Pakistan on Thursday opened a 330-megawatt nuclear power plant built with China, saying Beijing had been contracted to construct two more reactors in a bid to ease a crippling energy shortage. The plant is at Chashma in Punjab, where a Chinese-aided power plant of similar capacity is already operational.
“Today is a proud day for Pakistan and for Pakistan’s civil nuclear energy programme,” said Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani as he commissioned the second unit. “It is yet another illustrious example of the Pakistan-China cooperation in the field of nuclear science and technology,” he said. “Completion of this project takes to even greater heights the long and time-tested friendship between the two countries and their people,” said Gilani.
Pakistani plans to produce 8,000 megawatts of electricity by 2025 to address an energy shortfall which triggers violent protests each summer. The nuclear-armed nation, with a population of 167 million, produces only 80 percent of its electricity needs, starving industry that has slumped in the face of recession and three years of Taliban-linked bombings. In Chashma, Gilani confirmed that China had also been contracted to build two more reactors at the plant.
Construction was already underway on power plants C-3 and C-4 to help pave the way for the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission to meet the government-assigned target of 8,800 megawatts by 2030, he said.
