By Muhammad Luqman
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi inaugurated country’s fifth nuclear power plant C-4 in central Pakistan district of Mianwali on Friday that added another 340Megawatts of electricity to the national grid.
With the completion of a number of coal and gas-fired power plants , power generation has recently crossed the mark of 20,000 megawatt, about 2000 more than the power needed during the current sultry weather.
The plant had to be inaugurated by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif a month ago but due to his ouster from the office in line with July 28 verdict of Supreme Court, the inauguration was delayed.
The Chashma nuclear power projects units, C-1, C-2 and C-3 have already been successfully contributing to the national grid with an excellent performance since 2000, 2011 and 2016 respectively.
The three nuclear power plants of Chinese origin are the best performing power stations in the country, supplying over 950 MW to the national grid with availability factors of around 99%.
Currently, country’s four nuclear power plants KANUPP, C-1, C-2 and C-3 are operational and generating a total of 1,030 MW of power whereas with the inauguration of C-4 Chashma plant, will bring the total volume of nuclear power to 1370 megawatts.
Two large sized nuclear power plants, K-2 and K-3 are under construction near Karachi and are scheduled to be operational in 2020 and 2021 respectively, adding another 2,200 MW to the national grid.
