GE’s contract relates to the country’s Hinkley Point nuclear power plant.
In what is likely to be a fallout of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, the country has now awarded General Electric Co a contract worth $1.9 billion to supply generators, steam turbines and other equipment for the Hinkley Point C project, the country’s first new nuclear power plant in decades.
With the UK government approving the Hinkley Point on Thursday, GE can now begin building the two 1,770-megawatt Arabelle steam turbines and generators which can power 6 million homes. The two generators can provide nearly 7% of the country’s power generation needs for the next 60 years.
The turbines will replace existing coal-fired plants.
This project was earlier put on hold by David Cameron’s government. Theresa May’s government has now given the go ahead to the controversial $24billion project.
Awarding the contract to GE wasn’t surprising since it had already done some engineering work on the project.
GE got the capability and the technology when last year it acquired France’s Alstrom. GE has reported that Alstom had won the bid for this project a couple of years back.
In an interview to Reuters, Andreas Lusch, chief executive officer of steam power systems at GE Power, said the UK government’s decision “confirms our technology leadership and it also confirms that it was not such a bad decision to buy Alstom”.
In the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, nuclear power plants were a no-go area. However, of late interest in them has again picked up. Lusche has disclosed that GE is also bidding for building nuclear power plants in other countries including, India, Finland, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China and South Africa.
“We are involved in all of those projects in the tendering phase,” said Lusche.
This move by the current administration marks a distinct change in UK’s investment policy which is aimed at giving the country a greater say and control in matters when foreign states are involved in buying stakes in “critical infrastructure” in the future.
The project, being built by EDF, a French state-controlled utility company, includes an investment of $8 billion from General Nuclear Power Corporation, a company which has Beijing’s backing.
Although EDF has agreed with the UK government to not sell its controlling stake in the project, there is no word yet on the investment made by the Chinese, which has raised concerns among analysts regarding the project’s risk profile.
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