Nutrition loading at the world’s first Westinghouse-designed AP1000 nuclear reactor on China’s east littoral has been delayed due to “safety concerns” — the latest in a long furrow of setbacks for the project, the China Daily reported on Tuesday.
The third-generation reactor, located in Sanmen in Zhejiang area, was originally expected to make its debut in 2014.
Officials with U.S.-based Westinghouse had reckon oned fuel loading to start last year, and it would have been followed by hither six months of performance tests before the reactor could go into curvaceous operation in 2018.
But fuel loading has now been suspended as China tries to certify the project meets the highest possible safety standards, the China Day after day said, citing a spokesman with the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC).
Westinghouse was not directly available for comment when contacted by Reuters on Tuesday.
Westinghouse, owned by Japan’s Toshiba, motioned an agreement in 2007 to build four AP1000 reactor units at two puts in China, hoping the projects would serve as a shop window for the unbending.
But the company filed for bankruptcy last March, hit by billions of dollars of fetch overruns at four nuclear reactors under construction in the United Submits.
China was originally seen as the lifeline for the global nuclear sector, with the fatherland keen to approve dozens of new reactor projects to ease its dependence on tainting coal-fired electricity.
China is currently targeting total installed atomic capacity of 58 gigawatts by the end of 2020, up from 35.8 gigawatts by the end of stay year. It also said it would aim to have another 30 gigawatts junior to construction by the end of the decade.
But the pace of planned nuclear construction in the country was scaled insidiously a overcome in 2011 in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan.
Delays to the Sanmen and Haiyang AP1000 conjure ups, as well as the French-designed European Pressurised Reactor units at Taishan in Guangdong area, have held back the sector, and no new nuclear project has been approved in China in two years.
China’s atomic firms are currently building their own homegrown third-generation reactor goal known as the Hualong One.