The Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology of Tsinghua University held a grand meeting to commemorate its 60th anniversary in Beijing, on Saturday.

Chen Xu, Secretary of the CPC Tsinghua University Committee, extended warm congratulations to all faculty, students and alumni, and expressed her heartfelt thanks to people from all walks of life who have cared about and supported the development of the Institute and Tsinghua.

Chen said that over the past 60 years, the Institute has achieved a number of leading scientific research results in China and worldwide by steadily aiming at scientific frontiers and serving the major strategic needs of the country.

Tsinghua always highlights nuclear energy as a key discipline, and hopes that the Institute will take key core technologies of the country as its research goal, carry forward the Institute’s traditional spirit of innovation and hard work, and strive for making greater contributions to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, Chen added.

Zhang Zuoyi, Head of the Institute, noted in his speech that it has been working on the peaceful use of atomic energy, and is increasing efforts in research on the inherent safety of nuclear energy.

“We are committed to developing it into a world-leading interdisciplinary high-tech research institute focused on nuclear energy and new energy research,” Zhang said.

Liu Hua, Vice Minister of Ecology and Environment and Administrator of National Nuclear Safety Administration, said the Institute should bring in more talents, and put more effort into scientific research and development in order to keep improving the independent production level of key nuclear safety technology equipment and software. Liu added that the university and the Institute could further increase exchanges and cooperation in public communication and nuclear safety culture construction, as well as help train more talented people for nuclear energy administration.

Li Meng, Vice Minister of Science and Technology of China, said the Institute should give full play to its technological, talent, and platform advantages in the field of nuclear energy, and continue to carry out industry-university-research cooperation while making more contributions to China's nuclear energy innovation system construction.

By insisting on independent innovation and solid basic research, the Institute should help improve China’s original innovation capabilities in the nuclear energy field, he added.

Representatives from related ministries, enterprises, research institutions, universities and local governments attended the conference.

Founded in 1960, the Institute is the largest research institute in China’s higher education system and one of the important nuclear energy research bases in the early development stage of China. With outstanding research teams, the Institute has built four experimental nuclear reactors and has a number of high-level research platforms. In addition, it has built an advanced reactor engineering laboratory and an advanced PWR laboratory, which are two super large-scale laboratories at a world advanced level.

Serving as a nuclear energy talent training base, the Institute also has established a complete nuclear science and technology discipline system, and its discipline of "nuclear science and technology" ranks first in China’s nuclear discipline evaluation.