Nuclear power in Pakistan

As of 2022, nuclear power is provided by six commercial nuclear power plants in Pakistan. Pakistan is the first Muslim majority country in the world to construct and operate civil nuclear power plants. The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), the scientific and nuclear governmental agency, is solely responsible for operating these power plants. As of 2018, the electricity generated by commercial nuclear power plants constitutes roughly 7.5% of electricity generated in Pakistan, Pakistan is not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but is a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Pakistan plans on constructing 32 nuclear power plants by 2050 and envisions 40,000 MW of nuclear power generation. Professor (and later Nobel laureate) Abdus Salam, as Science Advisor to the President, persuaded President Ayub Khan, to establish Pakistan's first commercial nuclear power reactor, near Karachi. Known as Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP), the commercial power plant is a small 137 MWe CANDU reactor, a Canadian pressurised heavy water reactor. PAEC's Parvez Butt, a nuclear engineer, was project-director. The KANUPP began its operations in 1972, and it was inaugurated by President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Munir Ahmad Khan as PAEC chairman. The KANUPP which is under international safeguards is operated at reduced power. In 1969, France's Commissariat à l'énergie atomique and United Kingdom's British Nuclear Fuels plc (BNFL) contracted with PAEC to provide plutonium and nuclear reprocessing plants in Pakistan. Per the agreement, the PAEC engineers were the lead designers of the power plants and nuclear-reprocessing facilities. While the BNFL and CEA provided the funds, technical assistance, and nuclear materials. The work on projects did not start until 1972, and as a result of India's Operation Smiling Buddha — a surprise nuclear test in 1974 — the BNFL cancelled the projects with PAEC. In 1974, PARR-II Reactor were commissioned, and its project directors were Munir Ahmad Khan and Hafeez Qureshi.