Status of New Nuclear Power Plant Construction

The 1400 Megawatt Shin Kori Unit 3 nuclear power plant entered commercial operation on 29 August in South Korea.

This brings the number of new nuclear reactors started in 2019 to 5.1 Gigawatts of power.

New connections to the grid in 2019
NOVOVORONEZH 2-2 (1114 MW(e), PWR, RUSSIA) on 1 May
SHIN-KORI-4 (1340 MW(e), PWR, KOREA,REP.OF) on 22 April
TAISHAN-2 (1660 MW(e), PWR, CHINA) on 23 June
YANGJIANG-6 (1000 MW(e), PWR, CHINA) on 29 June

450 Nuclear reactors in operation around the world today
399.7 GWe of net installed nuclear power.
52 Nuclear reactors under construction
52.7 GWe of net power would come from the new nuclear reactors

About 40 of the new nuclear reactors are being built by China, Russia, South Korea or India.

Only 6 of the reactors are being built in the USA or Europe.

Expected New Nuclear Reactors Through 2022M

2019 Belarus, BNPP Ostrovets 1 VVER-1200 1194
2019 China, CGN Fangchenggang 3 Hualong One 1180
2019 China, CGN Hongyanhe 5 ACPR-1000 1119
2019 China, CNNC Fuqing 5 Hualong One 1150
2019 China, China Huaneng Shidaowan HTR-PM 210
2019 Russia, Rosenergoatom Pevek FNPP KLT40S x 2 70

2020 Belarus, BNPP Ostrovets 2 VVER-1200 1194
2020 China, CGN Hongyanhe 6 ACPR-1000 1119
2020 China, CGN Fangchenggang 4 Hualong One 1180
2020 China, CNNC Tianwan 5 ACPR-1000 1118
2020 China, CNNC Fuqing 6 Hualong One 1150
2020 China, CGN Bohai shipyard ACPR50S 60
2020 Finland, TVO Olkiluoto 3 EPR 1720
2020 India, Bhavini Kalpakkam PFBR FBR 500
2020 Japan, Chugoku Shimane 3 ABWR 1373
2020 Korea, KHNP Shin Hanul 1 APR1400 1400
2020 Russia, Rosenergoatom Leningrad II-2 VVER-1200 1170
2020 Slovakia, SE Mochovce 3 VVER-440 471
2020 UAE, ENEC Barakah 1 APR1400 1400

2021 Argentina, CNEA Carem25 Carem 29
2021 China, CNNC Tianwan 6 ACPR-1000 1118
2021 Korea, KHNP Shin Hanul 2 APR1400 1400
2021 Pakistan Karachi/KANUPP 2 ACP1000 1100
2021 Slovakia, SE Mochovce 4 VVER-440 471
2021 UAE, ENEC Barakah 2 APR1400 1400
2021 USA, Southern Vogtle 3 AP1000 1250

2022 France, EDF Flamanville 3 EPR 1650
2022 India, NPCIL Kakrapar 3 PHWR-700 700
2022 India, NPCIL Kakrapar 4 PHWR-700 700
2022 India, NPCIL Rajasthan 7 PHWR-700 700
2022 India, NPCIL Rajasthan 8 PHWR-700 700
2022 Pakistan Karachi/KANUPP 3 ACP1000 1100
2022 Russia, Rosenergoatom Kursk II-1 VVER-TOI 1255
2022 UAE, ENEC Barakah 3 APR1400 1400
2022 USA, Southern Vogtle 4 AP1000 1250

SOURCES- World Nuclear News, IAEA, World Nuclear Association
Written By Brian Wang, www.nextbigfuture.com

80 thoughts on “Status of New Nuclear Power Plant Construction”

  1. Yet nobody proposes another small test reactor… All the Elysium and Thorcon’s go full retard save the earth feed the people. That isn’t how this game is played, and therefore the proposals for the Elysiums and Thorcons will… fade… away.

  2. ” when you can pay less to use renewables plus storage?”
    So why do the countries with the highest percentage of renewables have the highest electricity rates? They all pay a premium for renewables

  3. I agree with your comment. But to stop the MSR was a political decision in favour of the Sodium Fast Reactors which was then canned as well later. If one could go ahead and just build an MSR I am sure there would be a couple around already, not necessarily successful, but at least one could learn from them how not to do that.
    But one just can’t do that. The NRC is taking years just to approve a known technology light water reactor, what will happen if they are approached with a new unproven technology.
    Had the NRC been around in the 1950’s no reactor would have ever been built in the USA. As it was at least one design went from a rough idea to critical in less than 2 years.

