China's investment in Britain's 16 billion pound Hinkley Point project is its first foray into Europe's nuclear power market and a marker of its global ambitions, but its firms will depend on foreign partners if they are to fulfil them.
China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) plan to take a combined 30-40 percent stake in a consortium led by French utility EDF to build French-designed EPR reactors in southwest England.
China has the world's largest nuclear building programme at home and hopes to leverage this into a nuclear export industry.
While China has already built reactors for its ally Pakistan, Hinkley Point is its first nuclear project in a developed country, and Beijing hopes the UK credentials will help promote its two nuclear giants on the global stage.
But industry analysts say gaps in the Chinese supply chain, fears of political interference and inexperience in the economics of nuclear power mean the firms will struggle to go it alone.
"They are very ambitious, but whether they will be welcomed overseas is another question," said Li Ning, a nuclear power specialist and dean of the School of Energy Research at China's Xiamen University.
In Britain, for example, political discussions behind closed doors about Chinese nuclear involvement concluded the public would not accept Chinese companies owning majority stakes in new plants and that initial participation should be capped at 49 percent, a source familiar with the discussions said.
China's massive domestic nuclear new-build programme is one of the few bright spots in the global nuclear industry following the 2011 Fukushima disaster, which prompted several countries including Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Belgium to close or phase out their nuclear programmes.
After a post-Fukushima suspension lasting a year and a half, Beijing restarted its programme late in 2012 and aims to bring capacity up from 12.57 gigawatts now to 58 GW by the end of 2020. Nearly 30 GW of new capacity is under construction in China, more than 40 percent of the world's total new-build.
Source: Reuters
