sorry if repost, merge please.
China Agrees to Sell Pakistan Two More Nuclear Reactors - WSJ.com
ISLAMABAD Pakistan is acquiring two large nuclear power reactors from longtime ally China, officials said, under a $9.1 billion deal that has raised concern in Washington that Beijing is overstepping international rules on transferring nuclear technology.
For Islamabad, the pact with China counters the nuclear energy accord New Delhi signed with the U.S. under the president George W. Bush. Pakistan regards that arrangement as providing India with an unfair potential strategic advantage for nuclear weapons. Both countries possess a nuclear arsenal.
But the expanding nuclear cooperation between the two countries has raised concern in the U.S. and others about whether China is going beyond international agreements on restricting the transfer of nuclear technology to countries, like Pakistan, who haven't signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.
Pakistani officials haven't talked publicly about this latest agreement, which was quietly signed around midyear and closed in early July, about the time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited China.
The senior Pakistani official confirmed the pact to The Wall Street Journal, disclosing that it covers two nuclear power reactors. The accord had been rumored before, but was generally thought to entail just one reactor. Explaining the government's silence over the deal, the official added: "I fear dirty hands will start their spoiling work."
China's embassy in Islamabad and the Commerce Ministry in Beijing didn't respond to calls seeking comment for this article.
The reactors covered by the deal would be technologically advanced and built outside the main port city of Karachi. They each would provide 1,000 megawatts of electricity, a big boost for power-starved Pakistan. "Every country has this. We are also entitled," the senior official said. "We have to focus on adding cheaper energy supply."
China would deliver the first reactor in 70 months-80 months, with the second coming 10 months later. Nuclear reactors take several years to build. They would be installed on the Karachi coast close to a small existing reactor, the senior Pakistani official said. The Chinese will provide 82% of the financing through a loan on what another Pakistani official described as very soft terms.
China is Pakistan's closest ally, in a decadeslong partnership pegged by their respective disputes with India. China has assisted Pakistan's nuclear power program since the 1990s, and the two nations are alleged to have worked together on nuclear weapons technology.
"The cooperation [with Pakistan] is in accordance with the nonproliferation treaty and international norms," Su Hao, director of the Center for Strategic and Conflict Management at China Foreign Affairs University, said.
China belongs to the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which regulates trade in civil nuclear technology, with an eye toward nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. China says its cooperation with Pakistan predated its joining the NSG in 2004, so the alliance with Islamabad is grandfathered as an existing arrangement.
But a U.S. State Department official said the group discussed China's cooperation with Pakistan in the past several plenary sessions. "We remain concerned that a transfer of new reactors to Pakistan appears to extend beyond the cooperation that was grandfathered in when China was approved for membership in the NSG."
"Most members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group do not want to see an indefinite stream of equipment and nuclear material going from China to Pakistan under the grandfather clause," said Mark Hibbs, an expert on nuclear energy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an independent think tank based in Washington, D.C.
Pakistan says all its nuclear plants will be open to inspection from the International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations organization that polices nuclear safety.
China has supplied Pakistan with two 300-megawatt reactors of an older design, which were completed in 2000 and 2011. It is building two more under past deals, in addition to the new 1,000-megawatt reactors. Pakistan's current nuclear energy capacity is just 725 megawatts.
A Pakistani official said the supply of power from the nuclear plants was constant, unlike hydroelectric power, another option for Pakistan, while the operational cost of electricity from a nuclear power station is considerably lower than the country's oil and gas-fired generation plants.
Pakistan suffers a debilitating energy crisis that is starving industry of power and depriving households of basic everyday comforts. There are planned outages of 10 hours-12 hours a day, due to a roughly 5,000-megawatt gap between supply and demand. Tackling the crisis has been Mr. Sharif's top priority since taking office in June.
Beyond energy needs lies a strategic rationale. Under 2005's U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement, India, which also isn't part of the nonproliferation treaty, was granted an exemption to buy nuclear power technology.
Pakistan is in a nuclear arms race with India and says the accord was discriminatory. "The U.S.-India nuclear deal was very disturbing for the strategic stability of this region," said Sarwar Naqvi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the IAEA. "It put Pakistan at a disadvantage. It freed Indian uranium to be diverted to their military program."
However, some legal complications have subsequently stalled the anticipated sale of American nuclear plants to India. These obstacles include the liability for compensation for accidents that now exists under Indian law, following the deadly 1984 accident at a chemical plant owned by Union Carbide, a U.S. company, in the Indian city of Bhopal.
"Pakistan is getting more benefits from China than India is getting from the United States so far," Carnegie Endowment's Mr. Hibbs said.
Mr. Hibbs said that the design of the new 1,000-megawatt reactors that Pakistan will receive is untested, even in China. He added that the price tag doesn't suggest that Islamabad is getting any "bargain."
The Indian ministry of external affairs declined to comment on the Chinese nuclear deal with Pakistan.
As part of his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month, Prime Minister Sharif called for Pakistan to be allowed to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group. "Pakistan qualifies for full access to civil nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, to meet its growing energy needs," Mr. Sharif said.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...511807840.html
Kersten Zhang and Niharika Mandhana contributed to this article.
First good news coming from this PML_N government