  4. It says ‘new reactors’ – not new stations. In the West nuclear power is dead. These were mostly planned a decade or more ago. It is dead because it is expensive. Do you want to pay more tax to use nuclear in the west, when you can pay less to use renewables plus storage? For modern western nuclear costs see Hinckley or the other few recent designs – massively expensive and extremely slow to build.

  5. You got a spy inside the Politburo sparky – maybe its working so well they don’t want whitey’s to know about it.

    The most competent regulator on the planet just approved an HTGR.

    I’m sure the Chinese are watching.

  6. Why do innumerates keep spewing this horseshit. Do you want to drive us over an AGW cliff?

    “A variable renewables only solution also requires long duration energy storage. In a review of literature, Jenkins finds a seasonal storage requirement for 8-16 weeks worth of US electricity consumption.”

    Look it up then tell me how much $100/ kWh battery storage would cost to cover those 16 weeks over the 80 year plant life of a nuke.

  7. There are already factories that can be powered by off-grid sources in the USA.

    You just need methane piped in and a turbine.

  8. If only nuclear power plants could be built by a single man we could blame for the whole thing, that would be something.

  9. “does maintaining a distribution system, particularly in rural areas make sense?”

    Yes, snow, rain, EVs.

  10. I strongly suspect that they are trying to get version 1.0 of their reactor to market ASAP. Once that is good there will probably be a version 2.0 in half a decade.

  11. “You should imagine that a well advanced paper reactor such as this has not spent the time to iron out the CFR compliance on shipping.”

    Dis. Sure sign that shipping logistics haven’t been thought through: low resolution PPTs.

  12. Yang is the only Democrat who speaks favorably of nuclear power. Trump and Trump’s DOE are pushing to get SMRs done. If you want I can point you to the Youtube video where a lead engineer for NuScale talks about how the Trump administration is very easy to work with on nuclear (compared to Obama).

    So Yang/Trump if you want nuclear power.

  13. Damn it, man. Coffee laugh spray cleanup on my iphone here…at least I know not to read your comments on a laptop.

  14. I don’t make a point, I remind about physical reality of the material economy. Farmers had wind-powered water pumps for so long that they became a national icon in some distant places. That is not a new idea, as farms with solar arrays are not a new idea either. In US economy farmers constitute something on the order of 2% of polulation, hence it does not matter what they choose for power. They may as well have free grid connection and free power for all their farming needs — that would not make a dent in the economy, and that would not move the metaphorical needle for utilities. Hence any off-grid would have to compete with grid, and only until the first time off-grid power goes down for any reason. A hundred cows late for milking will instantly convince any farmer that exclusive off-grid power was a terrible mistake. And if there is grid backup line, then off-grid is not really off grid.

  15. It is always important to remember that Field of Dreams involved supernatural beings.

    In real life you build stuff and then you go bankrupt because you didn’t make it near the existing market. By which I mean the customers were only 100 m away but had to cross a road to get to you, and couldn’t be bothered.

  16. I would expect that building a lot more nuclear power plants is the best possible way to ensure that there are lots of qualified personnel and an operational supply chain.

  17. They are patient. Likely waiting on their own research to get them to MSR.
    IIRC, Shanghi has a team on it ,or its in a university there.
    IT might be a good move to use coal for a few more years to get the general population behind clean and cheap nuclear

  18. he said “rural”.
    Aluminum smelters are beside massive hydroelectric plants, Cominco is in my province, but that is a special industrial zone. not really “rural”.
    Don’t miss-interpret the gist to suit your point.
    Rural is milking parlours, water pumps, and lights maybe one day electric mowers and tractors

  19. Yes large and growing suburban co-ops will be just fine

    Rural shrinking ones with many millions sunk into obsolete generation assets (especially coal) with a significant amount of commercial customers are collapsing. It’s incredibly easy to buy your own 55MW natgas turbine for your fertilizer plant and use your own solar and wind as “fuel replacement”.

  20. Yes, it is just a paper design at this point, which likely means the design is only specified to a level that allowed them to run simulations of liquid and heat flows and such.

    But my point is that the ability to ship the unit sealed with fuel installed is intrinsic to the design. As such they MUST resolve all issues of safe shipping before they can consider their design complete. I see no reason to assume they cannot do that, though most likely they have not yet done so.

