China Civilian Nuclear Industry, Technology, Exports and Supply Chain: News & Discussions

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Will China beat the world to nuclear fusion and clean energy?
By Stephen McDonellBBC News, Anhui Province
18 April 2018

China says it's ahead in the global race for nuclear fusion​

In a world with an ever-increasing demand for electricity and a deteriorating environment, Chinese scientists are leading the charge to develop what some see as the holy grail of energy.

The BBC's Stephen McDonell was given rare access to their facility in Anhui province.

Imagine limitless energy with virtually no waste at all: this is the lofty promise of nuclear fusion.

On Science Island in Eastern China's Anhui Province, there is a large gleaming metal doughnut encased in an enormous shiny, round box about as big as a two-storey apartment. This is the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (or EAST).

Inside, hydrogen atoms fuse and become helium which can generate heat at several times the temperature of the sun's core.

Powerful magnets then control the reaction, which could one day produce vast amounts of electricity if maintained.

Around the globe, they are trying to master nuclear fusion - in the United States, Japan, Korea, Brazil and European Union - but none can hold it steady for as long as the team in Anhui.

Right now that's 100 seconds and it gets longer every year. Here they're already talking about goals which are 10 times as long, at temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius.

Hundreds of specialists are working at the site​

But there's a reason why fusion has eluded scientists and engineers since the early advances in the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

It is really difficult.

Safe nuclear energy
Maintaining a limited fusion reaction in a controlled environment has been possible for more than 50 years and yet the duration is still a long way short of what would be needed to capture this vast heat and convert it to electricity.

The EAST system is a souped-up version of the original Russian design.

On the day we visit we watch a lively debate unfold in the control room. There are leakage problems - not material getting out but air being sucked into the vacuum within - and they need to find a solution.

A separate group is in walkie-talkie contact with the control room. They move around the configuration of pipes, electricity housing and stepladders surrounding the Tokamak, looking to patch the leak.

When Xi Jinping visited here he wanted to know about the dangers of this technology, so we asked what they told China's president.

"A fusion reactor is quite safe compared with fission reactor," says Song Yuntao, deputy director at EAST.

"Magnetic confinement is controllable fusion. I can shut down the power supply and it's perfectly safe. There won't be any nuclear disaster."

The Chinese project builds on earlier Russian research​

Current nuclear reactors rely on fission and the splitting of an atom which leaves toxic waste that must be safely stored for potentially tens of thousands of years.

A nuclear fusion power plant would instead stem from the joining of two nuclei to make a single nucleus and then magnets inside the internal wall of the doughnut contain the reaction (called the plasma) inside the huge tube.

Crucially, we're told, this leaves almost no waste.

A hefty price tag
However the technology is not cheap.

It costs $15,000 a day just to turn on the machine and that's without the wages of hundreds of specialists, the construction of buildings and the like.

And yet the Chinese government is digging into its deep pockets to fund the project in the full knowledge that it could be decades before fusion is lighting up major cities.

"Fusion is going to require huge breakthroughs from scientists and engineers as well as a lot of financial backing from the government," Mr Song says.

"It's a project which costs so much but personally I think it's going to be great for the sustainable development of mankind."

Because it carries such a hefty price tag and because it is so hard, the pursuit of fusion is seeing a fair amount of international collaboration.

For example, China is one of the countries contributing to the ambitious International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project in southern France which - apart from European nations - draws in India, Japan, Russia, South Korean and the United States. It is expected to start testing in 2025.

In the meantime China is also making leaps and bounds on its own.

The project still requires huge breakthroughs from scientists and engineers​

The proposed next step for this team is to design a fully-fledged nuclear fusion test reactor capable of generating electricity. To eventually work properly it would have to be much bigger than what we've seen and able to contain a plasma reaction indefinitely rather than for a minute-and-a-half.

"The demand for energy is huge in every country and China has a roadmap for fusion-generated power," says Mr Song. "We want to complete the design for a test fusion reactor within five years. If we succeed it will be the world's first fusion reactor."

The eventual hope is that fusion might produce electricity in volumes beyond mankind's wildest dreams.

It may be some way off but Beijing is taking the challenge very seriously meaning that, if it can get it to work, China could end up having the edge over all others when it comes to the power generation of the future.


Will China beat the world to nuclear fusion and clean energy? - BBC News

 

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Fuel loading under way at Chinese AP1000
25 April 2018

The loading of fuel assemblies into the core of unit 1 of the Sanmen nuclear power plant in China's Zhejiang province began today following the issuance of a permit by the country's nuclear regulator. The unit is later this year expected to become the first Westinghouse AP1000 to enter operation.

Sanmen units 1 and 2 (Image: CNNC)

Westinghouse said China's National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA) issued the permit after Sanmen 1 successfully completed all the necessary functional tests, as well as technical, safety and Chinese regulatory reviews. The fuel loading permit was presented to China National Nuclear Corporation subsidiary CNNC Sanmen Nuclear Power Company Limited at a ceremony in Beijing today by Liu Hua, vice minister of Ecology and Environment and Director of the NNSA.

In a statement the NNSA said that, before the first loading of materials, it had conducted a six-year safety review of the Sanmen 1 project and dispatched on-site supervisors for the entire construction process. The project meets the design safety goals and the construction quality is good, it added.

The loading of the first of 157 fuel assemblies into the core of Sanmen 1 began promptly.

Westinghouse noted, "The fuel loading process will be followed by initial criticality, initial synchronisation to the electricity grid, and gradual power ascension testing, until all testing is safely and successfully completed at 100% power."

In September 2007, Westinghouse and its partner the Shaw Group received authorisation to construct four AP1000 units in China: two at Sanmen and two more at Haiyang in Shandong province. Hot testing of Sanmen 1 was completed on in June 2017 and it is expected to be the first AP1000 to begin operating later this year. Haiyang 1 and Sanmen 2 are also expected to begin operating by the end of this year, with Haiyang 2 expected to start up in 2019.

