The photo is sourced from TTstudio/Shutterstock.com
Thermal energy will be provided by the second power unit of the Haiyang NPP, which has a thermal capacity of 1,930 megawatts (MW) and a power capacity of 650 MW. The under-construction pipeline will be able to transport 9.7 mln gigajoules of thermal energy, which will be sufficient to provide 1 mln people across 13 mln square kilometres with electricity. The project will make it possible to reduce coal consumption by 900,000 t and carbon dioxide emissions by 1.65 mln t per year, which is comparable to the amount of CO2 emissions produced by Iceland’s energy sector (1.8 mln t in 2021, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy).
As Sama Bilbao y León, director general of World Nuclear Association, told Sergey Brilev, president of the Global Energy Association, in an interview, the possibility of generating both electricity and heat is an advantage of NPPs. “When it comes to low-carbon energy sources, nuclear power is the only energy source that can produce electricity and heat. Keep in mind that we need heat for both warming and cooling. Heat is also used in many industrial processes. This is why it is very important to have access to both heat and electricity,” she stressed.
According to the IAEA’s Power Reactor Information System, the first power unit of the Haiyang NPP was connected to the grid in 2015 and the second one became operational in 2016. Currently, the third and fourth power units are being built at the power plant; the units will have a thermal capacity of 3,190 MW each and a power capacity of 1,197 MW and 1,200 MW respectively. The new reactors will help expand the infrastructure of low-carbon energy sources in Shandong Province, which also had 18 gigawatts (GW) of wind generators and 7.5 GW of solar generators in operation by January 2023.
