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BEIJING: South China's Daya Bay nuclear power station has returned to service after switching an essential part from one of its two 900 megawatt reactors to the other, the Xinhua news agency said late on Monday.

The power station's Unit Two had restarted normal service after being fitted with an exciter, a non-nuclear component, from Unit One, the agency said.

The Daya Bay plant, in China's southern Guangdong province just over the border from Hong Kong, was shut down for the second time in a year last month when problems with the Unit Two exciter coincided with refuelling of Unit One.

The faulty exciter was being repaired in Britain and was expected to be back at the plant by early May, in time to assist refuelling, Xinhua said.

Unit One was expected to resume operation in mid-June, it said.

Officials of China Light and Power Co, which owns 25 percent of the power station, have stressed the problems with the exciter are not relevant to safety or radioactivity.

The plant was shut down for more than a month last April after problems with Unit One's reactor control rods and because of refuelling work on the second unit.

Daya Bay's unit 2 was built by the French state-owned nuclear power group Framatome, in which Alcatel Alsthom owns a substantial stake.-reuter