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Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy last month, hit by billions of
dollars of cost overruns at four nuclear reactors under
construction in the United States.
Despite the filing, the company will continue existing projects
in China and pursue others, focusing on engineering and
procurement rather than construction, said Gavin Liu,
Westinghouse's president for Asia, at an industry event.
The plan was to decouple the U.S. AP1000 nuclear reactors from
the rest of Westinghouse's operations, which he said was "very
healthy and profitable."
"The rest of the Westinghouse business, the healthy part, which
is new plant construction, fuel, service, decommissioning - we
anticipate an ownership change," Liu said, adding that there has
been "high interest from the financial community".
A source with knowledge of the issue told Reuters that about 10
potential bidders had shown interest, including Western Digital
Corp, rival Micron Technology Inc, South Korean chipmaker SK
Hynix Inc and financial investors.
The Trump administration and Japanese government are in
discussions to ensure that its bankruptcy does not lead to U.S.
technology secrets and infrastructure falling into Chinese
hands.
Four 1,000 megawatt medium-sized nuclear reactor designed by
Westinghouse are under construction in China, which is
increasing its use of the energy form as it seeks to limit the
country's reliance on other power sources such as dirty coal.
Liu said that the first AP1000 units in Sanmen and Haiyang were
moving into the final stage of fuel loading and the Sanmen unit
was on track to be put in commercial operation by the end of
this year.
"As long as the first unit is on line commercially, that is the
foundation for the industry and the government to approve future
AP1000 units," he said.
He added that Westinghouse was not concerned about competition
from China's domestically-developed third-generation reactor,
Hualong One.
"Hualong is a Chinese indigenous design based on China's early
years experience in the nuclear area. It reflects the Chinese
industry's own capabilities," he said.
"The future market will tell."
(Reporting by David Stanway; Writing by Brenda Goh in SHANGHAI;
Editing by Kim Coghill and Randy Fabi)
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