South Korean president, Lee Myung-Bak and his United Arab Emirates counterpart, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan held a summit in Abu Dhabi on the 27th. After their meeting, the U.A.E. announced that it will award the nuclear power plants contract to South Korea. The state-run Korea Electric Power Corporation accepted the US$40 billion contract that deals with constructing four major nuclear power plants. This is significant because it is the biggest contract since the 1980s when Libya made a contract of US$6 billion to construct the nuclear power plant. Moreover, this deal is Korea's first to export nuclear reactors, build four 1,400-megawatts reactors, support operations and provide fuel. The Kepco consortium includes the Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Corporation, Korea Nuclear Fuel, Hyundai Construction & Engineering, Samsung C&T, Doosan Heavy Industries, Westinghouse of the United States and Japan's Toshiba.
President Lee stated in his press conference that in the near future China will construct 100 nuclear power plants for they plan to and will continue to plan developing 400 by 2030 and in a long run the nation plans to construct an additional 1000. Thus, in order to combat China's ambitious plan, South Korea will walk shoulder to shoulder with United States, Japan, France, and Russia as the first exporting nation of the nuclear power. In addition, President Lee stated that South Korea and United Arab Emirates will consider this grand contract as a stepping stone and focus on education, innovative technology, and security in the long run and develop a firm relationship. Among the four reactors to be completed, the first will be done by 2017 and the remaining three will be activated by 2020. In addition, South Korea will make a profit of about US$20 billion for the next 60 years by participating in the operation, maintenance, and fuel supply of the power plants.
Furthermore, one of the Blue House officials said, "This contract with the U.A.E. will open doors to many job seekers as the estimated job openings for the next ten years amount to 110,000 and South Korea will become one of the economically advanced nation when considering other fields than benefiting from exporting nuclear power plants such as finance, power technological development, machine construction." President Lee announced that he will invite President Khalifa to South Korea and hope to arrange additional meetings that will bring the two nations closer together. President Lee will come back to Seoul on December 28.
