China National Nuclear Corp, the state-owned nuclear power company, will pay high attention to raising compensation for scientists, an important factor in improving the company's core competitiveness, according to its chairman.

"We will enable scientists undertaking major military projects and scientific and technological innovations to receive high salaries, and stimulate the creativity of talent to the greatest extent," Yu Jianfeng, CNNC's chairman, said on Thursday.

He said at a press conference the company's new assessment method will be skewed toward those who contribute to the group's innovation development.

Yu said development of the nuclear industry over the past 60 years has proved nuclear science and technology is strategically important and its core technology cannot be bought from abroad, so the nation must insist on independent innovation.

Yu said the first measure of the group's talent and institutional reform, which will be carried out next year, is to increase the capacity of scientific research, as well as improve employees' conditions.

"We must create a sound environment to keep talent in our research institutions and attract the best researchers from different countries to CNNC," he said.

The reforms will involve changes in the treatment of many people. "I hope the staff here can accept those changes, because only by truly respecting talent in scientific and technological innovation can the nuclear industry develop healthily," the chairman said.