Plant Operation

China’s Haiyang-1 Becomes Second Westinghouse AP1000 To Begin Commercial Operation

By David Dalton
24 October 2018

China’s Haiyang-1 Becomes Second Westinghouse AP1000 To Begin Commercial Operation
The Haiyang nuclear power station in China. Photo courtesy SPIC.

24 Oct (NucNet): The Haiyang-1 nuclear power unit in China has become the second Westinghouse AP1000 to begin commercial operation after a week-long trial run, the project’s operator said.

The State Power Investment Corp (SPIC) said in a notice posted on its website that Haiyang-1 completed a 168-hour continuous full-power test at 22:12 on Monday.

Construction of the Generation III+ unit in Shandong province, northeast China, began in September 2009 and it was connected to the grid in August 2018.

In 2007 US reactor maker Westinghouse won a bid to build four AP1000 units in China – two at Haiyang and two at Sanmen in Zhejiang Province.

In September 2018 Sanmen-1 became the first AP1000 in the world to begin commercial operation.

Apart from the four AP1000 units in China there are two units under construction at the Vogtle nuclear station in the US state of Georgia.

Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy in March 2017 after delays and rising costs at the Vogtle and Summer AP1000 nuclear projects in the US. The Summer project has since been abandoned.

Earlier this year Westinghouse, formerly a wholly owned subsidiary of Toshiba, was sold to Brookfield WEC Holdings, a subsidiary of Brookfield, the Canadian-listed asset management company, for $4.6bn.

In April 2018 US energy secretary Rick Perry said Westinghouse was now “ready to get to work” on building six AP1000 nuclear reactors in India, although an agreement for the project has not yet been confirmed.

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