Pakistan’s PM Shehbaz Sharif launches $3.5 billion Chinese-designed nuclear energy project

By MUNIR AHMED
Associated Press

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has launched the construction of a 1,200-megawatt Chinese-designed nuclear energy project. It’s being built at a cost of $3.5 billion as part of the government efforts to generate more clean energy. Friday’s ceremony to mark the start of the project comes less than a month after Pakistan signed an agreement with China’s National Nuclear Corporation Overseas. The planned Hualong One reactor is a third-generation nuclear reactor and is considered safer. Pakistan and China are longtime allies. The nuclear power plant known as Chashma-5 will be constructed at a site along the left embankment of the fast-flowing Indus River in Punjab province’s Mianwali.