Four AP1000 reactors were also being built in the USA - two each at Vogtle and Summer. However, construction of the two Summer units was suspended in August.

Westinghouse President and CEO José Gutiérrez said, "Today we have reached a tremendous milestone for Westinghouse and our AP1000 plant technology. This is the next step in delivering the world's first AP1000 plant to our customer and demonstrating the benefits of our advanced passive safety technology to the world."

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News



http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Fuel-loading-under-way-at-Chinese-AP1000-2504185.html

 

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中国核电_CNNP
今天 07:47 来自 小米Max2 大屏大电量
4月29日13点37分，AP1000全球首堆三代核电——三门核电1号机组157组全新的燃料组件全部安全装载入反应堆堆芯，18点36分，燃料管理人员核查证实燃料装载准确无误，标志着三门核电1号机组首次装料工作顺利完成，机组向并网发电迈出关键一步。

China National Nuclear Power
Today 07:47
At 13:37 on April 29th, AP1000 - world's first third-generation nuclear power plant, the Sanmen Nuclear power plant Unit 1, all 157 fuel assembly were safely loaded into the reactor core. At 18:36, fuel management personnel verified the fuel load accuracy, marking the successful completion of the first loading of the Sanmen 1 unit and a key step toward grid-connected power generation.

 

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Dome installed at first Fangchenggang Hualong One
23 May 2018

The dome has today been installed on the containment building of unit 3 at the Fangchenggang nuclear power plant in western China. The unit is the first of two demonstration Hualong One (HPR1000) reactors being built at the site in the Guangxi Autonomous Region, about 45 kilometres from the border with Vietnam.

The dome is lowered into place at Fangchenggang 3 (Image: CGN)

The steel dome - measuring 45 meters in diameter and almost 14m in height, and weighing about 260 tonnes - was raised to a height of 63m before being lowered on to the top of the containment building walls.

The dome is made up of embedded parts, steel plates and welded corner steel, said China General Nuclear (CGN). There are safety and control systems installed within the dome, it added. "Exceptionally high technical standards are a prerequisite for prefabricating and assembling the dome on the ground before lifting," it added.

The company said it had used "innovative three-dimensional modelling and other intelligent nuclear power construction technology to simulate the dome lifting, allowing it to predict the challenges and formulate solutions to ensure the accuracy, safety and success of the dome lifting in practice".

First concrete was poured for the nuclear island of unit 3 of the Fangchenggang plant - 39% owned by Guangxi Investment Group and 61% by CGN - in December 2015, while that for unit 4 was poured a year later. Unit 3 is expected to start up next year, with unit 4 scheduled to start up in 2020.

Construction of two Hualong One units is also under way at China National Nuclear Corporation's Fuqing plant in Fujian province. Those units are also expected to start up in 2019 and 2020. Two HPR1000 units are under construction at Pakistan's Karachi nuclear power plant. Construction began on Karachi unit 2 in 2015 and unit 3 in 2016; the units are planned to enter commercial operation in 2021 and 2022.

The HPR1000 has also been proposed for construction at Bradwell in the UK, where it is undergoing Generic Design Assessment. The Office for Nuclear Regulation and the Environment Agency announced in November last year the start of the second, technical, phase of the assessment programme for the UK HPR1000.

CGN UK CEO Dongshan Zheng said, "The announcement today shows the very positive progress being made at Fangchenggang unit 3, and illustrates once again our expertise, as the world's leading builder of nuclear power stations, in project management, engineering and construction of new reactors." He added, "This milestone for the HPR1000 technology is also great news for the Bradwell B project, showing that CGN will have a track record in safely and efficiently building and operating this type of reactor well before the project becomes operational in the UK."


http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Dome-installed-at-first-Fangchenggang-Hualong-One-2305185.html

Dome installation completed for Hualong One nuclear power unit in Guangxi
CGTN
Published on May 23, 2018

A containment dome has been placed on a reactor in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Wednesday for a nuclear power project using Hualong One technology, a domestically-developed third generation reactor design. The Hualong One technology is China's only domestically-developed third-generation nuclear technology that has so far gone international.

 

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Fifth Yangjiang unit connected to grid
25 May 2018

Unit 5 of the Yangjiang nuclear power plant in China's Guangdong province has been connected to the electricity grid, China General Nuclear (CGN) announced yesterday. The unit - the first ACPR1000 reactor to be built and the first Chinese unit to feature a domestically-developed digital control system - is scheduled to enter commercial operation later this year.

The six-unit Yangjiang nuclear power plant (Image: CGN)​

CGN said the unit was connected to the grid at 9.12pm on 23 May. The milestone marks the formal transition of Yangjiang 5 from the construction and commissioning phase into the power generation phase. CGN noted that it is the first new Chinese nuclear power unit to be grid connected this year. Yangjiang 5 becomes its 21st operational power reactor.

"During the entire grid-connection process, the parameters of the unit's equipment were normal and stable, and the unit was in good condition," CGN said. "The unit has now entered the final load stage before commercial operation."

Six units are planned for the Yangjiang site. The first four units are CPR-1000s, with units 5 and 6 being ACPR-1000s. Unit 1 entered commercial operation in March 2015, with units 2, 3 and 4 following in June 2015, January 2016 and March 2017, respectively. First concrete for Yangjiang unit 5 was poured in September 2013, with that for unit 6 following three months later. All six reactors should be in operation by 2019.

Digital control system

CGN noted that Yangjiang 5 became the first operational reactor that features a digital control system designed in China.

"This is a landmark event in the field of China's nuclear power major technical equipment manufacturing," it said. "China has thus become the fourth country to master the technology after the USA, France and Japan."

The FirmSys digital instrumentation and control (I&C) system developed by CGN's Beijing CTEC System Engineering Co Ltd subsidiary. The company described the system as the "nerve centre" of a nuclear power plant, capable of controlling more than 260 plant systems running nearly 10,000 pieces of equipment and process conditions. It plays an important role in the safe, reliable and stable operation of nuclear power plants, it said.

