Officials said the plan has been drafted by Israel's National
Infrastructure Ministry. They said Israeli National Infrastructure Minister
Uzi Landau has discussed Israeli-Jordanian cooperation with France as well
as French nuclear contractor Areva.
"Nuclear energy can be an area of regional cooperation with the
objective of promoting peace," Landau told a nuclear energy conference in
Paris on March 9.
In 2009, France and Jordan signed a nuclear cooperation agreement that
paved the way for the construction of a nuclear reactor by 2017. Israel has
two reactors and has been mulling a nuclear power facility for nearly 20
years.
Officials said Israel required nuclear power to compensate for its lack
of natural energy reserves. They said such a facility could remove pressure
from its increasingly-strained electricity grid.
"We need this energy source because it is environmentally clean," Landau
said.
Jordan has denied plans for nuclear cooperation with Israel, saying the
Jewish state proposed this in early 2009. Jordan has been working with the
French government as well as contractors to
prepare for the construction of a 1,000 megawatt nuclear energy reactor in
the southern part of the kingdom.
"It is too early to speak of regional cooperation with Israel before
resolving the Palestinian issue and the Arab-Israeli conflict," Jordan
Atomic Energy Commission chairman Khaled Toukan said in a statement.
