3 Jan (NucNet): The first unit of the Yangjiang nuclear power station in Guangdong, southern China, has been connected to the grid for the first time, the China Atomic Energy Authority said.
Yangjiang-1, a 1,000-megawatt Chinese-designed CPR-1000 pressurised water reactor, was connected to the grid on 31 December 2013, the CAEA said. It is the first of six units planned for the Yangjiang site, about 200 km north of Hong Kong.
The CAEA said the reactor is scheduled to begin full commercial operation “in the next few months”.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the CPR-1000 is an evolutionary design based on the Daya Bay and Lingao nuclear power stations, using operating experience at those plants to introduce a number of modifications.
In turn, Daya Bay used the French 900 MW PWR at Gravelines-5 and -6 as reference, the IAEA said. This design has had 28 operating units in France since 1980, with more units in Belgium, South Africa and South Korea.
According to state news agency Xinhua, about 75 percent of the components for Yangjiang-1 were sourced from China.
Two of the Yangjian plants are planned to be advanced ACPR-1000 PWR units. Safety features include an extra heat removal system to remove heat from the containment through containment spray and to realise in-vessel retention of core damage under severe accident by external reactor vessel cooling.
Construction began at Yangjiang in 2008. In July 2011 Hong Kong’s CLP Holdings agreed to invest 745 million US dollars (USD) (about 545 million euros) in the project, whose total cost CLP put at USD 10.8 billion.
