The Shaw Group and Toshiba Corporation have announced a global strategic partnership giving Shaw exclusive rights to provide engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services for Toshiba Advanced Boiling Water Reactors (ABWRs), including a contract for the planned South Texas Project reactors.
 

Shaw has signed a commercial relationship agreement (CRA) with Toshiba that will see it become the exclusive EPC contractor for Toshiba ABWRs in all countries except Japan and Vietnam for the next 20 years. In a presentation to investors, Shaw identified Mexico, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Finland and Turkey as countries likely to present EPC contract opportunities.
 
Accordingly, Nuclear Innovation North America (NINA) has announced that the EPC contract for two ABWRs at South Texas Project in the USA has been awarded to a consortium of Toshiba subsidiary Toshiba America Nuclear Energy Corporation and Shaw. South Texas Project units 3 and 4 will be the first in the US to use the Toshiba variant of the ABWR technology, and are scheduled to come online in 2016 and 2017 respectively. NINA is itself a joint venture of Toshiba and NRG Energy.
 
As part of Shaw and Toshiba's CRA, Shaw will invest $250 million in an ABWR joint venture with Toshiba, including $100 million which will be available as a credit facility to NINA to help in financing and development for the South Texas Project reactors. Provided conditions are met, the credit facility will convert to equity in NINA upon the project receiving full notice to proceed, which is expected to be achieved in mid-2012.
 
NINA president and CEO Steve Winn said the addition of Shaw to the South Texas Project team would add additional expertise in modular and nuclear construction that will be invaluable to the project. "The collaboration of Toshiba and Shaw is the ideal partnership for the expansion of the South Texas Project," he said. Toshiba Corp senior vice president Yasuharu Igarashi said the new consortium would further solidify the "joint global leadership position" held by the two companies.
 
As well as the ABWR partnership, Shaw has also announced that it has also begun discussions with Toshiba on extending the two companies' agreement to work together to provide EPC contracts for Westinghouse AP1000 pressurised water reactors. If the negotiations are successful, the agreement will be extended for a further four years to 2017. An extension would also mean that an existing option to sell Shaw's investment in Westinghouse to Toshiba would be extended for the same period. Shaw and Westinghouse are currently contracted to provide EPC contracts for six new AP1000s in the USA, plus four in China.