Jordan’s Prime Minister Nader Dahabi and Anne Lauvergeon – president and CEO of French nuclear giant Areva — on Sunday discussed a plan to build a 110-megawatt reactor in the energy-poor kingdom.“The two sides also discussed a timetable and sustainable funding resources for the project,” the state-run Petra news agency reported without elaborating.
“The prime minister said Jordan is keen to develop cooperation with Areva.”
Jordan and France signed a nuclear cooperation agreement in May.
Officials in Amman have said that Areva could extract around 130,000 tonnes of uranium from Jordan’s 1.2 billion tonnes of phosphate reserves and build a nuclear reactor.
The tiny desert kingdom, which imports around 95 percent of its energy needs, is seeking alternative energy sources, such as the use of nuclear power to generate electricity and desalinate water.
The country aims to bring its first nuclear plant on line by 2015, hoping to supply 30 percent of energy production by 2030.
Jordan is the latest Sunni Arab country, after Egypt and pro-Western Gulf states, to announce plans for nuclear power programmes in the face of Shiite Iran’s controversial atomic drive.
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