According to CGN, FirmSys - launched in 2010 - has already been used in the upgrades of several of China's operating plants. However, Yangjiang 5 is the first new reactor to feature the system. CTEC and CGN signed a contract in 2013 for the supply of the FirmSys system for the unit. The I&C system was delivered in November 2016.

The system is also to be employed at Yangjiang 6, as well as units under construction at the plants including Hongyanhe, Tianwan and Fangchenggang, as well as the demonstration high-temperature gas-cooled reactor at Shidaowan. In July 2016, the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that FirmSys meets IAEA Safety Standard requirements.

France's Framatome announced today that it provided the digital safety I&C system for unit 3 of China National Nuclear Corporation's Tianwan nuclear power plant in Jiangsu province. That unit - a Russian-supplied VER-1000 - was connected to the grid on 30 December 2017 and is scheduled to enter commercial operation later this year.

The announcement came as Framatome and the Russian company JSC Rusatom Automated Control Systems (JSC RASU) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to enhance their cooperation in the field of I&C. The MoU was signed on the sidelines of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

The agreement notably provides a framework for the participation of RASU and Framatome in VVER and Framatome's nuclear power plant projects in the global market, cooperation in the fields of maintenance and modernisation, training, development of nuclear infrastructure, and support for the certification of Russian equipment to ensure compliance with European and international norms and standards. The parties will also look at how to integrate Framatome I&C systems into Rosatom new build projects abroad, with the possible localisation of component and system production on Rosatom sites.



http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Fifth-Yangjiang-unit-connected-to-grid-2505185.html

 

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1 Jun 2018 | 15:00 GMT
TerraPower’s Nuclear Reactor Could Power the 21st Century
The traveling-wave reactor and other advanced reactor designs could solve our fossil fuel dependency
By Michael Koziol

Photo: TerraPower
Pipe Dream: Sodium-cooled nuclear reactors have a history of lackluster performance, but TerraPower believes it can build one that will work. Testing the flow of molten sodium through the reactor assembly is crucial. Water shares many of the same flow characteristics as the toxic metal and is a viable substitute for tests.

Table tennis isn’t meant to be played at Mach 2. At twice the speed of sound, the ping-pong ball punches a hole straight through the paddle. The engineers at TerraPower, a startup that has designed an advanced nuclear power reactor, use a pressurized-air cannon to demonstrate that very point to visitors. The stunt vividly illustrates a key concept in nuclear fission: Small objects traveling at high speed can have a big impact when they hit something seemingly immovable.

And perhaps there is a larger point being made here, too—one about a small and fast-moving startup having a big impact on the electric-power industry, which for many years also seemed immovable.

In a world defined by climate change, many experts hope that the electricity grid of the future will be powered entirely by solar, wind, and hydropower. Yet few expect that clean energy grid to manifest soon enough to bring about significant cuts in greenhouse gases within the next few decades. Solar- and wind-generated electricity are growing faster than any other category; nevertheless, together they accounted for less than 2 percent of the world’s primary energy consumption in 2015, according to the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century.

To build a bridge to that clean green grid of the future, many experts say we must depend on fission power. Among carbon-free power sources, only nuclear fission reactors have a track record of providing high levels of power, consistently and reliably, independent of weather and regardless of location.

Yet commercial nuclear reactors have barely changed since the first plants were commissioned halfway through the 20th century. Now, a significant fraction of the world’s 447 operable power reactors are showing their age and shortcomings, and after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan seven years ago, nuclear energy is in a precarious position. Between 2005 and 2015, the world share of nuclear in energy consumption fell from 5.73 to 4.44 percent. The abandonment of two giant reactor projects in South Carolina in the United States and the spiraling costs of completing the Hinkley Point C reactor in the United Kingdom, now projected to cost an eye-watering £20.3 billion(US $27.4 billion), have added to the malaise.

Elsewhere, there is some nuclear enthusiasm: China’s 38 reactors have a total of 33 gigawatts of nuclear capacity, and the country has plans to add an additional 58 GW by 2024. At the moment, some 50 power reactors are under construction worldwide. These reactors, plus an additional 110 that are planned, would contribute some 160 GW to the world’s grids, and avoid the emission of some 500 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year. To get that kind of cut in greenhouse gases in the transportation sector, you’d have to junk more than 100 million cars, or roughly all the passenger cars in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Against this backdrop, several U.S. startups are pushing new reactor designs they say will address nuclear’s major shortcomings. In Cambridge, Mass., a startup called Transatomic Power is developing a reactor that runs on a liquid uranium fluoride–lithium fluoride mixture. In Denver, Gen4 Energy is designing a smaller, modular reactor that could be deployed quickly in remote sites.

Photo: Michael Koziol
Hardcore Testing: The full-scale reactor-core test assembly is more than three stories tall. ​

In this cluster of nuclear startups, TerraPower, based in Bellevue, Wash., stands out because it has deep pockets and a connection to nuclear-hungry China. Development of the reactor is being funded in part by Bill Gates, who serves as the company’s chairman. And to prove that its design is viable, TerraPower is poised to break ground on a test reactor next year in cooperation with the China National Nuclear Corp.

To reduce its coal dependence, China is racing to add over 250 GW of capacity by 2020 from renewables and nuclear. TerraPower’s president, Chris Levesque, sees an opening there for a nuclear reactor that is safer and more fuel efficient. He says the reactor’s fuel can’t easily be used for weapons, and the company claims that its reactor will generate very little waste. What’s more, TerraPower says that even if the reactor were left unattended, it wouldn’t suffer a calamitous mishap. For Levesque, it’s the perfect reactor to address the world’s woes. “We can’t seriously mitigate carbon and bring 1 billion people out of energy poverty without nuclear,” he says.

The TerraPower reactor is a new variation on a design that was conceived some 60 years ago by a now-forgotten Russian physicist, Saveli Feinberg. Following World War II, as the United States and the Soviet Union stockpiled nuclear weapons, some thinkers were wondering if atomic energy could be something other than a weapon of war. In 1958, during the Second International Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, held in Geneva, Feinberg suggested that it would be possible to construct a reactor that produced its own fuel.

