First Concrete Poured for Unit 5 at China’s Haiyang Nuclear Plant

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State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC) has poured the first safety-related concrete for the nuclear island of unit 5 at its Haiyang nuclear power plant in Shandong province, China, marking the formal start of main construction on the reactor. Contractor China Nuclear Industry 24 Construction Co Ltd (CNNC 24), a subsidiary of state nuclear group CNNC, carried out the pour on October 31, using about 6,626 cubic metres of concrete over a continuous operation of nearly 62 hours, World Nuclear News reported on Monday.

A sixth reactor for an expanding coastal site

Unit 5 is a CAP1000 reactor, the Chinese-adapted version of Westinghouse’s AP1000 pressurised water reactor design, and is the fifth of six units planned at Haiyang. China’s State Council approved construction of units 5 and 6 on April 27, 2025, and the National Nuclear Safety Administration has since issued construction permits for both. CNNC 24 is handling civil construction of the nuclear islands for this third phase of the site.

What the expanded plant is meant to deliver

SPIC expects that once units 5 and 6 are complete, Haiyang’s total annual electricity generation will reach 60.9 billion kilowatt-hours. The site also supplies district heating: its heating capacity is set to exceed 150 million square metres, serving 25 county-level cities in the region. CNNC 24 said in a statement that the expanded plant would be "capable of meeting the annual electricity needs of 54 million residents," underscoring both the scale of the project and the role nuclear cogeneration is playing in northern Chinese heating networks.

Part of a longer build-out

Haiyang’s first two reactors, both standard AP1000 units, entered commercial operation in October 2018 and January 2019. A second phase added two CAP1000 units: construction on unit 3 began in July 2022 and on unit 4 in April 2025, with both scheduled to reach full commercial operation in 2027. Unit 5’s first concrete pour effectively starts the clock on the plant’s third and final planned phase, continuing a build-out that has run almost without interruption since 2018 and that mirrors China’s broader push to keep adding large reactors to its coastal fleet even as it also develops small modular designs elsewhere, a strategy with echoes in the UAE’s own multi-unit Barakah nuclear plant.

Sources

World Nuclear News, November 2, 2026 — construction timeline, capacity figures and quotes from CNNC 24.
TheDailyEnergy.com, China Energy Profile — background on China’s power generation mix.