China General Nuclear Power Corp (CGN) has started main construction of the second unit at its Shandong Zhaoyuan nuclear power project, marking full-scale construction of the first phase.

The first concrete pour for the unit's nuclear island began on September 5 at 9:18 am, CGN said. Units 1 and 2 received national approval on August 19, 2024, with unit 1's main construction starting on November 18, 2025 as China's first Hualong One unit equipped with cooling towers.

The reactor building raft foundation for unit 2 is a cylinder measuring 27 meters in radius and 3.7 meters in height, requiring about 8,800 cubic meters of concrete with continuous construction expected to last around 60 hours.

Yu Xiangdong, executive director of Shandong Zhaoyuan Nuclear Power Co., said the project has leveraged its industrial advantages to integrate local Shandong enterprises into the Hualong One supply chain, with over 300 companies in the province now cooperating with the project. The plant is also being integrated into the Jiaodong Peninsula clean heating network to develop nuclear heating and industrial steam supply demonstration applications.

The project has applied 17 advanced construction technologies since the first phase began, including China's first fully intelligent steel reinforcement processing workshop in the nuclear industry and a robotic automated production workshop for embedded parts. A digital construction system coordinated with the Beidou navigation system has been established to reduce human error risks during concrete pouring.

The Zhaoyuan project plans to build six Hualong One units, each equipped with a 203-meter-high natural draft cooling tower with a spray area of 16,800 square meters, replacing the sea as the direct cold source for the conventional island.

Once fully completed, the plant is expected to generate 50 TWh of electricity annually based on 2025 average utilization hours, meeting the annual production and living electricity needs of over 5 million people. This would save approximately 15.02 million tonnes of standard coal and cut carbon dioxide emissions by about 46.2 million tonnes annually, equivalent to planting over 110,000 hectares of forest.