    As to engineering – if I were regulating this, I demand that they load a full-scale unit with dummy fuel and dummy coolant and perform rigorous real-world shipping tests; and that they perform equivalent stress testing with real Na coolant in a controlled environment where unexpected Na spills could be controlled. And finally, repeat those lab tests with real fuel loaded.

  21. > does maintaining a distribution system, particularly in rural areas make sense?

    If you have to ask that question, you are not ready to discuss this matter. It is a matter encompassing economics, technological policy and time measured in decades. Your reasoning, as it is written, is on the level of a farmer considering power options for his water pump.

    A factory cannot be powered by off-grid sources. Notionally, it is on the level of 100MW baseload — no interruptions, low cost, or that is not the place for that factory. Metallurgy cannot be powered by off-grid sources, unless that source is a hydroelectric station with multi-GW capacity. One electrolysis cell making aluminium burns over a megawatt of power continuously, and if it is unpowered, it it damaged and has to be rebuilt. A microelectronic factory cannot be powered by anything less than perfect grid, with multiple redundant power stations, at it takes a month or more to make a microchip, and power loss at any stage may send it to bin. So, unless you wish to live 19th century lifestyle, you cannot opt for off-grid on a country scale. A small share of production and consumption can be off-grid, but everything they consume, which is above 19th century level, will come from grid-powered industry.

    MSR are hyped dream, it takes decades to build a new type of nuclear reactor, and there is not a single MSR in operation. MSR is not a new idea, decades of work were spend developing them up to 1980’s. They lost to others.

  22. You should imagine that a well advanced paper reactor such as this has not spent the time to iron out the CFR compliance on shipping. C’Mon guy, that’s just marketing. Doesn’t really matter. If there is a need for such a thing they’ll build it. This is not a case of if you build it they will come – that didn’t even make sense in Field of Dreams.

    In other words stop thinking like a scientist that the solidified sodium will cushion the fuel and start thinking like an engineer who couldn’t prove such a thing economically.

  23. The liquid Na and impact hazards seem like obvious issues that designers of the unit and of the shipping process would have to take into account if they really want to ship it by truck.

    Perhaps the Na might be allowed to solidify (expansion in transition to solid form would have to be dealt with) and melted via electric heaters once in place. And the unit could be driven very slowly and have shock dampeners.

  24. I belong to a large “rural” electric co-op. It used to be farm country, but now it is part of the Atlanta metro. They are adding lots of solar the next few years (they already have some). They offer “community solar” for $22/mo. That gets you some of the power their solar farm makes as an offset against your meter bill. I would rather not cut down the nice big shade trees around my house, so this is a good option for me. It even works for renters, who don’t have an option to put panels on their roof.

  25. Please show me where Trump has done anything to support nuclear power. He has really only pushed coal, which is full retard. The only candidate that openly supports nuclear is Yang.

  26. No just Yang. Trump has done very little to support nuclear power. He is still trying to bring back coal, the worst idea of them all.

  27. There’s vastly different progress on the “real” vs. “paper” front between those two.

    What is exciting about NuScale is to see whether it can succeed on the hypothesis of learning curve cost reductions aka Wright Scaling. If they can prove it out it will be a huge boost for all SMRs.

  28. The NuScale seems a little conservative on the MWe output. They started at 50 MWe and then upped to 60 MWe. According to my math they can go up to 80 MWe with current design. I wonder if they’ll increase above 60 MWe? It is actually not difficult to do with current NRC regulations as it is just considered a “power uprate” like they’re doing on refurbished nuclear plants right now.

    Maybe they’re planning to underpromise and overdeliver. That would be nice…

  29. I wish China were cranking out 10 nuclear reactors a year.

    I just don’t see the CAP1400 potentially becoming the top design in China for another 8 years at their current build rate. There’s not enough incentive to build the supply chain for the parts over the Hualong One.

  30. I agree – when have they never NOT cracked a fuel ball leaving radioactive dust everywhere inside the things?

    With HT helium gas reactors go with scheduled fuel removal during shutdown (prismatic, whatever). Don’t play pinball while it is running.

  31. There are already small rural electricity co-ops being bankrupted right now. Many of them have exit contracts with their members and the members are just paying the penalty and bailing out.

  32. Omni Consumer Products…?
    You have 20 seconds to comply.

    In all seriousness though, yeah, corporations being highly risk averse it does seem like a big problem.

