South Korea's state-run power company Korea Electric Power Corporation(KEPCO) has been selected as the preferred bidder in a 21 trillion-won project to build nuclear power plants in Britain.
 
KEPCO said in a statement on Thursday that Toshiba, which has a 60 percent stake in the NuGen consortium in charge of building three nuclear reactors in Cumbria, northwest Britain, picked KEPCO as its preferred bidder.
 
The statement said that the selection does not mean the firm secured the contract, adding KEPCO and Toshiba will negotiate the terms over the next few months.

Toshiba in 2006 took over the U.S.-based Westinghouse Electric Company for five-point-four billion dollars. But it later decided to withdraw from nuclear reactor projects and sell its NuGen stake after seeing losses from tighter nuclear reactor regulations worldwide.
 
If KEPCO signs the contract, it would be the first such deal since 2009 when it won a 20 billion dollar deal to build four nuclear power plants in the United Arab Emirates.