China's poor Anhui gears up for nuclear plant

The new joint-venture aims to supply the southern part of Anhui but also send electricity on to the country's financial hub, Shanghai, and the power-thirsty Yangtze River Delta.

The plant is slated to go up near Wuhu city, on the southern bank of the Yangtze and along the route of a power transmission link into the coastal regions.

It will have four 1 GW pressurized water reactors, with total investment of around 50 billion yuan ($7.32 billion), China News Agency reported on the website www.china.com.cn.

Upon completion it is expected to generate 30 billion kilowatt-hours of power annually.

China is ramping up its domestic nuclear capacity, targeting a total of 60 gigawatts by 2020 as it seeks to curb dirty emissions and a reliance on foreign fuel.

Its current nuclear capacity is only 9 GW, under 2 percent of its total installed power generation capacity.

Many local governments are keen to win the right to build a plant from Beijing, because of the funds and jobs the projects can bring, although so far approved sites have been clustered along the booming east coast.

The new Wuhu Nuclear Corp is a joint venture between China's Guangdong Nuclear Power Corp -- a nuclear pioneer -- Shenergy Group, Anhui Wenergy Corp and Shanghai Electric Power Corp.

A feasibility study for the proposed Wuhu nuclear project was sent to the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planner, in September 2006, the report said.

It did not specify when the project might be approved. Anhui's fast-growing economy has created high power demand in recent years, but it gets around 95 percent of its output from polluting coal-fired plants which have to ship in most of their fuel and this year have struggled to source supplies.

($1=6.828 Yuan)

(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom, Editing by Emma Graham-Harrison)