At least nine interior Chinese provinces are entangled in a tight race over the right to be the first to operate a nuclear power plant inland.

Li Chunming, secretary-general of the Hubei provincial government, pledged at a recent news briefing that his province would make every possible effort to lead the way.

His resolve was echoed by Li Zongbai, chairman of the Hubei Provincial Commission of Development and Reform, who disclosed that they submitted a document concerning Hubei's nuclear power development to the State Development and Reform Commission (SDRC) for approval in 2004.

Hubei's eight other competitors are Hunan Province in central-south China, Chongqing Municipality and Sichuan Province in the southwest, Anhui and Jiangxi provinces in east China, Jilin Province in northeast China, Gansu Province in the northwest and central Henan Province.

The location of the proposed nuclear power project in Hubei, also known as a "province strewn with a thousand lakes", is fixed at Gaokeng Township of Tongshan County, in southern Hubei, said the secretary-general of Hubei Provincial Government.

"We will try our utmost to make conditions available for launching the construction of the nuclear power plant near the end of the 11th five-year-program period (2006-2010)," said the secretary-general, who added an agreement on the cooperative development had been reached by his provincial government and the China Power Investment Corporation.

A special highway linking the site of the proposed nuclear power plant to elsewhere in China, with a length of 25.87 km, laid the foundation for construction on March 1 and is scheduled to be finished in Sept. next year.

The province's ambitions in nuclear power development, nevertheless, might be challenged directly by neighboring Hunan Province.

Hunan's plan to locate a nuclear power plant at Xiaomo Hill, Hurong County, which sits south of Hubei Province, has won approval from the SDRC and relevant preparatory construction has been carried out in a swift manner.

China plans to increase its combined installed capacity of nuclear power stations to 40 million kilowatts by 2020, or four percent of the Chinese mainland's total, in order to end its power shortage.

Currently, it has nine nuclear generators in operation on the mainland, all located along the coast, with the combined installed capacity of 6,998 megawatts, making up 1.59 percent of its total. The electricity generated by nuclear power makes up 2.3 percent of the country's total.

Source: Xinhua