Pakistan Says Interested in Buying Nuclear Reactors
Date: 06-Jan-06
Country: PAKISTAN
"We are interested in purchasing nuclear power reactors because our economy is growing and so is the energy requirement," said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam.
"We are not only interested in purchasing them from China, but also from the West," she said, adding that any nuclear facility established would be run within the safeguards of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency.
Britain's Financial Times reported on Tuesday that Pakistan was in talks to buy up to eight nuclear reactors from China for between $7 billion and $10 billion, but Aslam said the report was "incorrect".
The newspaper, quoted an unnamed senior Pakistani official as saying that construction work on the nuclear plants could start by 2015 and end 10 years later. It said the new power stations would add 3,600-4,800 megawatts of capacity using a series of 600 megawatt reactors.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz formally launched construction last week of a Chinese-supplied nuclear plant at Chashma in the eastern province of Punjab.
Pakistan already has one nuclear power plant supplied by China and another that was supplied by Canada.
In September, Pakistan called on the United States and other Western countries to help it develop civilian nuclear technology that would meet its expanding energy needs.
However, there have been international concerns over Pakistan's nuclear activities since scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan admitted in 2004 selling nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
Khan, once revered as the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, ran a black market supplying technology to make highly enriched uranium for nuclear bombs.
Pakistan built its first nuclear power station in 1972 with Canadian help. But Western countries - under pressure from the United States - later halted cooperation amid suspicions that Pakistan was secretly developing nuclear weapons.
Pakistan exploded its first nuclear device in May 1998.