Grid Connection for Fuqing‑2 in China

Grid Connection for Fuqing-2 in China

7 August 2015

Grid connection for the Fuqing unit 2, located on the coast of Fujian Province, China, took place on 6 August 2015, according to plant owner the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). Construction and operation of the plant is a joint effort between CNNC (51 percent), China Huadian Corp (39 percent) and the Fujian Investment and Development Co. Ltd (10 percent). CNNC is the large state-owned enterprise under the direct management of the central government. Construction of the reactor began in September 2009, and had originally been planned to begin operation in September 2014.

Fuqing-2 is the fifth Chinese reactor to start up in 2015, only one more reactor, in South Korea, was connected to the grid in the world so far this year.

Unit 1 at Fuqing began commercial operation in November 2014. A total of six reactors are planned for the site, with the remaining two CPR-1000s still under construction and operation scheduled for February 2016 and March 2017 respectively. Fuqing Units 5 and 6 are of the ACP-1000 design, also called Hualong One. Construction on Fuqing-5, the first ACP-1000 to be built in the country, began in May 2015.

Safety issues with the CPR-1000 design have been raised in recent years, including descriptions of it being obsolete, based as it is on the a modified version of the Framatome 900 MW reactors, which were built in France between 1971 and 1987.