SEPI Sociedad Estatal de Participaciones Industriales

• This agreement will make possible to increase the activity of both Spanish companies in the Chinese nuclear market

The representatives of ENUSA, Tecnatom and of the Suzhou Nuclear Power Research Institute (SNPI) concluded on January 28th the signing of an important cooperation framework agreement on nuclear fuel inspection systems and equipment.

As a result of this agreement, the three companies undertake to jointly working for introducing the nuclear fuel inspection equipment and technology developed by ENUSA and by Tecnatom within the Chines group China General Nuclear (CGN) to which SNPI belongs.

On the date of the signing, the CGN Group already operates 16 nuclear reactors and a further 11 under construction, which turns it into the first Chinese nuclear power plants operator in terms of installed capacity.

Besides, the Group is embarked in an ambitious internationalization process, having reached agreements for the construction of new nuclear reactors in the United Kingdom and in Romania.

Origins of the cooperation

ENUSA’s and Tecnatom’s cooperation with SNPI began in 2014 with the signing of an agreement for the supply of the SICOM-UT equipment. This ultrasonic testing system for irradiated nuclear fuel was satisfactorily delivered in 2015 at SNPIU’s facilities in Daya Bay in the Guangdong province.

For its part, Tecnatom has in SNPI an important technological partner, since both companies are shareholders in CITEC, a company for the supply of services to nuclear power plants located in the Chinese city of Suzhou.

This agreement will make possible to increase the activity of both Spanish companies in the Chinese nuclear market, to which they have already supplied a number of items for quality control during the manufacture of nuclear fuel for the nuclear fuel factory in Yibin, which is owned by the big CNNC Corporation.

Photo: Signature of the agreement with SNPI. On the foreground, from left to right: Mr. Mariano Rodríguez, Mr. Roberto González, Wang An (SNPI) and Mr. Manuel Fernández (Tecnatom). On the background, Tang Ximing (SNPI), Ju Cunyou (SNPI), Mr. Emilio Bobo, SK Cheung (NUTECH) and Mr. Sebastián Zhang (NUTECH)

Grupo SEPI

ENUSA is part of Grupo SEPI, a corporate holding which includes a total of 16 state-owned companies in which it has direct, majority shareholding participations, with a final workforce of around 73,000 professionals in 2014; the Spanish state-owned television and radio corporation, Corporación Radiotelevisión Española, which is attached to SEPI, and one public foundation. Equally, SEPI has direct minority shareholdings in a further ten companies, and indirect shareholdings in more than one hundred companies.