Japan's biggest heavy machinery maker Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (MHI) is to team up with US firm Westinghouse Electric Corp. to bid for nuclear power plant projects in China.

The bid is for the construction of two reactors in the southern province of Guangdong and the eastern province of Zhejiang with an output capacity of 1.0 to 1.5 million kilowatts each.

"There is growing demand for electric power in China. We hope to win the contracts" estimated at 400 to 500 billion yen (US$3.7b to US$4.7b), said Mitsubishi Heavy spokesman Kengo Tatsukawa.

The reactors are scheduled to start operating as early as 2010 and the Chinese government is expected to name the successful bidders by the end of this year, Tatsukawa said.

Mitsubishi Heavy's annual sales of nuclear power facilities currently stand at 200 billion yen and the company aims to increase its overseas business to offset a fall on the domestic side, he said.

China has nine nuclear power plants, with two more now under construction, and it is estimated that the country needs to build more than 20 one-million-kilowatt-class nuclear plants by 2020 to meet surging power demand, according to the business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

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