China nuclear power to hit 70 GW

JAPAN: China plans to boost nuclear power generation capacity nearly eightfold by 2020, to 70 gigawatts, a Japanese government official quoted China's Zhang Guobao, head of the National Energy Administration, as saying on Saturday.

In 2007, China, the world's second-largest power market after the United States, set a target of boosting its nuclear capacity to 40 GW by the end of 2020, but is likely to meet that goal five years early following a slew of project approvals. China has 11 working reactors with 9 GW of total capacity, or just over 1 per cent of total installed power generating capacity of 874 GW, about three-quarters of which is fuelled by coal.

China plans to build 28 new reactors, Mitsuo Matsumoto, director of natural resources and energy research at Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, told reporters during a briefing on a closed-door meeting, quoting Zhang. Zhang was attending a one-day gathering of energy ministers and senior officials in Fukui in northwestern Japan as part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, the United States and Vietnam.