It's a very good question. As the discussion with your colleague alluded to, we are looking at the market opportunity in the medium term—we'll say five to 10 years—of approximately five to eight new CANDU reactors to be built internationally. Each one of those contracts or projects is unique and will have various economic spinoff benefits, not only to SNC-Lavalin but to the downstream supply chain, the 200 SMEs I spoke about.
What I can reference is that in 2013 we commissioned the Conference Board of Canada to do an economic modelling study on the economic impact of the export of two new CANDU reactors internationally, in what I'll describe as a standard model. The findings showed that the economic impact was up to 37,000 person-years of employment, with a net GDP increase of approximately $3.8 billion. Now, those are large numbers, and that's not something we would glean from all of the export projects, but you can get an order-of-magnitude understanding of the type of economic impact that would entail in terms of these export opportunities.
I talked about the short-term or medium-term CANDU prospects in the five- to eight-year window period. In Asia alone there will probably be, our estimates show, between 150 to 200 new reactors built. That's driven by economic growth, people moving, and the middle class growing, but is also buttressed by decarbonization pushes within that region.
We see a large opportunity there. I talked about what we're doing in China. We also work very closely with countries like South Korea, as well as Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia, that are looking at new nuclear.
We think the prospects are quite bright for us, not only in nuclear new build but in services and life extension as well. There's an opportunity for us to life-extend the three remaining CANDU units in South Korea at the Wolsong site. We've already begun discussions with the client there. We've already life-extended one. Those projects alone are multi-billion dollar investments from which the downstream supply chain gleans a large benefit.