Construction starts on Tianwan industrial steam project 

The construction planning and project design have been reviewed by the General Electric Power Planning and Design Institute, CNNC said. The construction of the pile foundation for the project began on 23 February.

CNNC has now announced the pouring of first concrete for the industrial steam facility. The construction period for the project is 24 months, with completion due by the end of 2023. The total investment is CNY730 million (USD109 million).

The project is being jointly carried out by CNNC subsidiary Jiangsu Nuclear Power Company and the Lianyungang Petrochemical Industry Base in Xuwei New District, Lianyungang City. In the project, steam will be extracted from the secondary circuits of units 3 and 4 of the Tianwan plant. After passing through multi-stage heat exchange, the heat will be transported via an insulated above-ground pipeline to the Lianyungang Petrochemical Industrial Base for industrial production and utilisation.

The facility is expected to supply 4.8 million tonnes of steam annually, which will reduce the burning of standard coal by 400,000 tonnes per year, and the equivalent emission reduction of 1.07 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, 184 tonnes of sulphur dioxide and 263 tonnes of nitrogen oxides.

"As one of the seven major petrochemical industry bases planned and constructed in the coastal areas of China, the petrochemical base is a national eco-industrial demonstration park designated by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the Ministry of Commerce, and the Ministry of Science and Technology, and strives to build a world-class large-scale petrochemical base," CNNC noted.

"Putting into production and supplying steam will contribute green power to the energy supply of the Lianyungang Petrochemical Base, and also provide an energy demonstration plan for the transformation and upgrading of the national petrochemical industry," it added.

The first four units at the site - which began commercial operation between June 2007 and December 2018 - are Gidropress VVER units supplied by Russia, as will be the seventh and eighth, for which a general contract was signed in March 2020. Units 5 and 6 both feature Chinese ACPR1000 reactors.

When all eight units are in operation, Tianwan would become the largest nuclear power plant in the world with eight units and a total generating capacity of about 8100 MWe.

The Tianwan plant is owned and operated by Jiangsu Nuclear Power Company, a joint venture between CNNC (50%), China Power Investment Corporation (30%) and Jiangsu Guoxin Group (20%).