China has announced the start of construction for 6 new nuclear reactors on a site in Yangjiang City, Guangdong province. Each plant will produce 1,000 MW of electrical power (1 GWe). The total cost for the 6 reactor project is expected to be $10.2 billion. The announcement, when added to others means that China plans to start projects for a total of 10 new reactors in the months of November and December 2008. Note – these plants are all indigenous Chinese designs, and are in addition to the already announced Westinghouse and Areva projects. All six reactors are planned to be completed by 2017.
Since China’s energy demands are shrinking a bit during the global economic recession, the output of the new plants will displace output from existing dirty coal plants. Not only will China have access to low cost power, but it may actually return to a state of breathable air. You can read more at Reuters – China starts building Yangjiang nuclear plant. NextBigFuture.com has additional analysis at China’s Low $1565 per Kilowatt Nuclear Power Build Cost and new Cleaner Coal Plants. (Note: NextBigFuture.com and Reuters have slight differences in rounding and exchange rate assumptions.)
