At 9:18 a.m. on September 5, the first barrel of safety-related concrete was poured for the nuclear island of Unit 2 at CGN’s Shandong Zhaoyuan Nuclear Power Project, marking the First Concrete Date (FCD) and the official commencement of main construction for the unit. This signifies that Phase I of the project has entered full-scale construction.

Shandong Zhaoyuan Nuclear Power is CGN’s tenth nuclear power base in China. Units 1 and 2 were approved by the state on August 19, 2024. Main construction of Unit 1 began on November 18, 2025, making it China’s first Hualong One nuclear power unit equipped with a cooling tower. The raft foundation of the Unit 2 reactor building involved in this concrete pour is cylindrical, with a radius of 27 meters and a height of 3.7 meters. Approximately 8,800 cubic meters of concrete will be poured over an estimated 60 hours of continuous work.

“Zhaoyuan Nuclear Power has leveraged its industrial strengths to establish platforms such as industrial-chain and supply-and-demand pairing events, actively driving local Shandong companies to join the Hualong One supply chain. More than 300 Shandong companies have established partnerships with Zhaoyuan Nuclear Power,” said Yu Xiangdong, Secretary of the Party Committee and Executive Director of Shandong Zhaoyuan Nuclear Power Co., Ltd. He added that the project is actively integrating into the construction of a unified clean-heating network across the Jiaodong Peninsula,, building a demonstration base for the comprehensive utilization of nuclear energy, and advancing demonstration applications such as nuclear heating and industrial steam supply.

Since the start of Phase I construction, the company has remained committed to technological innovation and upgrades, comprehensively advancing improvements in construction techniques and digital intelligence management to ensure steady progress. To date, a total of 17 advanced construction technologies have been fully applied. The project has put into operation the first full-process intelligent rebar-processing workshop in China’s nuclear power industry, as well as a robotic automated production workshop for embedded parts, known as the “Building Block Factory”. These facilities have significantly improved structural forming quality and multiplied construction efficiency, driving the transformation of nuclear power construction from “traditional construction” to “intelligent construction”. The project has also built “Concrete Chain”, a full-scenario digital intelligence construction system operating in coordination with the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, effectively reducing human-factor risks in concrete pouring and keeping quality under control throughout the process.

CGN’s Shandong Zhaoyuan Nuclear Power Project plans to build six Hualong One nuclear power units. Each unit will be equipped with a 203-meter-high high-level water collecting (HLWC) natural draft cooling tower with a water-spraying area of 16,800 square meters, utilizing the atmosphere instead of the sea as the direct heat sink for the conventional island. Upon full completion, and calculated based on China’s average nuclear power utilization hours in 2025, the project is expected to generate 50 billion kWh of electricity annually, enough to meet the annual residential and industrial electricity demand of more than 5 million people. This is equivalent to saving approximately 15.02 million tonnes of standard coal and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by about 46.2 million tonnes each year, delivering environmental benefits comparable to afforestation of more than 110,000 hectares.