A closed-door meeting of the ruling Communist Party stripped Kang Rixin, 57, former president of China National Nuclear Corp, of his party membership in October.
The disgraced head of China's main nuclear energy company was jailed for life on Friday for taking bribes, Xinhua news agency said, as part of a crackdown on corruption that has sent shudders through the power sector.
A closed-door meeting of the ruling Communist Party stripped Kang Rixin, 57, former president of China National Nuclear Corp, of his party membership in October.
"Kang was convicted of having abused his power, enabling profits for others, and taking a large amount of bribes," Xinhua said, quoting the Beijing Number One Intermediate People's Court. It gave no further details.
The court, contacted by telephone, declined to comment. Kang's family and lawyer could not be reached.
Before his downfall, Kang was a member of the Communist Party's elite 204-member Central Committee and held a rank equivalent to that of a cabinet minister.
He was the second senior official at a state-owned power company to be ensnared for corruption this year.
In August, Jiang Xinsheng, 56, former president of China National Technical Import and Export Corp, which builds power plants, was jailed for 20 years for leaking state secrets in connection with a bid for foreign-made nuclear reactors, sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
Chinese media have not reported Jiang's conviction, apparently because it involves state secrets.
The arrests of Kang and Jiang have shaken the power sector.
China is planning a massive push into nuclear power in an effort to wean itself off coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. It now has 12 working reactors with 10.15 gigawatts of total generating capacity.
China's official nuclear capacity target for 2020 remains 40 GW, less than 5 percent of its current installed electricity generating capacity, or enough to power Spain. However, officials said China was considering raising the goal to 80 GW or more for 2020.
In another corruption scandal, Li Haitao, who oversaw the protection of cultural relics at an imperial garden villa in Chengde city in the northern province of Hebei, was executed on Friday for stealing and selling cultural relics, Xinhua said.
He was convicted of stealing 259 cultural relics between 1993 and 2002 and pocketing more than $550,000 by selling 152 pieces, the agency said.
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