The Jordan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) has selected three vendors as preferred bidders in the competition to build Jordan’s first nuclear power plant.
JAEC has picked Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd’s Enhanced CANDU 6 (EC6), the Atmea1 reactor from Areva and Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and the AES-92 VVER-1000 reactor from Russia’s Atomstroyexport as preferred technologies after a series of studies and evaluation procedures.
Jordan Atomic Energy Commission chairman Khaled Toukan said: “The selection ends months of careful and thorough analysis and evaluation, but opens the way for more months of hard work to choose the most suitable reactor technology for the Kingdom’s first nuclear power plant.”
The selection comes just two weeks after JAEC announced that a preliminary report has found the proposed site in southern Jordan to be geologically suitable for construction of the country’s first nuclear plant, he added.
The invited vendors have been selected from seven offers from vendors who completed JAEC’s technology questionnaires, which were technically and economically evaluated by JAEC and its consultant Worley Parsons.
JAEC and Worley Parsons say they will engage the top three vendors in the coming months to conduct further technical and economic evaluation.
The competitive dialogue process is due to start in June selection of the optimal technology for Jordan based upon the best technical and economic offer should be completed within a year.
Project Manager and JAEC Commissioner for International Cooperation Kamal Araj stressed transparency of the evaluation process and equal treatment of all offers as important considerations for the Commission.
He said the first discussions with vendors will focus on the specifics of the technology to be provided. Later on, the dialogue will look at the financing and organizational support that the vendor will be providing for future operation of the plant. At that point JAEC will select one vendor with whom to negotiate a final contract for design and construction of the NPP.
In parallel, the JAEC has embarked on a series of specialized workshops to discuss financing of Jordan’s first nuclear power plant, starting with a Jordanian-French-Japanese workshop. The workshop was one of a number of similar workshops to be held with other bidders for providing nuclear technology for the NPP.
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