Feinberg imagined what we now call a breed-and-burn reactor. Early proposals featured a slowly advancing wave of nuclear fission through a fuel source, like a cigar that takes decades to burn, creating and consuming its fuel as the reaction travels through the core. But Feinberg’s design couldn’t compete during the bustling heyday of atomic energy. Uranium was plentiful, other reactors were cheaper and easier to build, and the difficult task of radioactive-waste disposal was still decades away.

The breed-and-burn concept languished until Edward Teller, the driving force behind the hydrogen bomb, and astrophysicist Lowell Wood revived it in the 1990s. In 2006, Wood became an adviser to Intellectual Ventures, the intellectual property and investment firm that is TerraPower’s parent company. At the time, Intellectual Ventures was exploring everything—fission, fusion, renewables—as potential solutions to cutting carbon. So Wood suggested the traveling-wave reactor (TWR), a subtype of the breed-and-burn reactor design. “I expected to find something wrong with it in a few months and then focus on renewables,” says John Gilleland, the chief technical officer of TerraPower. “But I couldn’t find anything wrong with it.”

That’s not to say the reactor that Wood and Teller designed was perfect. “The one they came up with in the ’90s was very elegant, but not practical,” says Gilleland. But it gave TerraPower engineers somewhere to start, and the hope that if they could get the reactor design to work, it might address all of fission’s current shortcomings.

Others have been less optimistic. “There are multiple levels of problems with the traveling-wave reactor,” says Arjun Makhijani, the president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. “Maybe a magical new technology could come along for it, but hopefully we don’t have to rely on magic.” Makhijani says it’s hard enough to sustain a steady nuclear reaction without the additional difficulty of creating fuel inside the core, and notes that the techniques TerraPower will use to cool the core have largely failed in the past.

The TerraPower team, led by Wood and Gilleland, first tackled these challenges using computer models. In 2009, they began building the Advanced Reactor Modeling Interface (ARMI), a digital toolbox for simulating deeply customizable reactors. With ARMI, the team could specify the size, shape, and material of every reactor component, and then run extensive tests. In the end, they came away with what they believe is a practical model of a breed-and-burn TWR first proposed by Feinberg six decades ago. As Levesque recalls, he joined TerraPower when the team approached him with remarkable news: “Hey, we think we can do the TWR now.”

Photo: Michael Koziol
Fuel for Thought: Mock fuel pins (not made of radioactive uranium!) sit ready for validation tests.

To understand why the TWR stymied physicists for decades, first consider that today’s reactors rely on enriched uranium, which has a much higher ratio of the fissile isotope of uranium (U-235) to its more stable counterpart (U-⁠238) than does a natural sample of uranium.

When a passing neutron strikes a U-235 atom, it’s enough to split the atom into barium and krypton isotopes with three neutrons left over (like that high-speed ping-pong ball punching through a sturdy paddle). Criticality occurs when enough neutrons hit enough other fissile uranium atoms to create a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. In today’s reactors, the only way to achieve criticality is to have a healthy abundance of U-235 atoms in the fuel.

In contrast, the TWR will be able to use depleted uranium, which has far less U-235 and cannot reach criticality unassisted. TerraPower’s solution is to arrange 169 solid uranium fuel pins into a hexagon. When the reaction begins, the U-238 atoms absorb spare neutrons to become U-239, which decays in a matter of minutes to neptunium-239, and then decays again to plutonium-⁠239. When struck by a neutron, Pu-239 releases two or three more neutrons, enough to sustain a chain reaction.

It also releases plenty of energy; after all, Pu-239 is the primary isotope used in modern nuclear weapons. But Levesque says the creation of Pu-239 doesn’t make the reactor a nuclear-proliferation danger—just the opposite. Pu-239 won’t accumulate in the TWR; instead, stray neutrons will split the Pu-239 into a cascade of fission products almost immediately.

​

Illustration: James Provost

In other words, the reactor breeds the highly fissile plutonium fuel it needs right before it burns it, just as
Feinberg imagined so many decades ago. Yet the “traveling wave” label refers to something slightly different from the slowly burning, cigar-style reactor. In the TWR, an overhead crane system will maintain a reaction within a ringed portion of the core by moving pins into and out of that zone from elsewhere in the core, like a very large, precise arcade claw machine.

To generate electricity, the TWR uses a more complicated system than today’s reactors, which use the core’s immense heat to boil water and drive a steam turbine to generate usable electricity. In the TWR, the heat will be absorbed by a looping stream of liquid sodium, which leaves the reactor core and then boils water to drive the steam turbine.

But therein lies a major problem, says Makhijani. Molten sodium can move more heat out of the core than water, and it’s actually less corrosive to metal pipes than hot water is. But it’s a highly toxic metal, and it’s violently flammable when it encounters oxygen. “The problem around the sodium cooling, it’s proved the Achilles’ heel,” he says.

Makhijani points to two sodium-cooled reactors as classic examples of the scheme’s inherent difficulties. In France, Superphénix struggled to exceed 7 percent capacity during most of its 10 years of operation because sodium regularly leaked into the fuel storage tanks. More alarmingly, Monju in Japan shut down less than a year after it achieved criticality when vibrations in the liquid sodium loop ruptured a pipe, causing an intense fire to erupt as soon as the sodium made contact with the oxygen in the air. “Some have worked okay,” says Makhijani. “Some have worked badly, and others have been economic disasters.”

Photo: TerraPower
Foundational Underpinnings: An engineer readies a bundle of full-size mock fuel pins to test how they’ll perform during their operational lifetime.

Today, TerraPower’s lab is filled with bits of fuel pins and reactor components. Among other things, the team has been testing how molten sodium will flow through the reactor’s pipes, how it will corrode those pipes, even the inevitable expansion of all of the core’s components as they are subjected to decades of heat—all problems that have plagued sodium-cooled reactors in the past. TerraPower’s engineers will use what they learn from the results when building their test reactor—and they’ll find out if their design really works.

