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VP stresses
improvement of energy structure
Beijing—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 |
