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 ...

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...

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 A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

Yangjiang Yangjiang (, ), alternately romanized as Yeungkong, is a prefecture-level city in southwestern Guangdong Province in the People's Republic of China. It borders Maoming to the west, Yunfu to the north, Jiangmen to the east, and looks out to the ...

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 The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units, International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), ...

(MW)

CPR-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 ...

pressurized water reactor A pressurized water reactor (PWR) is a type of light-water reactor, light-water nuclear reactor. PWRs constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants (with notable exceptions being the UK, Japan and Canada). In a PWR, the primary ...

s (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 The AP1000 is a nuclear power plant designed and sold by Westinghouse Electric Company. The plant is a pressurized water reactor with improved use of passive nuclear safety and many design features intended to lower its capital cost and improve ...

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 __NOTOC__ Taishan may refer to: *Mount Tai or Taishan (), Shandong, China *Taishan District, Tai'an (), named after the Mount Tai, a district in Tai'an, Shandong, China *Taishan, Guangdong (), a county-level city of Jiangmen, Guangdong, China **Gre ...

, 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 Ningde (; Foochow Romanized: Nìng-dáik), also known as Mindong (; Foochow Romanized: Mìng-dĕ̤ng; lit. East of Fujian), is a prefecture-level city located along the northeastern coast of Fujian province, People's Republic of China. It borders ...

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 A core catcher is a device provided to catch the molten core material ( corium) of a nuclear reactor in case of a nuclear meltdown and prevent it from escaping the containment building. A core catcher is made from a special concrete ceramic to pr ...

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