Late Friday evening, the No.1 reactor of the second phase project at the Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant, which was independently designed and built by China, reached its critical capacity for the first time.

The nuclear plant, the first such facility with a capacity of 600,000 kilowatts, is now able to join the national power grid and operate at full scale, according to official sources.

This means China's nuclear technology and civil nuclear power industries have entered a new stage, the sources stressed.

The second-phase project at Qinshan, in Haiyan County of east China's Zhejiang Province, started construction on June 2, 1996, with an investment of 14.8 billion yuan (US$1.8 billion). Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant was the first nuclear power plant built with China's own technology.

When the second-phase project begins to operate at full capacity June 1, 2002, it is expected to generate four billion kilowatt hours of electricity a year for the east China power grid.

(China Daily December 29, 2001)