US provides China with nuclear energy technology

Radio Australia ^ | January 7, 2008 | Staff

[Schnucki]

The United States has kept a tight grip on to its peaceful nuclear technology for decades, forcing emerging nations like China to purchase Russian, French and Canadian designs.

American company Westinghouse, however, has been allowed to deliver its newest third-generation nuclear plant to China.

Radio Australia's Adam Connors reports that the need for energy over the coming few decades is reaching a fever pitch in red-hot economies like China.

Energy analyst with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Alan McDonald, told Radio Australia that China and India will be the most veracious about the most controversial energy source of all.

"China and India have booming economies, booming populations, growing energy demand; they basically need to develop all the energy sources they can," he said.

"Right now, nuclear electricity is only a small percentage - two per cent in China, three per cent of electricity in India but China plans a five-fold increase by 2020 and India plans an eight-fold increase by 2022."

US nuclear cooperation 'remarkable'

Nuclear energy, along with its massive hydroelectric schemes, are the centrepiece of tough pollution and energy consumption targets in China.

China's 11 nuclear plants are a combination of homegrown, French, Canadian and Russian technologies.

For the first time, however, China is developing nuclear energy technology through agreements with the United States - four new reactors with American firm, Westinghouse.

The World Nuclear Association's Ian Hore-Lacy told Radio Australia the cooperation is remarkable, given US reluctance to help in the past.

"It's generally believed that that's because of technology transfer aspects and they were wanting a high level of technology transfer and the right to be able to then adapt and sell that technology by way of exports from China," he said.

"The Westinghouse deal is presumed to have come closer to that objective than the others and also of course there is the actual intrinsic virtue of the three technologies being offered and by some accounts the Westinghouse was the most advanced."

Nuclear energy renaissance

Two new second-generation nuclear reactors have gone online in China's Jiangsu province - the two Tianwan reactors use 50 tonnes of nuclear fuel a year, with virtually no emissions.

Coal-fired power plants, with the same capacity, require six million tonnes of coal.

Jiangsu is now closing down many small, highly-polluting coal fired power plants.

The International Atomic Energy Agency's Alan McDonald says pollution is just one of the many concerns driving a renaissance in the nuclear energy industry.

"There are good reasons for that renaissance in interest - the nuclear power has a strong and successful performance record, its' economics are strong in most countries, new environmental constraints such as greenhouse gases make it attractive, energy security concerns," he said.

"There are good reasons for the renaissance of interest, whether it turns into a renaissance of operating plants is still yet to be seen and there's still a fair amount of uncertainty."

[domenad]

Probably figured since it will never be built here, might as well build it in China.

[CarrotAndStick]

Look at this, lol!

[wolfcreek]

“American company Westinghouse, however, has been allowed to deliver its newest third-generation nuclear plant to China.”

Globalism = Good

Protectionism = Bad

Or so the 1 worlders want you to think.

[panaxanax]

We are being held hostage and forced to pay off our ransom one security and freedom at a time.

[Brilliant]

We’ve already given them our military technology, so I guess this is irrelevant at this point.

[decimon]

Veracious? Veracious about their voracious quest for energy?

[raybbr]

Probably figured since it will never be built here, might as well build it in China.

I wonder if Westinghouse had to get permission from the U.S. govt. to do this. If so, it's pretty ironic and sad, that they can build one in our competitor's backyard with our govt.'s blessing but we can't build one here.

[raybbr]

ping

[Calpernia]

Remember you were wondering what in the heck Giuliani was doing with Kazakhstan?

Well, here is a good answer!

From below:

>>>Greg Vojack, a managing partner with law firm Bracewell & Giuliani in Kazakhstan, said the Westinghouse interest shows that Kazakh companies are coming of age and expanding globally. It’s also a way to shore up partners other than Russia for its nuclear-related industry.<<<

2007 July 11. A report in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, then the only U.S. reporting on the deal:

Ex-Soviet state eyes uranium primacy
By Bonnie Pfister
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, July 11, 2007

In its prospective deal with Toshiba Corp. to purchase a 10 percent stake in Westinghouse Electric Co., Kazakhstan is making its latest step in a quest to become the world’s top uranium producer by 2012.

Since May, state-run energy firm Kazatomprom has made a deal with a Canadian firm for construction of a new uranium-conversion facility, another to provide nuclear fuel to a key Chinese utility, and a third with its Russian counterpart for cooperative uranium exploration. A 2006 contract with two Japanese firms to develop a new uranium mine also is under way.

Those moves set the stage for the Central Asian nation’s negotiations to buy a piece of Westinghouse.

Published reports in Japan suggest the price for a 10 percent stake in the Monroeville-based firm could be $486.4 million. Such a deal reportedly would shore up supplies of reactor fuel in return for access to Toshiba technology and its sales channels. A spokesman for Toshiba would confirm only that talks are under way.

Growing concerns about the role of carbon emissions in global warming has utilities in the United States and abroad looking to nuclear power after two decades of ambivalence. The demand and extended weather-related closures at key uranium mines in Australia and Canada have tripled uranium prices in the past year to about $120 a pound.

