UAE rebar maker meets nuclear grade

Thursday, 28 June 2012

Emirates Steel Industries - the only integrated steel plant in the UAE - is now certified to produce concrete reinforcing bar (rebar) for use in nuclear facilities having met the necessary quality standards.

Rebar manufactured by Emirates Steel

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has awarded a Quality System Certificate (QSC) to Emirates Steel for the production of rebar. This certification shows that Emirate Steel's rebar products meet the established technological requirements of ASME's nuclear standards in production, safety, testing, inspections and control of measurement devices. Emirates Steel is the fourth rebar manufacturer worldwide to attain this certification and the first within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.

Emirates Steel chairman Suhail Al Ameri said, "The ASME certificate and the implementation of our Nuclear Quality System (NQS) program will enable us to produce and supply our products to companies involved in nuclear activities." He added, "We expect that the nuclear market is going to be a growing market for the use of rebar. With this issuance of a QSC to our company, we are now well positioned to service that growing market."

Emirates Steel said that it plans to "expand its business by supplying high-quality, reliable materials demanded by nuclear plant builders, and seeks to contribute to nuclear power safety by bringing its technological and quality levels in general up complying with ASME standards."

Emirates Steel was established in 2001 and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the General Holding Corporation. The company currently has a finished product capacity of 3 million tonnes per year.

Preparatory groundwork for the UAE's first nuclear power plant at Braka is already underway, with the pouring of the concrete basemat for the first unit scheduled in December. In a $20 billion deal announced in December 2009, the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (Enec) selected a Korean consortium led by Korea Electric Power Company (Kepco) to build four APR-1400 reactors, the first of which is scheduled to come online in 2017. Further reactors could be ordered as electricity demand grows from some 16 GWe currently to an expected 40 GWe by 2020.

Other Middle Eastern countries - including Saudi Arabia and Jordan - also have plans to introduce nuclear power into their energy mixes.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News