30 Jul (NucNet): Ground has been broken one month ahead of schedule at the site of the Haiyang nuclear power plant in Shandong province on the east coast of China.
Westinghouse Electric said it broke ground yesterday with the Shandong Nuclear Power Company and its consortium partner The Shaw Group.
Haiyang will house two Westinghouse AP1000 reactor units.
Westinghouse, which is part of Japan’s Toshiba Corporation, said that excavation for the first of the units will take about three months. The first unit is expected to be delivering electricity to the grid in 2014.
The Westinghouse consortium is working in partnership with the State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation to build four reactor units in China, all using AP1000 technology.
Excavation on the first of two other plants in Sanmen in Zhejiang province, also on China’s east coast, in partnership with the Sanmen Nuclear Power Company, started in February 2008.
In May 2007, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced it was forming a joint committee with the National Nuclear Safety Administration of China to oversee technical cooperation on the AP1000.
The NRC said that the committee would offer opportunities to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of regulatory reviews and construction of the reactor design.
– by John Shepherd
