Haiyang 5 starts nuclear island concrete two days after its licence

Concrete started going into the nuclear island foundation of Haiyang Unit 5 in Shandong province on October 31, 2026, opening the third phase of the Haiyang nuclear site, State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC) announced. SPIC Industry-Finance Holding, the listed SPIC unit that holds a controlling investment in project company Shandong Nuclear Power No. 3, told the Shenzhen Stock Exchange the same day that the pour would put the unit into full construction. The unit uses CAP1000 technology with an installed capacity of 1,250 MW, the filing says.

The licence arrived two days earlier. China's National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA) issued construction licences for Units 5 and 6 on October 29, each valid to October 28, 2036, according to its notice. An NNSA inspection team found Unit 5 ready for its first nuclear island concrete. Unit 6 has to wait: the regulator made its first pour a control point, which the Ministry of Ecology and Environment's North China nuclear and radiation safety supervision station must release before concrete goes in. Each licence also sets a control point on main pipe welding.

The unit's size depends on who is describing it. Liu Fei, who heads SPIC Shandong Nuclear Power's Haiyang project, told Xinhua that design optimisation had raised each unit's rated electrical output to 1.3 million kilowatts, 50 MW more than the filing's figure. Neither document explains the gap.

Units 5 and 6 use localised third-generation passive pressurised water reactor technology and are the first nuclear project in Shandong to start construction in the 15th Five-Year Plan period, Xinhua reports. The site is planned for six million-kilowatt-class units in three phases, and Liu said the company will coordinate the first phase's operation, the second's commissioning and the third's construction. With all six running, he said, Haiyang would be the world's largest nuclear base built entirely on passive PWR technology, generating 60.9 billion kWh a year.

The pour came 23 days after CNNC's Tianwan unit 7 in Jiangsu delivered its first electricity to the grid, on October 8.