Hitachi Ltd.'s (6501.TO) efforts to expand adoption of its nuclear-power reactors overseas in the face of strong resistance at home appear to be bearing fruit after a person familiar with the matter said over the weekend that Hitachi's bid to acquire a nuclear-power venture in the United Kingdom has been selected.
Hitachi Ltd.'s (6501.TO) efforts to expand adoption of its nuclear-power
reactors overseas in the face of strong resistance at home appear to be bearing
fruit after a person familiar with the matter said over the weekend that
Hitachi
's bid
to acquire a nuclear-power venture in the
United
Kingdom
has been selected.
RWE AG (RWE.XE) and E.ON AG (EOAN.XE) will likely announce the winning bid for
the Horizon nuclear power venture--Hitachi and consortium partner SNC-Lavalin
(SNC.T) are bidding against Westinghouse Electric Co., a unit of Toshiba Corp. (6502.TO).--as
early as Tuesday, the person told Dow Jones Newswires.
It is unclear whether Hitachi and SNC-Lavalin are proposing a boiling-water
reactor configuration for Horizon or plan to adopt a pressurized-water reactor
system, which has come to be the industry standard for most new global
projects.
To date,
Hitachi
has
only manufactured BWR reactors based on a General Electric Co. (GE) design,
though it may be contemplating adopting PWR technology for the
U.K.
project.
A
Hitachi
spokesman declined to discuss details of the consortium's plans, saying only,
"We placed a bid because we expected positive outcomes."
In the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi accident last March, the BWR
configuration of reactors at the complex was cited as having been a risky
choice. One of the six units at
Fukushima
was
equipped by
Hitachi
, with
all six being General Electric designs.
BWR technology is used almost exclusively in
Japan
and
the
U.S.
, a
factor that apparently limits
Hitachi
's
scope for expansion given that
Japan
's
nuclear-power program is mostly stalled, while
U.S.
electricity generators are gaining interest in building gas-fired generators to
take advantage of a natural-gas glut in the country.
Japanese competitors were also hard-hit in the aftermath of the
Fukushima
accident, but not as severely as
Hitachi
. Mitsubishi
Heavy Industries Ltd. (7011.TO) produces PWRs, while Toshiba Corp. (6502.TO)
produces both BWRs and PWRs.
In March RWE and E.ON put Horizon up for sale after
Germany
accelerated its planned exit from nuclear energy as a result of rising concerns
about nuclear power after the Japanese accident. The two German utilities
formed Horizon in 2009, planning to invest about GBP15 billion ($24 billion) to
build the 6.6 gigawatts of nuclear-power generation capacity.
In its quest for new business overseas,
Hitachi
approached a few other European countries, including
Poland
,
Finland
and
Lithuania
--even
before the
Fukushima
accident.
Expanding its customer base to the
U.K.
"is a positive thing," said Hirofumi Kawachi, an analyst of Mizuho
Investors Securities.
"For the long term, demand for nuclear power will definitely rise,
especially in emerging economies," he said.
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