China builds a fourth generation nuclear power plant

A project to build a nuclear power plant will turn China into the first country to exploit a fourth generation reactor for commercial purposes.

China's Huatong nuclear power group said it will build and operate a fourth-generation nuclear power plant on the shores of Shilin Bay in Yongcheng City, Shandong Province. The plant has a design capacity of 200 Megawatt and owns a fourth generation reactor. Construction began last month and the initial budget was three billion yuan (476 million USD), Xinhua reported.

"The latest generation reactor will start producing electricity from 2017," Hoa Nang Group announced.

A nuclear power plant in China. (Photo: morningwhistle.com)

The announcement of Hoa Nang Group also stated that experts of Tsinghua University have designed China's fourth generation reactor based on active and passive safety systems. This means that the reactor can automatically stop operating when an emergency occurs without causing fuel melting in the core or leaking radioactive material.

The temperature of the furnace is 750 degrees Celsius, much lower than the 1,000 degree C standard of the fourth generation reactor according to international standards proposed by many countries. It can also increase electricity production by about 40%. Similar performance of second and third generation reactors is only 30%.

Most nuclear reactors are and are about to operate in the second and third generation worlds. With the project on the shores of Thach Dao Bay, China will become the first country to use a fourth-generation nuclear reactor for commercial purposes. The United States Group said that if their reactors were successful, they would export furnace and equipment manufacturing technologies to other countries.

After the incident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011, China issued a ban on the construction of nuclear power plants. But in October last year, Beijing lifted the ban. State media reported that the government allowed the construction of nuclear power plants along the coast.