The Ling'ao II project will be comprised of two generating units, each with an installed capacity of 1,000 megawatts, with the first unit scheduled to start operation in December 2010, Xinhua news agency reported.

The second unit will go online in August 2011, the report said, citing sources from the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Co Ltd (CGNPC).

On completion, the two units will generate 150 billion kilowatt hours of electricity each year for the booming province which borders Hong Kong and has been driving the nation's robust export-driven economy.

Ling'ao II is based on pressurized water reactor technology imported from France, but with improvements made by Chinese nuclear scientists, the report said.

The new plant will be adjacent to the Daya Bay nuclear power plant and the Ling'ao I project which began commercial operation in 2003, with two 990-megawatt generating units.

Reactors at both Daya Bay and Ling'ao are French made.

China currently has nine nuclear generation units in operation, including four in Daya Bay and Ling Ao and five reactors at the Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant in east China's Zhejiang Province.

Two other units, imported from Russia are under construction at the Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant in Jiangsu Province, east China.

China gets just 2.3 percent of its energy from nuclear power plants and is hoping to increase that to 4.0 percent by 2020, which will make it the world's fastest developer of atomic energy.

International tenders for four more nuclear reactors, two each to be installed at plants in Sanmen in the eastern province of Zhejiang and at Yangjiang in Guangdong province are being reviewed by officials.

France's Areva and Westinghouse of the United States are the front runners in the bids expected to be worth between 6.0 and 7.0 billion dollars, but officials have said they needed better pricing and more technical details before a decision could be made.

"These companies haven't given us satisfactory proposals on many key technical details, such as engineering and plant security," Chen Hua, director of the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), said.

"It is unlikely that the talks will be finalized by the end of the year."

Selection had been expected by this year as China embarks on an ambitious nuclear energy plan that calls for some 15 new 1,000 megawatt nuclear reactors to be built by 2020.

"It now seems improbable that construction (of the plants) will start at the end of 2007 as we originally planned," Chen said.

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