The Times of India
Pakistan to buy 6 nuclear reactors from China [Wednesday, January 04, 2006 01:46:20 am TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
LONDON: Pakistan is negotiating to buy at least six nuclear power reactors from China during the next decade in its most ambitious nuclear facility expansion, according to media reports here.
A newspaper report said Pakistan's nuclear shopping could cost as much as $10 billion. Islamabad's talks with Beijing involve a minimum of six and a maximum of eight reactors, a newspaper said.
It quoted an unnamed, senior Pakistani official to say that the nuclear plants being negotiated were expected to be completed by 2025, with construction starting by 2015.
The report said the massive expansion in nuclear power capability, courtesy the Chinese, could take Pakistan substantially down the path of meeting Islamabad's declared targets of raising its nuclear power generation capacity to 8,800 mw by 2030, up from a current capacity of 425 mw.
The reactors under negotiation are of 600 mw. News of negotiations with China comes just days after the formal start of a Chinese-supplied nuclear plant at Chashma in the Pakistani province of Punjab.
The Chashma plant, Pakistan's third, was formally launched by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz just last week.
Commentators agreed that the news would underline western concerns about nuclear proliferation as Pakistan increasingly and boldly makes clear its reliance on China as the main supplier of its nuclear reactors.
According to remarks attributed to unnamed senior western diplomats, Pakistan's latest round of nuclear negotiations with China may be a reaction to a recent American offer to sell reactors to India.
But according to a London daily, Lieutenant General (retd) Talat Masood, a Pakistani commentator on security affairs, insisted the discussions with China were long-standing and of greater vintage than the Indo-US talks.
Masood is quoted as saying Pakistan has a long-term relationship with China and there is a great trust factor.
The agreement to buy a series of reactors from Beijing is understood to have been reached on December 28 during a meeting between Aziz and Chinese minister for science and technology, national defence and chairman of China's Atomic Energy Authority Sun Qin at Chashma.
At the time, Aziz had declared that Pakistan's nuclear technology had a peaceful history, something that also categorised the N-ties between Pakistan and China.
Aziz said that the Chinese would help Pakistan build larger reactors to meet its growing energy needs.
But western commentators said they feared a growing trade in nuclear wares, considering Pakistan's father of nuclear technology, A Q Khan, had increasingly been revealed as the world's top proliferator, with clients scattered dangerously far afield, including North Korea, Libya and Iran.