The Yangjiang Nuclear Power Station (YNPS; ) is a

nuclear power plant A nuclear power plant (NPP) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a electric generator, generato ...

in Guangdong province,

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. The site is Dongping Town, Yangjiang

City A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

in western Guangdong Province. The station has six 1,000 megawatt (MW) CPR-1000 pressurized water reactors (PWRs). The plant began commercial operation in March 2014, and as of 2019 is the largest nuclear power station in China.

History

The site in Yangjiang was selected for nuclear development in 1988. The project was approved in 2004. The plant was originally to be one of the first in China to host

Generation III reactor Generation III reactors, or Gen III reactors, are a class of nuclear reactors designed to succeed Generation II reactors, incorporating evolutionary improvements in design. These include improved fuel technology, higher thermal efficiency, sign ...

s — specifically AP1000 reactors. In 2007 however, plans were revised from the AP1000 design to EPR design. Later in 2007 these plans were again revised, with the EPR designs to be realized at Taishan, and the established CPR-1000 reactor design (as already used at Ling Ao) selected for Yangjiang. Ground was broken for the plant in February 2008; the first concrete for the first unit was poured on 16 December 2008. Construction of the fourth unit was to begin in March 2011, but was delayed by China's safety review in reaction to the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima; the first concrete was poured in November 2012. The sixth unit began commercial operation in July 2019.

Domestic development

The CPR-1000 is a PWR design developed by China from the

Areva Areva S.A. is a French multinational group specializing in nuclear power headquartered in Courbevoie, France. Before its 2016 corporate restructuring, Areva was majority-owned by the French state through the French Alternative Energies and Atom ...

-designed PWRs at the

Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant Daya Nuclear Power Plant () is a nuclear power plant located in Daya Bay in Longgang District, along the eastern extremity of Shenzhen, Guangdong, China; and to the north east of Hong Kong. Daya Bay has two 944 MWe PWR nuclear reactors based ...

. Yangjiang marks a step in the development of China's domestic nuclear industry. Shu Guogang, GM of China Guangdong Nuclear Power Project said, "We built 55 percent of Ling Ao Phase 2, 70 percent of Hongyanhe, 80 percent of Ningde and 90 percent of Yangjiang Station."

ACPR-1000 reactor type

Yangjiang 5 is the first construction of an

ACPR-1000 The CPR-1000, or CPR1000 (Chinese PWR) is a Generation II+ pressurized water reactor, based on the French 900 MWe three cooling loop design (M310) imported in the 1980s, improved to have a slightly increased net power output of 1,000 MWe (1080 MW ...

reactor, starting in September 2013. This design is an evolution to the Generation III level of the CPR-1000, and includes a core catcher and double containment as additional safety measures. Yangjiang 5 was the first Chinese reactor to have a domestically-developed digital control system.

Reactor data

References

External links