The concrete pouring marks the official start of construction of the first of two CAP1000 pressurised water reactors planned as Phase II of the site.
Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute, the engineering firm in responsible for the work, said construction of the base plate for the nuclear island began at 09:17 on 7 July and was completed at 14:16pm on 9 July. “It took 53 hours and a total of 5,488 cubic metres of concrete was poured, the company said.
In April, the Chinese government approved the construction of four new CAP1000 units –Haiyang-3 and -4 and Sanmen-3 and -4 in Zhejiang province, south of Shanghai. First concrete was poured for Sanmen-3 in June.
There are two existing Westinghouse-supplied AP1000 nuclear reactor units in commercial operation at Haiyang. The first began commercial operation in 2018 and the second in 2019.
There are two AP1000 units at Sanmen that began commercial operation in 2018.
The Generation III CAP1000 is China’s domestic version of the AP1000 design.
According to China’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), the government wants to have 70 GW of installed nuclear capacity by 2025, up from 51 GW at the end of 2020 and an increase of more than 40%, after failing to meet its previous target of having 58 GW of installed capacity by 2020.
According to data by the International Atomic Energy Agency, China has 54 large-scale nuclear reactor units in commercial operation. The Chinese fleet generated about 5% of the country’s electricity in 2021.
Work Begins On Haiyang Nuclear Heating Project
State Power Investment Company (Spic), which owns the Haiyang station, said it has started work on a 900 MWt nuclear energy heating project at the facility. It claims it will be “the world's largest single-unit extraction steam heating project”.
The project includes construction of a heat transmission pipe network of about 120 km. The heating area is expected to reach 30 million square metres, meeting the heating needs of about one million people in the Shandong Peninsula. The project is scheduled to be completed and put into operation in 2023.
Spic said the cogeneration heating network can replace 900,000 tonnes of coal consumption and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1.65 million tonnes.
Cogeneration from nuclear power means heat generated in a nuclear plant while generating electricity – heat that would normally be lost – can be used to heat households or industrial processes.
China has already announced successful cogeneration projects using the Qinshan nuclear power station in Haiyan county in Zhejiang province, eastern China and Units 1 and 2 at Haiyang. Beijing is planning a project to build a demonstration nuclear heating project at the Hongyanhe nuclear power station in Liaoning province in the northeast of the country.
