Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) Unit-2 (K-2) with a capacity of 1100 Mega Watts will be formally inaugurated here on Friday at a virtual ceremony to be held simultaneously at Islamabad, K-2 NPP Karachi and Beijing, China.

Prime Minister Imran Khan will be chief guest at the ceremony.

K-2 is a generation III, state of the art plant with improved safety systems, especially internal and external accident prevention ability and enhanced emergency response capability.

The plant has 60-year life expectancy, extendable to further 20 more years. It is designed with higher plant availability and capacity factors and extended refueling cycle.

The construction of K-2 commenced in November 2013, whereas its fuel loading started on December 01, 2020 after approval from the Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (PNRA).

A series of cold and hot functional commissioning tests related with plant operation and safety were conducted, before achieving criticality at the end of February this year.

After further reactor physics tests, plant was connected to national grid on March 18, 2021 for trial operation and power escalation tests, according to the information made available by Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC).

With inauguration of K-2 NPP, PAEC will be operating six Nuclear Power Plants in the country. Two of them are located in Karachi namely Karachi Nuclear Power Plant Unit-1 (K-1) and Unit-2 (K-2), while four sited at Chashma, in District Mianwali, named as Chashma Nuclear Power Plant Unit 1-4.

Earlier, the collective generation capacity of all PAEC operated NPPs was around 1,400 Mega Watts. The inauguration of K-2 with 1100 MW capacity will nearly double these figures, substantially improving the overall share of nuclear power in the energy-mix.

Meanwhile, Karachi Nuclear Power Plant Unit-3 (K-3), with similar capacity was also in commissioning phase and was expected to start production during first quarter of 2022.

It is worth mentioning that addition of clean, reliable and cost-effective nuclear power, in the energy mix, would greatly benefit the society and country at large.