The State Council, China's cabinet, yesterday appointed Li Ganjie, 42, the director of the National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA), a functional institution under the State Council.

Li was born in November 1964 at Wangcheng in Central China's Hunan Province. He did his masters in engineering from the Tsinghua University in Beijing and joined NNSA in 1989.

He was sent by the NNSA on a 15-month study at the Nuclear Protection and Safety Institute of France in 1991.

Li was the director of the Nuclear Safety Department of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) from July 2002 to December 2006, and appointed vice-minister of the SEPA last December.