Qualla: Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant

Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 风之清扬, CC BY-SA 3.0. Thirty kilometers east of Lianyungang, on a stretch of Yellow Sea coastline where Jiangsu Province meets the Pacific, eight reactor domes are rising in stages toward a record. When the last two units at Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant achieve commercial operation -- expected by 2027 -- the facility will surpass both South Korea's Kori plant and Japan's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa to become the world's largest nuclear power station, with generation capacity exceeding 9,000 megawatts. It is a distinction born from a 1992 handshake between Russia and China, and three decades of construction that have unfolded across the end of one era and the beginning of another.

Image: 风之清扬 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant: A Cold War Technology in a New Century

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit WPTO, CC BY 4.0. Tianwan's reactor design tells the story of its origins. The first four units use Russia's VVER-1000 pressurized water reactors, each producing approximately one gigawatt of electrical power -- proven Soviet-era technology supplied by Atomstroyexport and built to withstand a 20-t...

Image: WPTO | CC BY 4.0

Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant: Building by Decades

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chk2011, CC BY-SA 4.0. The plant's construction timeline reads like a compressed history of modern Chinese industry. The 1992 cooperation agreement took seven years to produce the first concrete pour in 1999. Jiangsu Nuclear Power Corporation signed contracts for units 3 and 4 in 2009, and by 2015 and ...

Image: Chk2011 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant: Ownership and Investment

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit WPTO, CC BY 4.0. Tianwan is owned by Jiangsu Nuclear Power Corporation, a joint venture split among China National Nuclear Power at fifty percent, Shanghai HeXi Power Investment at thirty percent, and Jiangsu Guoxin Group at twenty percent. The financial scale matches the engineering ambition -- ...

Image: WPTO | CC BY 4.0

Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant: Power on the Pacific Rim

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 风之清扬, CC BY-SA 3.0. From the air, Tianwan presents itself as a row of containment domes along the coast, their white curves stark against the blue of the Yellow Sea. The plant generates electricity for the Jiangsu grid, one of China's most energy-hungry provincial networks, powering the factories, c...

Image: 风之清扬 | CC BY-SA 3.0