Construction starts on sixth Tianwan unit

Wednesday, 7 September 2016

The first safety concrete has been poured for the containment building basemat of Tianwan nuclear power plant's sixth reactor,  in Jiangsu province, marking the official start of the unit's construction. 

Construction gets under way on Tianwan unit 6 (Image: CNNC)

The operation to pour the concrete began at 9.30am today, China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) announced.

Construction of Tianwan Phase III - units 5 and 6 - was originally scheduled to start in early 2011. However, following the March 2011 accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant, the Chinese government suspended the approval of new nuclear power projects, including those two units.

The latest Five-Year Plan calls for construction of Phase III of the Tianwan plant to be accelerated. The State Council gave its approval for Tianwan units 5 and 6 - both featuring 1080 MWe ACPR1000 reactors - on 16 December 2015. First safety-related concrete was poured for unit 5 on 27 December. Unit 5 is expected to enter commercial operation in December 2020 and unit 6 in October 2021.

Despite construction of unit 5 having already started, a contract for the civil construction of the nuclear islands of Phase III of the Tianwan plant was signed between CNNC and China Nuclear Industry Huaxing Construction (part of China Nuclear Engineering Corporation) in June.

Tianwan Phase I - units 1 and 2 - was constructed under a 1992 cooperation agreement between China and Russia. First concrete was poured in October 1999, and the units were commissioned in June 2007 and September 2007 respectively. Tianwan Phase II - units 3 and 4 - will be similar to the first stage of the Tianwan plant, comprising two Russian-designed 1060 MWe VVER-1000 pressurized water reactors. First concrete for unit 3 was poured in December 2012, while construction of the fourth unit began in September 2013.

The Tianwan plant is owned and operated by Jiangsu Nuclear Power Corporation, a joint venture between CNNC (50%), China Power Investment Corporation (30%) and Jiangsu Guoxin Group (20%).

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News