The contract for the plant was agreed in July 2007.[4]
Announcement of the project start came roughly twelve months after Westinghouse won a bidding contest over other companies. The contract for the new plant involved The Shaw Group (now Chicago Bridge and Iron), a minority shareholder in Westinghouse. Westinghouse was controlled by Japanese Toshiba. The Shaw Group did provide engineering, procurement, commissioning, information management and project management services.[4]
The first pair of reactors were estimated to cost CNY 32.4 billion yuan, later estimates in 2013 gave figures of CNY 40.1 billion ($6.12 billion USD).[5] The final sum was CNY 10 billion yuan higher.[6]
Groundbreaking for the first and second units was held 26 February 2008.[7][8] Excavation for the first unit was completed in September 2008. Quality of the pit was certified, putting the project 67 days ahead of schedule.[9] Construction of Sanmen Unit 1 began on 19 April 2009, as the first 5,200 m3 of concrete were poured for the foundation, in a ceremony attended by State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation (SNPTC) chair Wang Binghua and Westinghouse CEO Aris Candris.[10][11]
First concrete for Sanmen 2 was poured on 15 December 2009.[12]
In June 2014, China First Heavy Industries completed the first domestically produced AP1000 reactor pressure vessel for the second AP1000 unit.[13]
The units were originally projected to begin operation in 2014 and 2015. In April 2015, a start date of 2016 was projected for both.[14] One month later, the start date was put back to 2017.[15][16] In January 2017 China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) announced that the final reactor coolant pump had been installed with start of operations still foreseen for 2017.[17] As of March 2018[update], Sanmen 1 had completed pre-fuelling safety checks but was not expected to be connected to the grid until the fall of 2018 at the earliest.[18] Hot testing of Sanmen 1 was completed in June 2017, and fuel loading started on 25 April 2018. It subsequently became the first AP1000 reactor in the world to achieve first criticality at 2:09 AM on 21 June 2018,[19] and was connected to the grid on 30 June 2018.[20]
Sanmen Unit 1 entered into commercial operation on 21 September 2018.[21]
Sanmen Unit 2 achieved first criticality on 17 August 2018 and was connected to the grid on 24 August 2018. Full-power demonstration testing was completed on 5 November 2018, and the unit is now considered to be in commercial operation.[22][23]
In March 2019 Sanmen Unit 2 shut down because of a reactor coolant pump defect, with the root cause still under investigation.[24] A replacement pump has been shipped from the United States by Curtiss-Wright. There have been previous problems with these pumps with impeller blade quality, which involved the return of three pumps to the U.S. in 2013.[25][26]
Reactor data
The Sanmen Nuclear Power Plant consist of 2 operational reactors.[27]
Groundwork for units 3 and 4 have been carried out, but during the process, the project nearly came to a standstill. This comes due to delays with CAP-1000 projects. However, on 20 April 2022, permission to resume construction on the two units was approved by the State Council.[33]
^"CURTISS-WRIGHT PROVIDES UPDATE ON AP1000 REACTOR COOLANT PUMPS". Curtiss-Wright Corporation. 1 April 2019. Retrieved 25 July 2019. At this time, the root-cause of this situation, presently limited to a single RCP, is unknown and we are in the process of evaluating the cause(s) in conjunction with Westinghouse and China.
^"US-designed Chinese nuclear reactor forced to shut by pump defect". Platts. S&P Global. 14 March 2019. Retrieved 23 July 2019. China's Sanmen-2 nuclear reactor, the third US-designed Westinghouse AP1000 unit to begin operating in the world, has been shut temporarily because of a defect in a reactor coolant pump, which is being replaced, a top Chinese nuclear regulator said Thursday. A replacement reactor coolant pump has been shipped from the US ... The pumps were manufactured by US-based Curtiss-Wright. During construction of the Sanmen and Haiyang units in China, several of the pumps were returned from China to the US for repairs after a defect was discovered that resulted in localized heating of the pumps.
