Tianwan Unit 7 starts fuel loading for 1.265-million-kilowatt reactor

On August 12, the first fuel assembly slid into the core of Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant Unit 7, the first fuel-loading operation in China for this reactor type. A fully automatic remote system is handling the job, while operators watch from a control room 30 meters from the reactor hall and verify each placement to millimeter precision. The unit now moves into nuclear commissioning.

The procedure is exacting because fuel loading installs the reactor’s fuel for the next stage of testing. Unit 7 must receive fuel assemblies, transferred, positioned in the core, and checked for correctness. The process is divided into those three steps, with the loading equipment doing the physical work and the operators supervising it remotely.

Tianwan is operated by CNNC and sits at the center of China-Russia nuclear cooperation. Units 1 through 6 have delivered more than 500 billion kilowatt-hours of cumulative safe grid power, according to the project account. Units 7 and 8 each have an installed capacity of 1.265 million kilowatts, a design life of 60 years, and are planned to enter commercial operation in 2026 and 2027.

So what changes in practice? Unit 7 is not producing commercial electricity yet, but it has reached a fuel-loading milestone and is moving toward reactor criticality and later grid operation. If the schedule holds, the two units will expand a nuclear base that the operator says is planned to exceed 9 million kilowatts of installed capacity and supply above 70 billion kilowatt-hours of power annually. The operator also projects annual CO2 emission reductions of 57.4 million tons once the entire base is operational.