Site in south of country will eventually have six Hualong One nuclear units
First nuclear safety-related concrete has been poured for the reactor building of Unit 4 at the Taipingling nuclear power station in south China’s Guangdong province, marking the official start of civil construction, state-owned energy developer CGN Power Company said on 11 May.
Taipingling-4, also known as Huizhou-4, is the fourth of six HPR1000 units planned for the site.
The HPR1000, or Hualong One, is a domestically developed PWR with a net capacity of about 1,100 MW that combines features from China National Nuclear Corporation’s ACP1000 and China General Nuclear’s ACPR1000+ designs.
Unit 1 at Taipingling began commercial operation in April, CGN announced.
CGN said Taipingling-1 was the first domestic Hualong One reactor unit to begin operation in the greater Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau bay area of southern China.
It said the area is seeing the emergence of a number of leading artificial intelligence companies such as DeepSeek. The “explosive” growth in computing power demand has led to a continuous increase in energy consumption, CGN said.
Chinese state media said that upon completion, the Taipingling project is expected to generate over 9 billion kWh of electricity annually, meeting the power demands of approximately one million people, it said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) database of nuclear plants in China says China has 60 plants in commercial operation and 35 under construction, not including Taipingling-4. About half of those are Hualong One units.
CGN has said the total project cost for Taipingling is estimated at CNY120 billion (€14.9bn, $17bn). Construction of Unit 1 began in December 2019. Construction has also begun of Units 2 and 3.
China is aiming for 200 GW of nuclear capacity by 2035, up from around 57 GW today. Nuclear is expected to contribute about 10% of power generation in the country by 2035 – up from around 4.5 today – and 18% by 2060, with a total generation capacity of 400 GW by 2060, the China Nuclear Energy Association has said.
