China pours first concrete for Haiyang-5 as reactor queue grows

Concrete on the nuclear island

State Power Investment Corp announced the pour in a post on Chinese social media. State media carried the same message. Kenya Today reported that the operation used about 6,626 cubic metres of concrete and ran for nearly 62 hours. Haiyang-5 is a CAP1000 pressurised water reactor. It is China's Generation III version of Westinghouse's AP1000 design, on the Shandong coast in eastern China.

China Nuclear Industry 24 Construction Co is building the nuclear islands for both new units. It is a subsidiary of China National Nuclear Corporation.

China's queue of 56 units under construction sets the pace for the global reactor supply chain, from forgings to fuel.

The State Council approved Units 5 and 6 on 27 April 2025. The National Nuclear Safety Administration then issued the construction permits.

NucNet gives Haiyang-5 a capacity of 1,161 MW. Global Times, citing the SPIC post, says the design was optimised to raise each unit's rated electrical output to 1.3 million kilowatts. Kenya Today puts each reactor at roughly 1,300 MW gross. The figures do not match. Neither SPIC nor its contractors have reconciled them.

Six units, 7.5 GW

Phase III adds Units 5 and 6 to a site planned in three phases of 6-million-kilowatt-class reactors.

SPIC estimates annual generation of 60.9 billion kWh once the site is complete. That is enough for about 54 million residents. The company says that would save about 18.56 million tonnes of standard coal a year and cut carbon dioxide emissions by 48.63 million tonnes. Heating capacity would exceed 150 million square metres, the post said. That is enough to cover 25 county-level cities.

Liu Fei heads SPIC Shandong Nuclear Power's Haiyang project. He told Xinhua the finished site would become the world's largest nuclear power base built entirely on passive pressurised water reactor technology.

The size of China's queue

China has 120 nuclear power units in operation or approved for construction, with a combined 135 million kilowatts of installed capacity. That ranks first in the world. Of those, 64 units are operating with about 68.59 million kilowatts, second worldwide. The remaining 56 are under construction or approved and awaiting construction, first worldwide.

Nikkei Asia reported on 1 November that the number of reactors under construction worldwide had risen to 79, driven by AI demand.

Forecasts cited by Global Times put China's operating nuclear capacity first in the world before 2030. They see 200 million kilowatts by 2040. Nuclear would need to supply 18% of electricity generation by 2060.

Where delivery gets hard

Polskie Elektrownie Jadrowe has applied for a permit covering early works at Lubiatowo-Kopalino, the site of Poland's first nuclear plant. The plant will use three Westinghouse AP1000 reactors. An Act of 3 July 2026 introduced the early-works mechanism. PEJ is preparing a construction permit application for 2027.

In the Czech Republic the trouble is contractual. Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power ended about 15 months of negotiations with a consortium of Daewoo Engineering & Construction and Doosan Enerbility over the Dukovany contract. The contract is worth about 27 trillion won, or roughly $20.1bn. KHNP ended the talks on 29 October. It delivered an official notice of termination to Daewoo E&C the following day. It plans to select a new contractor by July 2027.

South Korea's trade ministry says it has no legal authority to mediate between companies with commercial interests. Daewoo E&C had asked it to push for a renegotiation. The company said its final proposal offered to absorb losses of hundreds of billions of won.

KHNP blamed the increased construction volume since the bid. It also said the two sides disagreed over treating added work as a separate contract. Daewoo E&C argued it should not carry that volume without an adjustment to construction cost. It pointed to the risk of building the APR1000 for the first time in Europe.

What comes next

Work at Haiyang-5 moves on to completing the nuclear island foundation and the reactor building structures. Mechanical and electrical installation, pressure testing and fuel loading follow.

In Poland the early works cover the onshore part of the circulating water system, the pipelines that take in and discharge cooling water. They also include a retention basin for rainwater and meltwater, internal roads and launch pits for a tunnel boring machine. The National Atomic Energy Agency has classified the cooling water system as not safety-related. It can therefore be built before the main licences.