Friday, 14 August 2026

China's State Council approved construction of eight more reactors on 31 July, according to World Nuclear News, at a meeting chaired by Premier Li Qiang. The package covers three pairs of Hualong One reactors at the Jinqimen, Taipingling and Zhuanghe sites and two Guohe One units at Laiyang.

The approval landed alongside two operating milestones. Unit 3 of the Changjiang nuclear power plant in Hainan province has begun supplying electricity to the grid, World Nuclear News reported.

In Guangdong, Taipingling unit 2 has entered commercial operation. The pressurised water reactor, rated at 1,116 MWe net, was connected to the grid on 4 July, according to World Nuclear News.

Taipingling therefore appears in both records at once: as a site with a unit newly cleared for commercial output, and as a site holding fresh construction approval for a further pair of Hualong One units.

On the Hualong One programme itself, CNNC said 10 units are commercially operational domestically and internationally, with another 37 units approved for construction, per World Nuclear News. The 31 July decision adds six Hualong One units to that approved pipeline across the three named sites.

The Guohe One design, also referred to as CAP1400, accounts for the remaining two units in the approved batch, both at Laiyang.

Engineering design, licensing and safety analysis work for Blue Energy's paired gas and nuclear complex in Victoria, Texas, has moved forward under a new agreement, with the project still awaiting a final investment decision in 2027, Power Engineering Nuclear reported.

The site is designed around two equipment families: GE Vernova 7HA.02 gas turbines and GVH BWRX-300 small modular reactors.

Capacity arrives in two tranches. Two GE Vernova gas turbines would supply roughly 1 GW to a data center next to the site in 2030, followed by an additional 1.5 GW drawn from as many as five GE Vernova Hitachi SMRs starting in 2032, according to Power Engineering Nuclear.

Blue Energy puts time to power at 48 months or less, a figure the company attributes to energizing the turbines on what it calls a natural gas bridge that later converts to nuclear power, per Power Engineering Nuclear.

That ordering required a regulatory sign-off of its own. The NRC approved Blue Energy's method for resequencing the major phases of nuclear plant construction, an approach tied to large module and gas-to-nuclear delivery schedules, Power Engineering Nuclear reported.

No BWRX-300 unit is yet running. The first one is being built at Ontario Power Generation's Darlington site in Canada, and completion is expected by the end of the decade, which would make it potentially the first grid-scale SMR in the Western world, according to Power Engineering Nuclear.