The White House was likely to give the nod to the first-ever sale of its nuclear reactors to China in the next couple of months, said Nils Diaz, chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday.

"My understanding is that China is looking for an advanced reactor that provides graded assurance of safety," Diaz said during a trip to Beijing. "They're looking, I think, for something that is state-of-the-art, and the AP1000 is a state-of-the-art reactor."

"The commission will actually vote on this issue hopefully in the next couple of months. We don��t foresee any problems with the AP1000 license because most of the problems have already been solved." he said.

"I cannot predict what the voting of my fellow commissioners is, but I haven��t heard any significant opposition to the issue."

China had begun accepting bids to build a few new reactors, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said.

Whether the country would buy American technology depended on "the result of the bidding as well as the requirements of the Chinese companies," she said.

AP1000 is developed by Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse Electric, a subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., which applied to the US regulator in February to build two reactors in China.

In 1995, the company signed an agreement to provide two 650-megawatt steam turbines, considered non-nuclear systems, for China's Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant. Its archrivals in the Chinese market include France's Areva, Siemens AG of Germany and AtomStroyExport of Russia.

China has nine nuclear power plants in operation with a combined capacity of 7,010 megawatts. It plans to increase capacity to about 36,000 megawatts by 2020.

Source: Shenzhen Daily-Agencies