Abu Dhabi goes Nuke
Emirate’s new nuclear programme hailed as a best practice model
A South Korean-led consortium recently won the
US$20 billion contract to build four nuclear power
plants in the UAE.
“Our relationship with South Korea, which has seen
sustained growth in recent years, has ushered in a
new era of strategic partnership which will serve the
interests of the two countries,” Sheikh Khalifa, Ruler
of Abu Dhabi, was cited as saying by the state news
agency WAM.
The global economic slowdown has acted as an
impetus for financially robust governments, such as
Abu Dhabi, to ramp up power production while it is
cost efficient to do so.
The United States was very happy with how the
UAE went about its nuclear programme, garnering
international agreement with full disclosure at all
points along the way, not to mention, dangling the
carrot of the tender to build the infrastructure itself.
“We should not only support the UAE deal, but it
could be used as a model,” Jon Wolfsthal, a former
US government monitor at North Korean and
Russian nuclear facilities and an advisor to Joe Biden,
the vice-president of the US, told Bloomberg prior to
the award of the contract.
“The decision to give the contract to South
Korea indicates that it has been mainly driven by
commercial considerations,” said Eckart Woertz, an
economist at the Gulf Research Centre in Dubai.
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“Given the strategic importance of the whole project
and the earlier framework agreements with France
and the US, this has come as a surprise to many” he
continued.
When news first surfaced that Abu Dhabi wanted
to go down the nuclear route, some sceptics found
it hard to believe. But in a white paper released in
April 2008, the UAE Foreign Ministry laid out the
reasons for choosing such a path. The annual peak
demand for electricity in the UAE is likely to rise to
more than 40,000 MW by 2020, a cumulative annual
growth rate of about 9% from 2007. Current capacity
can only match about 50% of that amount, creating
a large supply gap. The use of crude oil to meet
the demand “would entail significant financial and
environmental penalties for the UAE,” according to
the Foreign Ministry.
Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC)
said the South Korean group was chosen for its
competitive price, its ability to deliver on time and
the company’s well-developed plans for Emiratising
the nuclear workforce. ENEC also liked the fact that
the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) was
clearly in charge of the rest of the consortium.
Nuclear power will make up approximately 25 per
cent of Abu Dhabi’s electricity supply by 2020,
according to Mohamed al Hammadi, the ENEC
chief executive. Renewables such as solar power are
expected to contribute seven per cent of the Emirate’s
electricity needs by the same year.