The Nigerian government has launched a tender for the country's first nuclear power plant, a four-reactor plant with a combined output of 4GW, or about a third of the country's current installed capacity. The announcement was made by Yau Idris, director general of the Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority, speaking at the Nigeria International Energy Summit in Abuja.

He dismissed concerns over Nigeria's lack of experience in overseeing the construction of nuclear power plants, saying mechanisms were in place to "ensure that any country can build nuclear power plants". Nigeria has been negotiating with Russian nuclear engineer Rosatom in the past. In 2016, the government reportedly agreed to move forward with an $80 billion plan to build four factories, and in October 2017 Rosatom agreed to a $10 billion build, operate and transfer deal for the Geregu plant on the Niger River. None of these plans came to fruition, and other cooperation and training agreements have since been signed with Pakistan, France and South Korea.

Another speaker at the summit pointed out that the Nigerian system needs more transmission and distribution capacity than additional generation. The World Bank ranks Nigeria 171st out of 190 power distribution countries, and the failure of the system is seen as one of the main drags on Africa's largest economy. Ifeoluwa Oyedele, executive director of Niger Delta Power Holdings, said the system can only handle 5GW of electricity at a time, and a better strategy in the future may be to bypass the grid and supply power directly to industrial clusters. Keywords: engineering construction, engineering news

Nigeria is a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency and must therefore strictly adhere to the tender requirements, which are designed to ensure that the winning bidder has the necessary capabilities to license, build, commission and operate a nuclear power plant.Editor/XingWentao