The safety of the TerraPower reactor stems in part from inherent design factors. Of course, all power reactors are designed with safety systems. Each one has a coping time, which indicates how long a stricken reactor can go on without human intervention before catastrophe occurs. Ideas for so-called inherently safe reactors have been touted since the 1980s, but the goal for TerraPower is a reactor that relies on fundamental physics to provide unlimited coping time.

The TWR’s design features some of the same safety systems standard to nuclear reactors. In the case of an accident in any reactor, control rods crafted from neutron-absorbing materials like cadmium plummet into the core and halt a runaway chain reaction that could otherwise lead to a core meltdown. Such a shutdown is called a scram.

Scramming a reactor cuts its fission rate to almost zero in a very short time, though residual heat can still cause a disaster. At Chernobyl, some of the fuel rods fractured during the scram, allowing the reactor to continue to a meltdown. At Fukushima Daiichi, a broken coolant system failed to transfer heat away from the core quickly enough. That’s why the TerraPower team wanted to find a reactor that could naturally wind down, even if its safety systems failed.

TerraPower’s reactor stays cool because its pure uranium fuel pins move heat out of the core much more effectively than the fuel rods in today’s typical reactors. If even that isn’t enough to prevent a meltdown, the company has an ace up its sleeve. As Gilleland explains, the fuel pins will expand when they get too hot—just enough so that neutrons can slip past the fuel pins without hitting more Pu-239, thereby slowing the reaction and cooling the core automatically.

Because the TWR burns its fuel more efficiently, the TerraPower team also claims it will produce less waste. The company says a 1,200-MW reactor will generate only 5 metric megatons of waste per gigawatt-year, whereas a typical reactor today produces 21 metric megatons per gigawatt-year. If that number is right, the reactor could address the ongoing storage problem by drastically reducing the amount of generated waste, which remains highly radioactive for thousands of years. More than 60 years into the nuclear age, only Finland and Sweden have made serious progress in building deep, permanent repositories, and even those won’t be ready until the 2020s.

TerraPower plans to break ground on its test reactor next year in China. If all goes well, this reactor will be operational by the mid-2020s. But even if TerraPower’s reactor succeeds wildly, it will take 20 years or more for the company to deploy large numbers of TWRs. Thus for the next couple of decades, the world’s utilities will have no choice but to rely on fossil fuels and conventional nuclear reactors for reliable, round-the-clock electricity.

Fission will probably not be the final answer. After decades of always being 30 years away, nuclear fusion may finally come into its own. Societies will be able to depend on renewables more heavily as storage and other technologies make them more reliable. But for the coming decades, some analysts insist, nuclear fission’s reliability and zero emissions are the best choice to shoulder the burden of the world’s rapidly electrifying economies.

“I don’t think we should think about the solution for midcentury being the solution for all time,” says Jane Long, a former associate director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in California. “If I were in charge of everything, I would say, have a long-term plan to get [all of our electricity] from sunlight—there’s enough of it. For the near term, we shouldn’t be taking things with big impact off the table, like nuclear.”

As the globe warms and the climate becomes increasingly unstable, the argument for nuclear will become more obvious, Long says. “It’s got to come to the point where people realize how much we need this.”

This article appears in the June 2018 print issue as “What Will the Electricity Miracle Be?”


TerraPower’s Nuclear Reactor Could Power the 21st Century - IEEE Spectrum

 

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First criticality achieved at Chinese EPR
07 June 2018

Unit 1 of the Taishan nuclear power plant in China's Guangdong province has attained a sustained chain reaction for the first time, becoming the first EPR reactor to reach the commissioning milestone. The unit is expected to enter commercial operation later this year.

Taishan units 1 and 2 (Image: CGN)​

"The Taishan EPR has just had its first chain reaction and has therefore started," Xavier Ursat, EDF group senior executive vice president, new nuclear projects and engineering, said on his official Twitter account yesterday. "This is excellent news for the entire nuclear sector." Although no official statement has yet been issued confirming the milestone, both EDF and Framatome re-tweeted his comment.

Taishan 1 and 2 are the first two reactors based on the EPR design to be built in China. They form part of an EUR8.0 billion (USD9.5 billion) contract signed by Areva and China General Nuclear (CGN) in November 2007. The Taishan project - 140 kilometres west of Hong Kong - is owned by the Guangdong Taishan Nuclear Power Joint Venture Company Limited, a joint venture between EDF (30%) and CGN.

Construction of Taishan units 1 and 2 began in 2009 and 2010, respectively. CGN began loading fuel assemblies into Unit 1's core on 10 April following the issuance that day of a permit from the regulator, the National Nuclear Safety Administration. Taishan 1 is expected to start power generation later this year, while Taishan 2 - which is in the equipment installation phase - is scheduled to begin operating next year.

Taishan 1 was the third EPR unit to begin construction, in November 2009. It followed Finland's Olkiluoto 3 in August 2005 and France's Flamanville 3 in December 2007. Those units are at similar levels of development - Olkiluoto 3, the first-of-a-kind EPR, has completed hot functional tests and is preparing to load fuel, while fuel loading at the Flamanville EPR is scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter of this year.


http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-First-criticality-achieved-at-Chinese-EPR-0706184.html

 

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China signs up to four new units from Russia
08 June 2018

Russia and China have signed four agreements envisaging the construction of four VVER-1200 units at Xudabao and Tianwan, cooperation in the CFR-600 fast reactor pilot project, and supply of the RITEG (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator) parts for China's lunar exploration programme. The signing ceremony was held today in Beijing and attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Two of the deals aim for construction of two units at a greenfield site in Xudabao and two at Tianwan (units 7 and 8). Russia will supply the VVER-1200 reactors and all related equipment.

Rosatom Director General Alexey Likhachov said that over the course of "longstanding cooperation with our reliable partners" - China's Atomic Energy Authority, the National Energy Administration, and the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) - "we have created an unprecedented level of trust".

