China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC) said its Tianwan nuclear power station, the biggest-ever joint project between China and Russia, began full commercial operation yesterday.

Located in Lianyungang, in East China's Jiangsu Province, the Tianwan station has two generating units with an installed capacity of 1,060 MW each.

The first unit began operating in May and has since produced 4.66 KW-hours of electricity.

With the second unit up and running, the Tianwan station is expected to ease power supply problems in Jiangsu Province, where demand has been increasing, said CNNC.

Jiangsu, neighboring Shanghai, is one of the fastest growing and prosperous regions in China.

On August 2, power load in the province reached 45,620 MW, approaching the maximum capacity of 46,000 MW. The number grew by almost 20 percent over the same period of last year, setting records in all 13 cities.

The daily power usage was 957 MW hours, growing by 16.6 percent year-on-year.

Building work on the Tianwan plant began in 1999, with total investment of 26.5 billion yuan. Both generating units feature Russian pressurized water technology.

CNNC has seven finished nuclear power reactors in China, including Qinshan and Tianwan. It produced 22.68 billion KW-hours of electricity in 2006 and has safely operated Qinshan, its first nuclear power plant, for 15 years.

It posted 20.3 billion yuan in revenue for its main business last year, up over 15 percent from 2005.

China is increasingly turning to nuclear power as a clean, alternative solution to its growing energy demands.

The nuclear power industry has shifted from appropriate development to accelerated development, said Han Xiaoping, executive vice-president of energy website China5e.com.

Nuclear power accounted for 1.1 percent of the nation's total installed power capacity in 2006, according to the State Electricity Regulatory Commission. China plans to increase nuclear power capacity to 40GW by 2020 - that's 4 percent of the nation's total generating capacity.

All nuclear reactors in operation or being built in China use first- or second-generation technology. Last month China finalized a contract with US-based Westinghouse Electric Co to build four third-generation nuclear power reactors in the eastern part of the country.

(China Daily August 17, 2007)