Because Toshiba would keep a 67 percent interest, it is not clear whether a deal would be reviewed by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. A spokeswoman for the committee — which approved such deals as Toshiba’s purchase last year of Westinghouse and the aborted attempt by Dubai Ports World to manage several U.S. seaports — neither would confirm nor deny if such a review would be merited.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission action would not be needed because there would be no change in licensing, an NRC spokeswoman said.

Kazakhstan is a place many Americans know only as the homeland of “Borat” — the title character of a hit film depicting a fictional journalist’s tour across the United States. But experts describe the sprawling country as among the most mature economies in Central Asia and a stable nuclear partner.

“Here we are talking about Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, India. This is the only country that had actual nuclear arms — not potentially nuclear arms — and gave them up,” said S. Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University. “In the moral sense, that gives them immense credibility.”

Kazakhstan — home to the Soviet Union’s nuclear-weapons program and nuclear-test sites — within four years of its 1991 independence had transferred its 1,400 nuclear warheads to Russia, according to the anti-proliferation group Nuclear Threat Initiative.

In 2002, Kazakhstan became the first of the former Soviet states to receive investment-level credit rating.

Kazatomprom, founded in 1997, reported assets of $1.6 billion last year. In April it announced plans to increase its uranium output sixfold to 18,000 tons per year by 2012.

Greg Vojack, a managing partner with law firm Bracewell & Giuliani in Kazakhstan, said the Westinghouse interest shows that Kazakh companies are coming of age and expanding globally. It’s also a way to shore up partners other than Russia for its nuclear-related industry.

“President (Nursultan Nazarbayev) has done a very good job in terms of balancing East-West,” Vojack said. “Having the resources that it does have, it must balance all interests to get the best deal for Kazakhstan.”

[Calpernia]

Emerging triangles: Russia-Kazakhstan-China
By Robert M Cutler

The significance of the agreements on energy cooperation achieved during Russian President Vladimir Putin's recently completed visit to Kazakhstan is only an indicator of the consolidation of deeper tectonic shifts in Eurasian security and economic affairs. A new triangle is emerging in East Central Eurasian geo-economics among Russia, Kazakhstan and China. (It is being complemented by the emergence of another such triangle in West Central Eurasia among Russia, Turkmenistan and Ukraine.) Energy cooperation is a linchpin of each of the the emerging triangular ententes, but the ententes themselves go far beyond energy.

There is every reason to believe that the agreements signed by Putin and Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbaev are not mere diplomatic boilerplate, but instead concrete joint undertakings to be followed through on and implemented. The list of such accords includes an agreement for Russia to continue to rent the Baikonur cosmodrome until mid-century, delimitation of 98 percent of the two countries' common border, provisions for enhancing "military-technical cooperation", and an affirmation of bilateral cooperation within a host of multilateral forums - the Eurasian Economic Community (including the Single Economic Space), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS - including the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia.

To this inventory are then to be added the agreements on energy cooperation, ranging from Russian transit for Kazakhstani oil to world markets - not only the Caspian Pipeline Consortium's route to the Black Sea, but also the future prospect of a Baltic outlet through Russia - to the consolidation of electrical power networks, and, last but not least, the confirmation of bilateral cooperation in the development of oil deposits near the border between the two countries' offshore national sectors of the Caspian Sea.

Like Moscow, but with less success, Beijing has sought to use major domestic energy corporations to extend political influence into Kazakhstan. In this perspective, Kazakhstan's profile as a marchland acquires a new dimension. Kazakhstan, historically a borderland between Russia and South Asia, is now equally so between western China and the expanded post-Soviet Middle East stretching from North Africa to the South Caucasus. If in mid-2000, among the three issue areas of energy development, anti-terrorism and economic cooperation, Russia's relations with Kazakhstan were implicated in the first and the last, it is now implicated in all three; but if at that time China was implicated only in the last, it, too, is now also implicated in all three.

If from the north a Russian bear hug threatens to smother Kazakhstan, then from the east the Chinese dragon equally imperils its breathing space. Over the past 12 years, Nazarbaev has acted as if he believed there was no alternative to acquiescence before China's varied importunings. These have included insistence on the suppression of domestic Uighur social organizations and, in violation of Kazakhstan's international treaty undertakings, the forced return of Uighur refugees to certain death in Xinjiang. China has also accomplished the seizure, by diplomatic means, of the greater part of the Black Irtysh river headwaters in the course of negotiations over border delimitation in the 1990s.

Most recently, Astana has acceded to Beijing's pressure to grant long-term leases to large numbers of Han Chinese for agricultural development of Kazakh lands with a view towards exporting foodstuffs to China. This last runs up against domestic social opinion in Kazakhstan, for which land tenure has been an extremely sensitive political issue since the early 1990s and which has resented illegal Han immigration from China beginning in the later part of that decade.

(snip)

[snowsislander]

American company Westinghouse, however, has been allowed to deliver its newest third-generation nuclear plant to China.

