World's First AP1000 Nuclear Unit Is Set to Enter Commissioning Stage
Yicai Global
DATE:  Jul 03 2017
/ SOURCE:  Yicai
World's First AP1000 Nuclear Unit Is Set to Enter Commissioning Stage World's First AP1000 Nuclear Unit Is Set to Enter Commissioning Stage

(Yicai Global) July 3 -- Sanmen Nuclear Power Station Unit 1, the first reactor in China with third-generation nuclear AP1000 technology, is set to hit a construction milestone.

All the hot tests of Sanmen Unit 1 have been completed, and the results have met expectations. Fuel loading work is slated to be finished by the end of this month, marking the start of the unit's nuclear commissioning stage, The Paper reported.    

"The plan is for the fuel loading work to be completed by the end of July, and although it may be earlier or later, we have paved the way for it entirely," The Paper quoted Zheng Mingguang, vice general manager of State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. and the president of Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute, as saying yesterday.

The AP1000 fuel loading work is hardly different from second-generation technology, and the imported third-generation nuclear technology is gradually coming into its own in China and can be promoted in batches, Zheng said.

China decided to introduce the third-generation nuclear AP1000 technology from the US-based Westinghouse Electric Corp. in a comprehensive technology transfer in 2006. Four units in total at the Sanmen Nuclear Power Station in Zhejiang province and the Haiyang Nuclear Power Plant in Shandong province, the first lot of AP1000 units built in the world, were specified as facilities where China could learn to use the underlying technology.

Sanmen Unit 1 is the first reactor to adopt AP1000 technology and its construction period was prolonged more than once for issues such as research and development of the canned reactor coolant pump. The delays impeded the approval of subsequent AP1000 projects.   

Construction began on Sanmen Unit 1 in 2009. The facility was supposed to go into operation at the end of 2014.

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Keywords:   AP1000,Third Generation Nuclear Reactor,Westinghouse,Sanmen,Nuclear Fuel Loading