Jordan to Select Supplier for Country's First Nuclear Reactor by April

Jordan will select the supplier of its first nuclear reactor by April from among three designs, the Middle Eastern kingdom’s regulator said.

“The competitive dialogue process should be completed with the selection of the best technical and economic offer by April 2011,” Khalid Touqan, chairman of the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission, said in an interview in Amman.

The commission and Worley Parsons, Australia’s biggest engineering company, will hold talks until then with the pre- selected groups of Canadian, French, Japanese and Russian bidders, Touqan said.

Jordan, much of which is covered by desert, relies almost entirely on imports for its energy needs. It signed nuclear- cooperation agreements to diversify its power supply and plans to build its first atomic plant by 2019.

Touqan said the commission preselected three reactor technologies on May 12: Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.’s Enhanced CANDU 6 (EC6), Russia’s ZAO Atomstroyexport’s AES-92 VVER-1000 and “ATMEA1,” proposed by Paris-based Atmea, a 50-50 joint- venture between France’s Areva SA and Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.

Areva, the world’s largest maker of nuclear reactors, signed agreements with Jordan this year for the protection of the planned nuclear installations and the exploration and mining of uranium in the kingdom.

Jordan estimates it has 65,000 tons of uranium deposits and expects annual production of 2,000 tons.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nayla Razzouk in Amman at nrazzouk2@bloomberg.net

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