A new Chinese nuclear power plant broke ground for construction
at the northeastern coast of Fujian Province on Monday.
It is ranked first in China in terms of the degrees for
independently developing and manufacturing the generating units to
be used at the power plant.
While meeting with the project contractors for the start of
construction on the Ningde nuclear power station today, Vice
Premier Zeng Peiyan called for efforts to accelerate
the optimizing of energy structure and to promote independent
development of nuclear power.
He said nuclear power was a sort of clean, high-efficient, safe
and reliable energy. He emphasized pushing forward construction of
nuclear plants as an important measure to speed up the change of
economic growth patterns and the restructuring of energy and the
national economy at large.
Zeng said endeavors should be exerted to strengthen the
absorption of imported nuclear power technologies and achieve
independent design, manufacturing and operating of pressurized
water reactors each with an installed capacity of at least one
million kilowatts.
Workers were busy cementing the hole for housing one of the
reactors for the new power plant on an unpopulated island off the
Fuding coast. The municipality falls under the jurisdiction of
Ningde, another Fujian city.
For the first-phase development, the power plant will be
equipped with four one-million-kw generating units. The investment
will total 50 billion yuan (about 6.85 billion U.S. dollars), said
Qian Zhimin, chairman of China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group, one
of the plant's investors.
The country's independently-developed nuclear technology, known
as CPR1000, will be used at the plant, Qian said. The localization
rate with the first two generating units will be 75 percent, but
will rise to 85 percent with the last two.
"The cost for power generation at Ningde nuclear power plant
will be lower because of the wide use of domestically- manufactured
equipment," Qian said. "I believe the foreseeable economic
prospects will be very good, and each kilowatt hour of electricity
will charge 0.37 yuan, much lower than the present rate for each
kilowatt hour of electricity."
The first generating unit with the Ningde nuclear power plant
will be finished and commissioned in 2012. The new plant will be
able to generate 30 billion kw/hours of electricity annually when
all four units are operational by 2015.
The project is being invested jointly by Guangdong Nuclear Power
Investment Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of China Guangdong Nuclear Power
Group, Datang International Power Generation Co., Ltd. and Fujian
Coal Industry (Group) Co.,Ltd.
China has 11 nuclear plants with a combined installed capacity
of 9.08 million kw. Three use domestic technology, two are based on
Russian technology, four use French technology and two are
Canadian-designed. All use second generation nuclear
technologies.
China generated 62.6 billion kilowatt hours of nuclear power in
2007, up 14.1 percent year-on-year, according to the China
Electricity Council.
The country has worked out a plan for vigorously developing
nuclear power during the 11th five-year-plan (2006-2010) and
beyond.
In accordance with the government plan, the country will have an
installed nuclear power capacity of 40 million kw by 2020,
accounting for four percent of the country's total.
Nuclear plants provide 2.3 percent of China's power and the
proportion is set to rise to 16 percent by 2030.
(Xinhua News Agency February 19, 2008)