The third agreement envisages the supply of equipment, fuel, and services for the CNNC-developed CFR-600 fast reactor pilot project. The fourth concerns the supply of radionuclide heat units (UHR) used as parts of radioisotope thermoelectric generators to power equipment in China's space programme, for use in lunar exploration in particular, Rosatom said.

The Tianwan units 1 and 2 were started up in 2007 and generate more than 15 terawatt hours of electricity every year. Unit 3 was connected to the grid on 30 December and is scheduled to enter commercial operation later this year.

The design of the Tianwan plant is based on Russia's AES-91 project with a VVER-1000 reactor, which fully meets the requirements of current Chinese, Russian, and International Atomic Energy Agency regulations, Rosatom said. Construction of the plant is being carried out by Jiangsu Nuclear Power Corporation (JNPC) in cooperation with Russia's Atomstroyexport. JNPC is a joint venture between CNNC (50%), China Power Investment Corporation (30%) and Jiangsu Guoxin Group (20%).

The State Council gave its approval for the third phase of the Tianwan plant (units 5 and 6) - both featuring Chinese-designed 1080 MWe ACPR1000 reactors - on 16 December 2015. First safety-related concrete was poured for unit 5 later that month and for unit 6 in September 2016. Unit 5 is expected to enter commercial operation in December 2020 and unit 6 in October 2021.


http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Russia-to-build-four-VVER1200-units-in-China-08061802.html

 

[JSCh]

China delivers first batch of crucial parts to int'l fusion power project
By Yang Jinghao, Luo Caiwen
2018-06-10 09:26 GMT+8
Updated 2018-06-10 17:50 GMT+8

China has completed the first batch of magnet supports, a key component for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project, or ITER. On Saturday, these devices made their debut in the city of Zunyi in southwest China's Guizhou Province.

“Magnets are necessary for the project. We need strong support working in a severe environment with a very strong magnetic field and very low temperature. The design and manufacturing of such supports are very difficult,” Luo Delong, director of ITER China Domestic Agency, told CGTN.

These sophisticated devices have been developed by the Southwestern Institute of Physics located in Chengdu City. After eight years' efforts, they are ready for delivery to the project’s headquarters in France before long.

The magnet supports, the first basic components to be installed in the plant, will support the overall tokamak gravity load of 10,000 tons and withstand the unprecedented large electromagnetic loads experienced by the magnets.

The first batch of magnet supports, consisting of different modes, designed and manufactured by China, will be delivered soon to the ITER project's headquarters in France. /CGTN Photo

"The completion of this batch of products is a milestone. It means that we have made technical breakthroughs, and I’m confident that we’ll be able to deliver the remaining magnet supports on time," said Liu Yong, president of the institute.

Jointly funded by the EU, US, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and India, ITER is the largest international scientific cooperation project in the world. It is committed to exploring the commercial use of fusion power to make the world’s power supply sustainable. On completion, the fusion reactor is supposed to generate electricity in a process similar to the nuclear fusion that powers the sun.

ITER is the largest international scientific cooperation project in the world, with its members including the EU, US, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and India. /CGTN Photo

“Fusion is a very stable process, the only thing you need is water. Meanwhile, it’s safe, the risk is very low compared with fission,” said Cornelis Beemsterboer, a senior engineer of ITER.

As a country with large energy consumption, China joined the ambitious scheme in 2006. Over the past decade, China has played an active role in terms of both funding and cultivation of research experts.

"Making such products (magnet supports) maybe unbelievable a few years ago. But you can see that during these years, China has made great improvements by working together (with us) and finally made it," said Beemsterboer.

An employee works to manufacture related products to be delivered to the project’s headquarters in France. /Photo via ITER China Domestic Agency

Among the 140 procurement packages, China undertakes 18 of them, covering most of the crucial parts of the project. In January, China started to ship four vapor suppression tanks, each weighing about 100 tons, to France, which arrived at the destination in April.

According to ITER’s plan, the first operational test is scheduled for the year of 2025, while the full operation is slated for 2035.

(Top image: Magnet supports, important components for the ITER project, made their debut in the city of Zunyi in southwest China's Guizhou Province, on Saturday. /CGTN Photo)

 

[JSCh]

China's Self-made Nuclear Power Plant Control System Put Into Operation
CCTV+
Published on Jun 8, 2018

China's home-made and self-designed digital control system (DCS) for nuclear power plants was put into operation at the No. 5 unit of Yangjiang Nuclear Power Plant in south China's Guangdong Province on May 22, making China the fourth country to independently master the technology after the United States, France and Japan.

The DCS, or Hemu system, controls more than 260 systems in a nuclear power plant, the running of nearly 10,000 pieces of equipment and all sorts of processes, and is seen as the nuclear plant's "nerve center".

The extremely high requirement for safety of nuclear power plants and forbidden use of commercial operation softwares posed great challenge for the researchers to develop the Hemu system.

China had to rely on importing DCS in the past, which is expensive and has information safety problems. Now the situation has changed.

China's nuclear power enterprises have received nuclear power orders from the United Kingdom and Argentina over the past few years, and are actively promoting cooperation with countries in Central and Eastern Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia.

 

[JSCh]

Russia and China sign nuclear deal
By Chu Daye Source:Global Times Published: 2018/6/10 22:58:40

Move comes at expense of US-based Westinghouse

An overview of the Tianwan Nuclear Plant in East China's Jiangsu Province Photo: VCG​

Russia's third-generation VVER-1200 nuclear technology will soon make its way into the Chinese market, after a deal was signed between Chinese and Russian companies. The Russian advance could be at the expense of US nuclear firm Westinghouse Electric Co, depriving the latter of a contract worth an estimated 80 billion yuan ($12.5 billion).

China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC) and Russian state nuclear company Rosatom agreed to build a total of four VVER-1200 nuclear reactors at the Tianwan Nuclear Plant in East China's Jiangsu Province and Xudapu nuclear plant in Northeast China's Liaoning Province as part of a 20-billion-yuan nuclear deal, according to a statement posted on the website of CNNC on Friday.