  33. I am pro-nuclear, but see lack of ongoing construction of plants in the US as a good thing. The coming generation of MSRs will be so much better that they will be worth the wait.

    With panels selling at $0.39 per Watt, by the pallet on ebay.com, and $100 kWh batteries on the horizon, does maintaining a distribution system, particularly in rural areas make sense?

    Assume for 1kW of PV, 5kWh/day, 20 year lifespan(drop in power balanced by life over 20 years) each kw of PV gives 36,500 kWh for 1.07 cents per kWh DC. I pay about 10 cents per kWh for AC now.

    Don’t forget that once off grid becomes common, DC appliances, and load control systems will become common, and cheap. This situation could destroy the electric utilities, particularly after customers begin to leave, and costs are borne by the remainers.

  34. “Also you need hundreds km of high voltage power lines and transformers to distribute power from plant to consumer”
    Those already exist if you put nuclear plants beside & to replace existing coal plants.
    Unlike the thousands of km of power lines needed if you try to use wind & solar & shunt power across the country from where it is currently windy/sunny to where

  35. Vogtle has been getting rubber stamped for decades. One of the largest boondoggles in US utility grid history, if not the biggest. I think it’s over 9 billion now with 0 electricity production, pure rate payer loss so far. Pure loss if you live in Georgia, North / South Carolina.

    I know, because I personally worked on it in Georgia, good money on that project, but it’s never getting finished lol.

    Now take wind and solar pv for example, they’re projecting 1TW of deployment combined between both from 2019-2024, at half the cost of the first TW. THAT’S where you need to be putting your money, not wasting it on nuclear.

  36. That pair of 250 MWth demos is all we will see. Commercialization plan with additional builds is cancelled after that. Too expensive.

  37. The only place green glowing mutants have ever existed, is in the febrile imaginations of those who get their science from comic books.

  38. Those Bloomberg charts are already overstating unreliables’ power percentage for 2019, so don’t put too much faith in their projections. Also, they have ‘levelised cost’ in China about the same for wind, solar, and nuclear.Their levelised cost takes no account of intermittency, or of transmission problems from low demand desert areas, which are already causing significant curtailment, and will get exponentially worse as wind and solar grow past insignificant levels.

  39. I don’t think the ‘horses in mid-war-stream’ effect carries over to trade wars – not visceral enough to sway voters.

    Though the Iran situation seems possible to heat up enough to have this effect.

  40. Also, it seems to be shipped from and eventually back to the factory with fuel in place. I could see that being done safely – but I have a hard time NOT seeing protestors lining the route and trying to block its progress. That could be worked around also, with enough police or national guard – but I’d wonder what corporation would be willing to deal with the ‘controversy’.

  41. I give United States and France only Two dr.strangelove points, but China and India are running the rodeo, bucking the nuclear bull without a saddle…war whoooping and yelling like heck as they get bucked here and there… what’s that weird screeching sound that Muslim woman make? This nuke plant is indestructible… it’s better made then even the titanic… there’s no way it could possibly. Melt through the third outer shield…we have plenty of disposable unemployed migrant farmers with water buckets to cool it down again if that happens..

  42. The Only countries with a large number of reactors are ones that don’t care if they nuke their own citizens… didn’t Russia just accidentally explode a nuclear rocket a few weeks ago..the reaction was like .. whoops… oh well… it’s only a little bit of radiation causing everybody in a small town to glow green with radiation and three heads and arms…but the shock wave was cool…

  43. …also LBE-cooled small design, accelerator-driven design, fusion design, and far less known and far more interesting things such as petawatt laser machines for highly advanced fusion research (along with US, EU and RU, with almost identical specs).

  44. China is playing every game.

    For nuclear power reactors for grid electricity they have/are building:

    • Heavy water reactors from Canada
    • Light water reactors from USA and Europe
    • Fast breeder Sodium cooled from Russia
    • High temperature helium cooled
    • Light water small modular reactors of multiple flavors in development
    • Molten Salt reactors in development

    I mean hire some accountants, pick a fuel cycle, and begin building like mad. Not everything is a valid approach.

  45. IMHO Helium cooled PBRs don’t seem that great. Sort of walkaway safe in they lose pressure but all those little TRISO balls. Odds that some weren’t made right? Pretty reasonable. You lose containment and you will leak volatiles.

    HT-PBRs are old. I’ll stick with well known fuel assemblies and water (until something notably better in most every area comes along).

