(Yicai) Dec. 6 -- China’s Shidaowan, the world’s first nuclear power plant to use a fourth-generation reactor, started producing electricity for the grid today, opening the door to commercializing the technology.

The high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, or HTGR, in Rongcheng, Shandong province has an installed capacity of 200,000 kilowatts and came online after 168 consecutive hours of trial operation, the National Energy Administration said on its website.

China is actively promoting the construction of nuclear energy projects with the aim of having an installed capacity of 100 million KW by 2030, according to a national atomic energy report published in April. By that year, the amount of electricity it generates from atomic power is expected to surpass that of the United States for the first time, the report said.

The Shidaowan project, with fully independent intellectual property rights, was jointly constructed by China Huaneng Group, Tsinghua University, and China National Nuclear. It started being built in 2012.

More than 500 companies took part in its design, research, development, production and operation, and almost 94 percent of the equipment and devices used in the plant were made in China.

High-temperature gas-cooled reactors are internationally acknowledged as fourth-generation advanced nuclear power technology, offering significant safety advantages. Most existing reactors are water-cooled, but gas cooling means the new reactors can be built inland without the need for water resources.

HTGRs are also flexible in scale varying from 200,000 KW to 1 million KW to meet the needs of different users. Wider use of the technology will result in a new industry worth more than CNY100 billion (USD14 billion), Yicai learned from an industry insider.

Many Chinese provinces such as Jiangsu, Guangdong, and Guizhou plan to build HTGRs and small reactors, Wang Binghua, an advisor to the committee of experts of the China Nuclear Energy Association and a former chairman of State Power Investment, said recently.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Tom Litting