Two Chinese reactors reached start-up milestones four days apart, and with them China’s installed nuclear capacity reached 63.98 GWe, passing France’s 63 GW for the first time. China is now second in the world only to the United States, at 96.9 GWe—and it is the only one of the three that is expanding its capacity.
Changjiang 3, on Hainan, was connected to the grid Aug. 1. It is a Hualong One, the domestically designed pressurized water reactor, and it went from first concrete in March 2021 to grid connection in five years and five months. Thirty-seven further Hualong One units are already approved for construction. Taipingling 2 in Guangdong entered commercial operation Aug. 3 after completing its demonstration run.
On July 31, the State Council approved eight more units worth some CNY170 billion, about $25 billion—two at Jinqimen in Zhejiang, two more at Taipingling, two at Zhuanghe in Liaoning, and two at Laiyang in Shandong. The Laiyang pair will be the first standardized, batch-built project using Guohe One, the enlarged Chinese derivative of the Westinghouse AP1000.
Hainan, an island province of ten million people, has designated nuclear power as its primary source of electricity. And on the same site as Changjiang 3 sits the Linglong One demonstration unit, a 125 MWe small modular reactor designed to be used for electricity, district heating, industrial steam or seawater desalination, making it a machine built for exactly the places that have neither power nor fresh water.