Two of the generators will be located in Sanmen in East China's Zhejiang Province and another two in Lingdong, South China's Guangdong Province with each generator having a capacity of 1 million kilowatts.
The People's Daily reported that sixteen provinces and autonomous regions have suffered frequent blackouts this summer due to surges in consumption and that the energy-hungry coastal regions lack coal, oil and gas to feed economic development, making locally built nuclear power desirable.
A number of provinces including Fujian, Jiangsu and Shandong are lobbying the State Council to build more plants to meet the increasing demand for electricity and to cash in on the lucrative business.
The new generators are part of a master plan to raise the proportion of electricity generated in the country by nuclear power from 1.3% to around 4-5% by 2020, reaching between 32 million and 40 million kilowatts.
The government hopes construction can start before 2005 and that the generators can begin operations by the end of 2010.
Eight nuclear power generators already operate in China. Three more generators are under construction with the last time the government approved a new nuclear power plant being in 1997.
