Contracts for the design of the Ling'ao phase II nuclear project in South China's Guangdong Province were signed on Thursday.

The accords were signed between the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group (CGNPG), the builder of the plant, and designers that include China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC) and Guangdong Electric Power Design Institute (GEDI).

Two nuclear engineering institutes owned by CNNC will design two reactors for the second phase of the project at Ling'ao. They will have an installed power generation capacity of 1 gigawatts (GW) each, according to the contracts.

The local GEDI will design the turbines and generators that will ultimately transform the nuclear energy into electricity.

The second phase project is a duplicate of the first phase, which has two 990-megawatt (MW) reactors built using French technology.

The second phase will use similar technology transferred from France, but now owned by China.

Kang Rixin, president of CNNC, yesterday said that this was the first time that China would design and build a nuclear reactor with a capacity of 1 GW.

"It (the signing of the contracts) marks an important step for China in developing its own technology in building nuclear power plants," Kang said at the signing ceremony.

Infrastructure construction for the second phase began last week, and the first reactor is expected to generate electricity from October 2010, CGNPG sources said. The second will come on stream the following year.

The cost of the second phase project is expected to be a total of US$3 billion, Zheng Dongshan, general manager of CGNPC, told China Daily yesterday.

Turbine equipment at the Ling'ao phase II project will be jointly provided by France-based Alstom and Shanghai Dongfang Electric Group of China, according to an agreement signed with CGNPC in May.

The Ling'ao phase II project will be the third nuclear plant in Guangdong Province, following the Ling'ao phase I project and the Daya Bay plant.

"We see tremendous demand for nuclear power to balance the energy mix in Guangdong, where oil fuels a third of the province's electricity generators," Qiao Junping, Beijing representative of CGNPG, said.

China intends to increase the amount of installed nuclear power capacity from the current 16 GW to 40 GW, or 4 percent of total installed capacity, within 15 years, Kang earlier told reporters at a news briefing in Beijing.

That ambitious target means two 1-GW reactors need to be built every year for the next 15 years.

(China Daily December 23, 2005)