South Korea Consortium Steals UAE Nuclear Deal

UAE strengthens hand with nuclear deal/Sun Dec 27, 2009 10:28am GMT
DUBAI/SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean firms Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO), Hyundai Engineering and Construction, Samsung C&T Corp and Doosan Heavy Industries have won a deal worth around $40 billion to build and operate nuclear power plants in the United Arab Emirates, industry sources said today.
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Were U.S. firms contenders? Probably not. Politics alone would have posed a barrier to GE. However, the broader issue is the dearth of U.S. commercial involvement. Although Westinghouse, owned by Toshiba, was one of the winning consortium, the plants are not AP-1000s. Most export income and profit from the project will go to Korea. The irony is that U.S. taxpayers, who footed the bill for commercial nuclear power development, will see no benefit accrue to U.S. companies, U.S. balance of payments, U.S. taxable income or other U.S. strategic concerns. Nor does the current crop of politicos in Washington on Capital Hill even care - they’re off chasing windmills.

The absence of a global U.S. nuclear strategy, as presented by President Dwight Eisenhower when he signed the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, has left the U.S. taxpayer's investments high and dry. Does the Obama administration care to change that picture?

Without a change of direction in Washington DC, the U.S. is headed towards third-rate status in world nuclear design, construction and operations. That should give all U.S. citizens pause for concern.