Saudi Arabia expects to award the contracts for the construction of its first nuclear reactors in December this year, and will be picking bidders from the pool of U.S., China, France, South Korea, and Russia, a Saudi official working with the project told Bloomberg on Monday. Saudi Arabia has received requests from five bidders from those countries, said Abdulmalik Alsabery, a consultant in the business development department at King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy. Alsabery declined to name the companies on the short list. “By April we will sign a project development agreement with two to three selected vendors,” Bloomberg quoted Alsabery as saying. “We are going to have only one winner that will be building the two reactors,” he noted. Saudi Arabia expects construction on the facilities to begin in 2019, aiming for commissioning them in 2027, the official said. Each of the two reactors—in one […]