Media reports said on Saturday that the No.3 and No.4 reactors at the Xudapu plant will use Russian technology and construction of them might start before reactors No. 1 and No.2 that will use the AP1000 technology designed by Westinghouse. That means Rosatom has taken a big chunk of the market originally designated for Westinghouse. The Xudapu plant has plans to accommodate six 1 million kilowatt reactors.

"The price tag for a 1 million kilowatt third-generation AP1000 reactor is about 20 billion yuan," Wang Dezhong, a professor specializing in nuclear-related technology at the School of Mechanical Engineering under Shanghai Jiao Tong University, told the Global Times Sunday.

This means Westinghouse could lose out on a deal worth 80 billion yuan if it doesn't get the contract for the four remaining reactors.

Wang noted that choosing the same technological route for most of the reactors in one nuclear plant would offer a lot of operational convenience.

However, there are exceptions to this approach. "Qinshan Nuclear Plant in East China's Zhejiang Province hosts reactors with various different capacities and technological routes," Wang said.

The Sanmen Nuclear Plant in Zhejiang, the first in the world to host AP1000 technology, has been hit by delays, which could bankrupt it, experts warned.

Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University, said the possible loss of the contract for Westinghouse is probably not a result of trade tension between the US and China, as Westinghouse is bankrupt. Japan's Toshiba Corp is currently in the process of trying to find a buyer for Westinghouse.

"Energy is a key part of Sino-US trade ties, but nuclear cooperation is too time-consuming for the Trump administration, which is eager to see quick results," Lin said.

The application of the VVER-1200 technology will add to China's status as a test ground for the world's third-generation nuclear technologies, and put the Russian technology in competition with homegrown third-generation Hualong One technology, as well as Westinghouse and Europe-based Orano.

As of November 1, 2017, the number of nuclear power units in operation in the mainland has reached 37, ranking third globally, according to data from the Chinese National Energy Administration. China also has 19 nuclear power units under construction and the combined installed capacity from both categories will be 57.5 million kilowatts.

If China still hosts the AP1000 technology at Xudapu, it would be beneficial for the US, Lin said.

"However, both AP1000 and [Orano's] EPR have proved costly to build, and nuclear energy in China is facing strong competition from other clean energy sources such as wind and solar power," Lin said.

The Russian route will also have to prove its cost effectiveness, Lin noted. Three reactors in China use Russian technology and have a good safety record, according to CNNC.

 

[JSCh]

China to build nuclear tech college amid talent shortage
By Yin Han Source:Global Times Published: 2018/6/18 21:43:40

China will build a new university dedicated to nuclear power research, amid a severe shortage of qualified people.

China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), the country's leading nuclear power developer and nuclear power plant operator, has signed a contract with the government of Tianjin Municipality to invest in a nuclear technology university in Tianjin, local media reported on Saturday.

The university would be built as a national level institution and would function as a base for skill straining, Master's and PhD programs, and core technology research and development, the report said.

China has a comparatively intact nuclear industrial system. However, few nuclear related fields such as nuclear fusion, uranium enrichment and post-processing "differ widely from each other, and the existing nuclear related majors in universities and colleges cannot satisfy the demand for talent," Science and Technology Daily reported, citing Wan Gang, director of the China Institute of Atomic Energy.

Wan said only 20.29 percent of 2,300 graduates CNNC has hired majored in nuclear-related courses. A CNNC development report says that colleges and universities can only satisfy less than half of the company's demand for talent for the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20).

Wang Yinan, a researcher at the State Council's Development Research Center, stressed the importance of cultivating talent for nuclear power security.

"China has many nuclear power projects and will continue to develop, which has led to a severe shortage of nuclear talent in power plant design, engineering construction, operations and security control," Wang told the Global Times.

If something goes wrong, the front-line operators should "immediately recognize the fault and solve it," Wang said. "Not enough qualified personnel is threatens nuclear power security."

Thirty-one nuclear power units were operating in China as of June 2016, with 23 more under construction. The China Electricity Council said in 2016 that China will have the second most nuclear power plants in the world.

Many Chinese universities offer nuclear technology-related programs, including Tsinghua University, Peking University and Xi'an Jiaotong University.

 

[JSCh]

Fuel loading under way at Chinese AP1000
25 April 2018

The loading of fuel assemblies into the core of unit 1 of the Sanmen nuclear power plant in China's Zhejiang province began today following the issuance of a permit by the country's nuclear regulator. The unit is later this year expected to become the first Westinghouse AP1000 to enter operation.

Sanmen units 1 and 2 (Image: CNNC)

Westinghouse said China's National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA) issued the permit after Sanmen 1 successfully completed all the necessary functional tests, as well as technical, safety and Chinese regulatory reviews. The fuel loading permit was presented to China National Nuclear Corporation subsidiary CNNC Sanmen Nuclear Power Company Limited at a ceremony in Beijing today by Liu Hua, vice minister of Ecology and Environment and Director of the NNSA.

In a statement the NNSA said that, before the first loading of materials, it had conducted a six-year safety review of the Sanmen 1 project and dispatched on-site supervisors for the entire construction process. The project meets the design safety goals and the construction quality is good, it added.

The loading of the first of 157 fuel assemblies into the core of Sanmen 1 began promptly.

Westinghouse noted, "The fuel loading process will be followed by initial criticality, initial synchronisation to the electricity grid, and gradual power ascension testing, until all testing is safely and successfully completed at 100% power."

In September 2007, Westinghouse and its partner the Shaw Group received authorisation to construct four AP1000 units in China: two at Sanmen and two more at Haiyang in Shandong province. Hot testing of Sanmen 1 was completed on in June 2017 and it is expected to be the first AP1000 to begin operating later this year. Haiyang 1 and Sanmen 2 are also expected to begin operating by the end of this year, with Haiyang 2 expected to start up in 2019.

