The ground breaking ceremony of the Ling’ao NPP Phase II Project was held at Daya Bay, Guangdong province on Dec. 15. Mr. Wu Bangguo, Chairman of the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress sent an instruction to the ceremony, saying it marks another major step towards designing, building and operating of nuclear power plant by the country on its own. By 2020, the China’s nuclear generation capacity will total up to 40 GWe. Mr. Zeng Peiyan, Vice Premier of State Council attended the ceremony and announced that the project start construction formally. Vice premier Zeng pressed the button to pure the first concrete into the base of nuclear island.

On the basis of constructing and operating the Daya Bay NPP and the Ling’ao Phase I NPP successfully, the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Co. (CGNPC) has built the third large commercial NPP-- Ling’ao Phase II NPP. This project is planned to build two 1000MWe PWR units by using the design of “copy plus improve” the technology of Ling’ao Phase I NPP. It is expected that the construction period will be 60 months, unit 1 will put into commercial operation on Dec. 2010, then unit 2 on Aug. 2011.