China’s 5 year plan for doubling nuclear power generation

Under the latest Five-Year Plan, China should have some 58 GWe of nuclear generating capacity in operation by 2020, up from the current capacity of almost 27 GWe. In addition, a further 30 GWe of nuclear capacity will be under construction by 2020.

The 13th Five Year Plan also calls for the construction of a demonstration as well as a large commercial scale reprocessing plant to be accelerated. China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) and France’s Areva signed an agreement in November 2007 to assess the feasibility of setting up an 800 tonne per year reprocessing plant for used fuel in China.

The latest Five-Year Plan also calls for construction of Phase III of the Tianwan plant in Jiangsu province to be accelerated. The State Council gave its approval for Tianwan units 5 and 6 – featuring 1080 MWe ACPR1000 reactors – in December. Tianwan units 1 to 4 are Russian-supplied VVER reactors.

The plan also calls for the preparation for construction of inland nuclear power plant