HONG KONG, Sept 18 (Reuters) - A transformer explosion at China's biggest nuclear power plant last month caused a fire that took five hours to put out and injured at least one person, a Hong Kong newspaper reported on Thursday.

No radiation leaked after the blast on Aug. 26 at plant No.1 of the Tianwan nuclear plant in the eastern province of Jiangsu, the Ming Pao newspaper said.

The explosion damaged a set of Ukrainian-made transformers and triggered an automatic safety shutdown, it quoted an official from Lianyungang, where the plant is located, as saying.

Fourteen fire engines and 66 firefighters took about five hours to extinguish the fire, the newspaper said. One fireman was injured.

The blast was not covered by China's heavily censored state media. Hong Kong, a former British colony which returned to China in 1997, has much greater press freedom than the mainland. The Tianwan facility is the largest cooperative project between China and Russia and is some 300 km (200 miles) up the coast from Shanghai. It has two plants, each with an installed capacity of 1.06 gigawatts. One started operation in 2006 and the other the following year.

China has 11 working reactors with 9.07 GW of total capacity, which accounts for less than 2 percent of the country's total installed power capacity.

Nevertheless, it has ambitious plans. China wants to raise its capacity to 60 GW of nuclear power generating capacity by 2020, over 5 percent of its total installed capacity and enough energy to power Spain. (Reporting by John Ruwitch; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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