Both projects will be based on pressurised water nuclear reactors where plain water is used for neutron moderator and coolant. The Lianjiang nuclear power plant will use CAP 1000 reactors, which are similar to the American AP 1000 double-loop reactors, designed for 60 years of operation. In turn, the Zhangzhou NPP will use Hualong-1 reactors as the background technology. These reactors have already found application outside the PRC. Reactors of this type are installed at the second and third power units of the Pakistani Karachi nuclear power plant, commissioned in 2021 to 2022.
The four power units scheduled for construction were not the first nuclear reactors announced in the PRC in 2022. In April, the State Council approved the construction of new reactors at the Sanmen nuclear power plant (power units No.3 and No.4) in Zhejiang province, and the Haiyang nuclear power plant (power units No.3 and No.4) in Shandong province in the Eastern China. In Guangdong province in the southeast of the country, new reactors will be built for the Lufen nuclear power plant (power units No.5 and No.6). Two new reactors were put into operation in China this year: in January, the sixth unit of the Fuqing NPP with a capacity of 1,075 MW in Fujian province was connected to the grid, and in May, the sixth unit of the Hongyanhe NPP (1,061 MW) in Liaoning province.
China ranks third in the world in terms of the number (55) and installed capacity (52.2 GW) of nuclear reactors. According to IAEA, by September 2022, the country was inferior in these parameters only to the United States (92 reactors yielding 94.7 GW) and France (56 reactors yielding 61.4 GW). By the end of 2021, the share of nuclear power plants in China’s generation structure amounted to 5%.
