As China’s first domestically produced third generation reactor goes online, Chinese nuclear officials said that they would begin to consider mass production of this type of reactor in order to export to the rest of the world. Yu Jianfeng, chairman of CNNC, said this week that the corporation will accelerate the progress of mass constructing Hualong One reactors and developing a new series of technologies in a bid to promote the Hualong One to export and achieve the target of carbon neutrality. [Ed. note, "carbon neutrality" is nonsense, but third generation nuclear reactors are certainly not.]
With a design life of 60 years, the Hualong One reactor adopts a 177-reactor core design that refuels the fuel every 18 months. It innovatively uses a combination of “active and passive” safety systems and a double-shell containment, which meets the latest international nuclear safety requirements.
The installed capacity of each Hualong One unit reaches nearly 1200 MWe, and each unit is able to generate nearly 10 billion kWh of electricity annually, meeting the electricity demands of 1 million people, within a setting of a moderately developed country.