Pakistan is negotiating the purchase of between six and eight nuclear power reactors from China during the next decade in the most ambitious expansion yet of the country’s nuclear energy capability.
The deal could cost $7bn-$10bn and would involve adding 3,600-4,800 megawatts of capacity using a series of 600MW reactors. The plants are expected to be completed by 2025, with construction starting by 2015, a senior Pakistani official told the Financial Times.
The installation of Chinese nuclear power reactors would take Pakistan a long way towards meeting government targets of raising its nuclear power generation capacity to 8,800MW by 2030, up from a current capacity of 425MW.
Disclosure of negotiations with China follows the formal start of construction last week of a Chinese-supplied nuclear plant at Chashma in Punjab province.
The new Chashma-2 plant is expected to be completed during the next five years and is to be built beside the existing 300MW Chashma-1, also supplied by China. Pakistan also operates a 125MW Canadian-supplied reactor in the southern port city of Karachi.
Pakistan’s increasing reliance on China as main supplier of its nuclear reactors is likely to raise concerns within the anti-nuclear proliferation lobby in the west.
China has been suspected of assisting Pakistan with development of its nuclear weapons programme, which led to the country’s first nuclear tests in 1998.
Pakistan emerged at the centre of global concerns about nuclear proliferation in 20004 when it was revealed that AQ Khan, father of its nuclear bomb project, sold nuclear expertise and technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Mr Khan, a national hero and iconic figure in Pakistan, was forced to appear on public television and admit he had made a mistake by selling nuclear technology. He has lived effectively under house arrest since. In an apparent attempt to pacify western concerns about proliferation, Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan’s prime minister, stressed last week that the country’s nuclear programme was for peaceful purposes.
“We have established an effective command-and-control authority to ensure the safety and security of our strategic assets. We have also adopted wide-ranging controls to prevent leakage of nuclear materials”, he said.
A senior western diplomat in Islamabad said Pakistan’s increasing reliance on China may be a reaction to a US offer to sell reactors to India, its neighbour and nuclear rival. “This could be meant to tell Washington that Pakistan has other options,” he said.
But Lieutenant General [retired] Talat Masood, a Pakistani commentator on security affairs, said discussions with China had been going on for some time:
“Pakistan has a long-term relationship with China and there is a great trust factor,” he said.
