The consortium includes Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO), Hyundai Engineering and Construction, Samsung C&T Corp and Doosan Heavy Industries.
A South Korean consortium has won a $40-billion contract to build several nuclear reactors for the United Arab Emirates, industry sources said on Sunday.
The consortium would build the first nuclear power plants in the Gulf Arab region under the deal, one of the largest energy contracts ever awarded in the Middle East and also one of the world's biggest nuclear power plant deals.
"We've won," said one industry source. "We're not sure about the exact figure but I think it's around $40 billion." South Korean president Lee Myung-bak was expected to sign the deal with UAE president Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan later on Sunday, sources said.
The consortium includes Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO), Hyundai Engineering and Construction, Samsung C&T Corp and Doosan Heavy Industries. The South Korean group beat a French consortium and another group of companies from the United States and Japan.
Nascent nuclear programmes in the Middle East, including in Saudia Arabia and Egypt, have fuelled concerns of a regional arms race. But the UAE has pledged to import the fuel it needs for reactors rather than attempting to enrich uranium, the fuel for nuclear power plants.
Uranium further refined can be used to make nuclear bombs, and taking enrichment out of the nuclear programme reduces the possibility of weapons development. Work on the first nuclear plant in the Gulf Arab region was expected to begin in 2012.
The UAE is the world's third-largest oil exporter and is looking to nuclear power to meet rapidly rising electricity consumption. Petrodollar-fuelled economic growth has left the Gulf Arab state struggling to meet domestic power demand.
Abu Dhabi is driving the UAE nuclear programme. The emirate holds most of the UAE's crude reserves, and has managed to avoid the worst of the global economic slowdown as well as the debt crisis that has hit neighbouring emirate Dubai.
The UAE plans to build three or four nuclear reactors in a first fleet to help meet an expected rise in power demand to 40,000 megawatts in 2020 from around 15,000 MW last year.
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