26 Apr (NucNet): The loading of nuclear fuel has begun at the Sanmen-1 Generation III+ Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactor unit under construction in eastern China, technology provider Westinghouse said on 25 April 2018.
Westinghouse said a fuel loading permit for the world’s first AP1000 plant had been received from China’s National Nuclear Safety Administration.
Earlier this year China National Nuclear Corporation said fuel loading had been delayed due to security and safety checks.
All functional tests, technical, safety and regulatory reviews have been completed, Westinghouse said. The fuel load process will be followed by initial criticality, initial synchronisation to the electrical grid, and conservative, step-by-step, power ascension testing, until all testing is safely and successfully completed at 100% power.
In 2007 Westinghouse won a bid to build two AP1000 units in Sanmen, Zhejiang Province and two units in Haiyang, Shandong Province. The company has two additional AP1000 units under construction at the Vogtle nuclear station in the US state of Georgia, although plans to build two AP1000s at Summer in South Carolina have been abandoned.
Westinghouse, the US-based nuclear unit of Japan’s Toshiba, filed for bankruptcy in 2017, but said it remained committed to its AP1000 reactor technology and would continue existing projects to build units at Sanmen and Haiyang.
