced an agreement in February to buy the US nuclear power plant maker Westinghouse from British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) for 5.4 billion dollars. Toshiba's acquisition, the biggest by a Japanese firm in years overseas, came amid expectations that the US nuclear market will grow strongly. BNFL, which is owned by the British government, bought Westinghouse in 1999 for 1.1 billion dollars. Resource-strapped Japan depends on nuclear power generation for about 30 percent of its total electricity needs.
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