  46. China is still in the lull of “Post Fukushima build every plant to license everyone’s technology” moving towards “Build the CAP-1400 supply chain and crank them out ten a year”.

    As for Europe most all new reactor development is in Russia.

  47. I don’t want AP1000s. I want to fast forward to as many NuScale reactors as possible as soon as possible.

    You can follow load during the weekdays and turn one or more off for the weekend. You can go two years between refuelling. You can build them incrementally. They are inherently walkaway safe.

    My worry is that if the Bad Orange Man doesn’t win reelection that they will be drowned in endless regulation.

  48. That Chinese helium-cooled reactor (2019) will be an interesting change, as it is the only Gen4 reactor on the list. Readers may not have noticed, but the rest of the list is variants of Gen3 pressurised water-cooled reactors, the type that is intrinsically kaboom-prone and expensive to make safe, not to mention the U-235 fuel cycle economy. Pity that all the time, effort and resources invested in metal-cooled fast reactors are simply shelved by bureaucracies. Consequences are now inevitable, but the price will be paid by kids and grandkids. Well played, well played.

  49. Yeah, looks like China is playing the short game. Selecting very dirty coal power because it is cheaper on the short term while their cities are full of smog and many of their own people are dying from this.

  50. Looks like China is out of steam. They have only 9 reactors in construction. To be honest, it is laughable considering how much electricity they produce. Not long ago we were told here on NBF that China is the best place for nuclear and how much they will build. And now it looks like that nuclear production will be a rounding error in their overall production.

    Consider that Slovakia is building 2 reactors with a population of 5.4 million people (and going from 55% nuclear to perhaps 80%). Or Finland with the same population is building the very big EPR reactor. China with 1 386 million people is building 9 reactors and NBF told us how absolutely Europe is not building anything and doesnt have any industrial base to build anything big. So far it looks like that China is the paper tiger or doesnt really want to commit to build significant Nuclear power.

  51. Oh you’re right. Except the French and Finnish ones have been complete for years they just won’t start them (kinda correct).

  52. Let’s tear into the perfectly workable SLIMM reactor discussed on Forbes 4 days ago… Do I hear oilsands? How about FOB? No? Bucket of hot alkali meets market that doesn’t exist? perfectly workable mind you. Expensive. About as big as a locomotive.

  53. >Only 6 of the reactors are being built in the USA or Europe.
    Hmm, lets see:
    Russia 6 (ok, not sure how many of those are geographically in Europe)
    Slovakia 2
    Belarus 2
    Ukraine 2
    USA 2
    Finland 1
    France 1
    UK 1

    So that is 17 instead of 6. Even with those 6 from Russia where I am not sure about the location it is still way over 6.

    I just used the pic from your own article.

  54. Yup. Ok. Slow and steady. Few more UK blackouts. I’m waiting for the day Germany sues France because the power wasn’t available. It’ll happen. Mark my words. Germany will sue France for not supplying power because of whatever loss of availability…

  55. Oh orange man will get reelected. He’s a trade ‘War[time] President’. Can’t change a horse midstream – to borrow from 2004. Our respective States will complain and then get back to work and maybe mine will legalize MJ.

    I liked mindbender’s discussion and links about large forges a couple of weeks ago… heavy machinery is awesome. We should make some of that!

    Right now there are 4 or 5 NRC approved designs – they just announced approval of the large Korean System80+ (Combustion Engineering – Palo Verde) derivative last week… but alas, fart gas is abundant, GE fart gas combustion turbines sell like hotcakes, while the stock is all of eight bucks.

  56. So made to make a story that doesn’t happen! How much we have here? 15 GB a year? Here is a honest forecast of the power generation trends. Nuclear energy share is going to continue to drop, the world is going green! Nuclear energy is relatively expensive and even if it get better so will renewable energy. We are not going to see a nuclear energy future as long as it is not considered save!

    https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2019/08/the-energy-transition-is-underway-10-charts-tell-the-story.html

  57. I’m personally looking forward to commissioning of the high temperature gas-cooled pebble bed reactors in China… I hope their learnings get funnelled into WANO reporting. I don’t see a lot of OE reporting out of China…

  58. It just makes me sad… that the US isn’t rubber-stamping its highly successful, well-matured, intrinsically safe, relatively compact nuclear power plant technology. Here, for us. Dunno… perhaps if The Orange President gets reëlected…

Comments are closed.