Four AP1000 reactors were also being built in the USA - two each at Vogtle and Summer. However, construction of the two Summer units was suspended in August.

Westinghouse President and CEO José Gutiérrez said, "Today we have reached a tremendous milestone for Westinghouse and our AP1000 plant technology. This is the next step in delivering the world's first AP1000 plant to our customer and demonstrating the benefits of our advanced passive safety technology to the world."

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News



http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Fuel-loading-under-way-at-Chinese-AP1000-2504185.html

Today, Haiyang Nuclear Power Unit No. 1 received approval for fuel loading. The second AP1000 to do so after Sanmen-1.

 

[JSCh]

Regulator details Taishan 1 commissioning schedule
21 June 2018

Unit 1 of the Taishan nuclear power plant is expected to be connected to the grid next month and achieve full-power operation by September, according to China's nuclear safety regulator. The unit, which achieved first criticality earlier this month, is expected to become the first EPR reactor to enter commercial operation, which it is scheduled to later this year.

Taishan units 1 and 2, pictured in November 2017 (Image: CGN)​

In response to media questions to its director Liu Hua, the National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA) said today that Taishan 1 is currently undergoing low-power tests. Plans call for the reactor to be connected to the external power grid in July and for it to reach 100% capacity during the third quarter.

Taishan 1 and 2 are the first two reactors based on the EPR design to be built in China. They form part of an EUR8.0 billion (USD9.5 billion) contract signed by Areva and China General Nuclear (CGN) in November 2007. The Taishan project - 140 kilometres west of Hong Kong - is owned by the Guangdong Taishan Nuclear Power Joint Venture Company Limited, a joint venture between EDF (30%) and CGN.

Construction of Taishan units 1 and 2 began in 2009 and 2010, respectively. CGN began loading fuel assemblies into Unit 1's core on 10 April following the issuance that day of a permit from the NNSA. The reactor achieved first criticality on 6 June. Taishan 2 - which is in the equipment installation phase - is scheduled to begin operating next year.

Taishan 1 was the third EPR unit to begin construction, in November 2009. It followed Finland's Olkiluoto 3 in August 2005 and France's Flamanville 3 in December 2007. Olkiluoto 3, the first-of-a-kind EPR, has completed hot functional tests and is preparing to load fuel, while fuel loading at the Flamanville EPR is scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter of this year.

"For the new nuclear power technology projects, such as the Taishan EPR, the NNSA has been implementing the most stringent safety review and supervision," the regulator said. "Since 2013, NNSA has organised a total of over 400 person-years of various professional review missions, reviewed 13 technical documents - such as the final safety analysis report for Taishan 1 and 2 - and held four nuclear tests." NNSA noted that it invited nuclear regulatory authorities from France, Finland and the UK, as well as representatives from the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, to witness inspections of Taishan 1.

NNSA said the Taishan nuclear power plant project is "a model of Sino-French cooperation, reflecting the achievements of domestic and foreign construction companies that combine strengths, complement each other and cooperate in the division of labour".


http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Regulator-details-Taishan-1-commissioning-schedule-2106184.html

 

[JSCh]

Chinese AP1000s pass commissioning milestones
22 June 2018

The start of power generation by two AP1000 reactors under construction in China moved a step closer yesterday with first criticality being achieved at Sanmen 1 and the loading of fuel beginning at Haiyang 1. Both units are expected to start up by the end of this year, becoming the first operating AP1000 reactors.

Sanmen units 1 and 2 (Image: Westinghouse)​

Unit 1 of the Sanmen nuclear power plant in China's Zhejiang province attained first criticality - a sustained chain reaction - at 2.09am yesterday, State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation announced.

Westinghouse President and CEO José Gutiérrez said, "Today we completed the final major milestone before commercial operation for Westinghouse's AP1000 nuclear power plant technology. We are one step closer to delivering the world's first AP1000 plant to our customer and the world - with our customers, we will provide our customers in China with safe, reliable and clean energy from Sanmen 1."

The next stage in the commissioning of Sanmen 1 will be synchronisation to the electricity grid. This will be followed by gradual power ascension testing until all testing is safely and successfully completed at 100% power.

Westinghouse said, "Once plant operations begin at Sanmen 1, it will be the first AP1000 nuclear power plant in operation, offering innovative passive safety system technology, multiple layers of defence and advanced controls for unequalled reliability and safety."

In September 2007, Westinghouse and its partner the Shaw Group received authorisation to construct four AP1000 units in China: two at Sanmen and two more at Haiyang in Shandong province. Construction of Sanmen 1 began in April 2009, while first concrete for Sanmen 2 was poured in December 2009. Construction of Haiyang 1 and 2 began in September 2009 and June 2010, respectively.

Hot testing of Sanmen 1 was completed in June 2017. The loading of fuel assemblies into its core began on 25 April following the issuance of a permit by the country's nuclear regulator, the National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA).

Hot tests at Sanmen 2 were completed in January. That unit is also expected to begin operating by the end of this year.

Haiyang 1 fuel loading

Westinghouse also announced that loading of the 157 fuel assemblies into the core of Haiyang 1 began at 7.36pm yesterday.

Haiyang unit 1 (Image: Westinghouse)​

The company said the unit recently successfully completed the necessary testing and regulatory reviews conducted by the NNSA. "Haiyang unit 1 met all the criteria, confirming the capability of Westinghouse's AP1000 technology," it said.

Haiyang 1 expected to begin operating by the end of this year, with Haiyang 2 expected to start up in 2019.

"The lessons learned and resources shared between Sanmen and Haiyang throughout all phases of construction and start-up have made tremendous improvements in terms of quality and execution, which will benefit future AP1000 fleets," said Gavin Liu, Westinghouse's president for the Asia Region. "We will continue to work side by side with our Chinese customers and ensure the success of the remaining testing."

Four AP1000 reactors were also being built in the USA - two each at Vogtle and Summer. However, construction of the two Summer units was suspended last August.


http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Chinese-AP1000s-pass-commissioning-milestones-2206184.html