Volume 9 issue 1 Nuclear Future
International news China Focus: nuclear programme progresses
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First electricity flows from Ningde nuclear plant
The landmark was reached on 28 December as the delivery of the first electricity took the reactor from the construction phase into commissioning. The plant’s operator, China Guangdong Nuclear Power Company (CGNPC), said it was the beginning of the nuclear power plant creating value for society. Further tests remain before the reactor will reach the next official
stage, commercial operation, in which it will generate power solidly for a lifespan expected to be 60 years. Achieving that status requires regulatory approval and a programme of operational tests including a run lasting 168 hours at its full rated power output of 1080 MWe. The reactor is the first of four CPR-1000s at the Ningde site in Fujian
province. Construction on units 1 and 2 started in 2008 and units 3 and 4 were started in 2010. They should all be in operation before the end of 2015 and are expected to ease pressure on the energy transport infrastructure in the congested coastal areas of China’s south-east.
First criticality for Hongyanhe unit
The 1080 MWe reactor achieved first criticality on 16 January, China Guangdong Nuclear Power Co (CGNPC) and China Power Investment Corp (CPI) reported. Construction of Hongyanhe 1 – the first of four CPR-1000 pressurised water reactors (PWRs) currently being built at the Hongyanhe Phase I project – started in August 2007. Cold testing of the nuclear island of Hongyanhe 1 was successfully
completed in October 2012. Since then, further tests have been conducted to check the operation of equipment and instrumentation under normal working conditions, prior to the reactor entering the commissioning phase. Previously scheduled to begin commercial operation by the end of 2012, Hongyanhe 1 now looks set to enter operation this year. All four units at Phase I should be in operation by the end of 2014.
Construction begins at HTR-PM unit
China has broken ground on a three billion-yuan (around £300m) demonstration high-temperature pebble bed modular nuclear reactor (HTR-PM) project, which will form part of what could become China’s largest nuclear facility, the state media confirmed in early January. The 200-megawatt Generation-IV Shidaowan nuclear reactor,
near the coastal city of Rongcheng in east China’s Shandong Province, will be part of the Rongcheng Nuclear Power Industrial Park project. This could – if approved by regulators – eventually be the site of a further 18 units of the same type as well as four CPR-1000 pressurised water reactor units. The gas-cooled HTR-PM, which has twin reactor modules of 100 MW each driving a single 200-MW steam turbine, will start generating commercial electricity by the end of 2017, HSNPC said in a statement. The HTR-PM’s fuel is in the form of graphite balls containing uranium enriched to 8.9 percent uranium-235. Instead of cooling water, the core is bathed in inert helium gas with an outlet temperature of up to 750°C. The reactor, which was developed by the Institute Of Nuclear
And New Energy Technology (INET) at Tsinghua University in Beijing, has passive safety features, meaning it can shut down safely in the event of an emergency without causing core meltdown or significant leakage of radioactive material, according to HSNCP. INET said the reactor can be widely used in power generation, cogeneration and high-temperature process heat applications. It can be used for oil refining, heavy oil recovery and in the chemical industry.
International news 13
Image courtesy of TonyV3112 /
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