The third generator unit at the Hongyanhe Nuclear Power Plant, the first nuclear power station in China’s northeast, became fully operational on Monday.
The generator has an installed capacity of 1.12 million kilowatts, the same as the power station's two other generators, which went into operation in Feb. and Nov. 2013, respectively, the plant's operator Liaoning Hongyanhe Nuclear Power Co. Ltd. told the Xinhua News Agency.
The generator, which uses pressurized water reactor technology developed in-house, can fulfill a quarter of the annual electricity needs of the port city of Dalian, Liaoning Province, where the nuclear plant is located.
Compared with a coal-fired power plant, the new generator unit will cut down China's annual coal consumption by 2.5 million tonnes, according to a report from the Global Times. It will also reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 6.03 million tonnes and sulfur dioxide emissions by 58,000 tonnes per year.
The completion of the third generator is part of a project that sees four power generation units built at Hongyanhe with a cost of 50 billion yuan ($8.13 billion). The project, which began in 2007, is expected to be completed by the end of this year.
Once fully operational, the four generators will have an output of 30 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, the Global Times said.
Earlier this March, the state-owned China General Nuclear Power Corp. announced that it had gained government approval to build two new reactors at the Hongyanhe power station, the first after a two-year moratorium in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake that led to the crippling of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in 2011. The moratorium was eventually lifted in 2012 after safety standards were revised.
Only 2 percent of China's electricity is currently being generated via nuclear power, which is produced at 23 nuclear reactors at eight different facilities across the country, according to the World Nuclear Association.