"Has been allowed"? Actually, we are quite possibly going to pay for these plants to be built. Our federal Ex-Im Bank (http://www.exim.gov) approved up to $5 billion in loan guarantees or even direct loans for this project back in 2005, although as far as I can see, no specific funding guarantee or allocation has yet been made.

I found two good articles on the situation as it stands now. One is from a June, 2007, article from Human Events, Administration Poised to Subsidize China’s Nuclear Industry, that covers the Ex-Im political situation up to that point.

The other is a November, 2007, technical article on Red China's nuclear power situation from the World Nuclear Association, Nuclear Power in China, which also has a bit about the funding and more detail about what contracts nuclear players are already involved in the PRC.

[Calpernia]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119068473680038294.html

Giuliani Fund Raising
Reaches Into Kazakhstan
By MARY JACOBY..................Wall Street Journal
September 25, 2007; Page A6

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s campaign is looking for political cash this week in an unlikely place: Resource-rich Kazakhstan, where the Republican presidential front-runner’s law firm does substantial business in the often murky oil, gas and minerals industries.

A fund-raising event tomorrow in Almaty, the commercial center of the former Soviet republic, will mark the campaign’s third foray overseas for cash. Last week, Mr. Giuliani flew to London for a fund-raising luncheon where about 100 Americans living in Europe paid between $1,000 and $2,300 for a ticket — the second his campaign has held in the United Kingdom..........snip

[DManA]

The more nukes they build, the less oil they consume.

[Liz]

DID YOU KNOW US PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE RUDY GIULIANI HELD A CAMPAIGN FUND-RAISER IN KAZAKHSTAN? That’s right, in Kazakstan

WHERE IS KAZAKHSTAN It is a former Soviet Union state, the only Central Asian country sharing borders with both Russia and China, and with states of nuclear-transit significance such as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

GLOBAL STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE Kazakhstan is in the Strategic Energy Ellipse and is a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization with China and Russia. A focal point of influence between the West and the East.

WHAT IS KAZAKHSTAN’S MAIN INDUSTRY Kazakhstan aims to become the world’s largest producer and exporter of uranium in the next five years.

Country Profile 10: KazakhstanFirstWatch International (FWI)

Overview: At independence in 1991, Kazakhstan was among the four states of the former Soviet Union to inherit nuclear weapons, acquiring with it the status of the fourth largest nuclear power in the world.(1) The new acquisitions included thousands of nuclear warheads, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), cruise missiles, and the world’s largest testing facility (where 456 nuclear tests took place over a 50-year period).(2)

Kazakhstan actively pursued disarmament and non-proliferation policies by joining the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), and other international and bilateral nonproliferation initiatives.

It participated in international and bilateral projects to improve safeguards and security at its facilities, to avoid becoming a target for nuclear trafficking. Kazakhstan signed the Additional Protocol to its safeguards agreement with the IAEA in February 2004, although it is not yet in force.(3) All acquired nuclear warheads, ICBMs, and cruise missiles were returned to Russia between 1994 and 1996.(4) Similarly by the end of 1999, Kazakhstan had dismantled all missile silos and sealed 194 test tunnels at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site.(5)

Kazakhstan continues to make remarkable progress in the area of nuclear safeguards, export controls, and nuclear material accountancy and control. Its cooperation in these efforts has been essential to maintaining stability and security in the region. Kazakhstan’s nuclear fuel cycle resources include extensive uranium mining zones and fuel processing and fabrication technologies. Kazakhstan aims to become the world’s largest producer and exporter of uranium in the next five years.

The country is taking advantage of its advanced fuel fabrication facilities to offer those services for export. While its overall intent appears peaceful, Kazakhstan has made known its desire to operate all steps of the nuclear fuel cycle. If Kazakhstan decides to undertake enrichment or reprocessing capabilities, that may be of concern to the international community as a potential source of weapon material.

At present, Kazakhstan’s nuclear strategic significance lies not in its capabilities, which are polished by decades of being part of one of the world’s two nuclear
superpowers, nor in its intent, which appears to be anti-proliferation, but in the risk of nuclear security and proliferation by virtue of its location and circumstances.

Kazakhstan’s geographic position makes it strategically important to current international nonproliferation efforts. It is the only Central Asian country sharing borders with both Russia and China, and with states of nuclear-transit significance such as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Kazakhstan continues to make remarkable progress in the area of nuclear safeguards, export controls, and nuclear material control and accountancy. Its continued cooperation regarding these efforts is essential to maintaining stability and security in the region.

[Calpernia]

ping

[Man50D]

Duncan Hunter is the only candidate who understand the threat of dealing with China, especially when it comes to giving away our technology so China can use it against the U.S.

[Calpernia]

Westinghouse is the company packing up and running off with all our light bulbs, right?

And Giuliani’s name keeps showing up with all these interesting, global events.

Is Giuliani running for Don of the World? I have relatives in Italy that went after people like him with pitch forks.

[JACKRUSSELL]

(Please FReepmail me if you would like to be on or off of the list.)