Nuclear construction hits a 40-year high as Poland files early works permit

The application covers the onshore part of the plant's circulating water system, a retention basin, internal roads and launch pits for a tunnel boring machine. The plant is to run three Westinghouse AP1000 reactors.

The work can start before the main nuclear licences arrive. Poland's Act of 3 July 2026 created an early works route for non-nuclear infrastructure. The nuclear regulator had already classified the cooling water system as not safety-related. For Warsaw the point is schedule: PEJ says the pipelines under the beach and the Baltic seabed can go in without waiting for further approvals. Energy minister Miłosz Motyka called the plant "the largest energy project in the history of Poland". PEJ still plans to file for a construction permit in 2027, so no reactor building has been approved yet.

Nikkei Asia tied the wave to rising fossil fuel prices and the spread of energy-hungry artificial intelligence.

First concrete for Haiyang-5 in Shandong was poured on 31 October, contractor State Power Investment Corp said. NucNet described the unit as a 1,161-MW CAP1000 pressurised water reactor. The Global Times quoted Liu Fei, head of SPIC Shandong Nuclear Power's Haiyang project, saying design optimisation had raised each unit's rated electrical output to 1.3 million kilowatts. The two figures do not match. China has 120 nuclear power units in operation or approved for construction. Their combined installed capacity is 135 million kilowatts, and 56 are under construction or approved and awaiting construction. SPIC says the six-unit Haiyang site would generate 60.9 billion kilowatt-hours a year once complete.

Rosatom chief executive Alexei Likhachev said the company is in talks with Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana and Uganda about large-scale reactors, NucNet reported. Nine African countries have shown interest in its floating plants. In Egypt, Rosatom is weighing an expansion of El Dabaa from four reactors to six.

Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power ended talks with the Daewoo E&C and Doosan Enerbility consortium on 29 October. The dispute was over construction costs and risk allocation at the Czech Dukovany plant. KHNP aims to pick a new builder by July 2027. The consortium answered in a Q&A booklet released on 30 October, saying KHNP had proposed quantities above those in the bid without accounting for the resulting increase in cost. It also argued the Czech project uses a new APR-1000 design with no reference plant, which makes a lump-sum contract hard to price.

Russia and the junta agreed in March 2025 on a 110-MW plant, possibly 330 MW, using two Russian small modular reactors. Rosatom said in August 2026 that construction would start in 2027. The Strategist argued on 3 November that Australia should work with ASEAN and the Quad to stop the project.