(Yicai) Feb. 25 -- China General Nuclear Power, a state-owned atomic and clean energy developer, has started construction work on the unit one reactor unit of the Lufeng Nuclear Power Plant.

The Lufeng project, located in China's southern Guangdong province, is designed to have six reactors with a capacity of about one gigawatt each. After full completion, it will have an annual generation capacity of 52 billion kilowatt-hours, enough to replace 15.8 million tons of standard coal, reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 42.7 million tons, or equal 117,000 hectares of afforestation.

The State Council approved the Lufeng project's Unit 1 and Unit 2 at the end of last August. They will adopt the CAP1000 third-generation passive pressurized water technology and have an annual capacity of 1.25 GW each and a designated operational life of 60 years.

The CAP Generation III nuclear power reactor was developed by State Power Investment Corporation's Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute based on US nuclear power company Westinghouse Electric's AP1000, a third-generation nuclear power reactor. The Guangdong Lianjiang Nuclear Power Plant, which started construction in July 2023, also adopts CAP1000.

In addition to Unit 1 and Unit 2, two other reactors of the Lufeng Nuclear Power Plant have started construction. Unit 5 and Unit 6, which adopt the Hualong One third-generation nuclear power technology, began construction in September 2022 and August 2023 and are expected to be completed in 2026 and 2027, respectively.

Hualong One, also known as HPR1000, is a third-generation pressurized water reactor technology jointly developed by CGN and China National Nuclear Corporation.

China has been steadily promoting the construction of nuclear power projects. In the past three years, it approved 10 nuclear power units per year, with several of them expected to begin construction this year. By the end of 2025, the total installed capacity of operating nuclear power will likely reach 65 GW.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione