Nuclear power plants expand across borders to expand new industrial landscape

China's nuclear power continues to advance.

Let’s look at the chassis first. Throughout 2025, the average utilization hours of China's nuclear power equipment was 7,870 hours, and the cumulative power generation for the year was 467.7 billion kilowatt-hours, ranking second in the world for six consecutive years. The main business is stable enough and the fundamentals are strong enough. This is the prerequisite for nuclear power plants to expand new boundaries.

But changes are already happening around nuclear power plants.

Tianwan Nuclear Power Station in Jiangsu Province has a 23.36-kilometer pipeline network that continuously delivers clean steam generated by nuclear fission heat to the petrochemical base; Haiyang Nuclear Power Station in Shandong Province brings nuclear energy heating into the homes of ordinary people; Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant in Zhejiang Province produces lutetium-177, yttrium-90, and strontium-89 one after another, and the localization and application scope of isotopes gradually expands.

From "a ton of steam" and "a warm current" to "a dose of medicine", nuclear power plants are no longer just one-way power generation, but have begun to integrate into industrial production, public services and life and health.

The question then arises, why are nuclear power plants “crossing the border” one after another?

Behind this, there are changes in business logic brought about by the jump in the scale of China's nuclear power, as well as the clear pull of national strategy.

Currently, China has 65 nuclear power units with operating licenses, and it will be close to 100 by 2030, when the number of operating units will rank first in the world.

As the scale increases, the accounting logic changes. Everyone is beginning to focus on the comprehensive utilization efficiency and added value of nuclear energy. In other words, how to sell the output of a reactor at a higher price and release more value.

At the same time, the national level has issued multiple documents to clearly promote the comprehensive utilization of nuclear energy, accelerate the green and low-carbon transformation of energy, and push the multiple values ​​of nuclear energy to the forefront of the industry.

As a result, the application of nuclear energy has accelerated.

The "Heqi No. 1" project of Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant sends steam into the petrochemical park, replacing the traditional high energy-consuming coal-fired steam supply. The nuclear power plant is currently the largest seawater desalination project in the domestic nuclear power industry that is put into operation, with a fresh water production capacity of 1,520 cubic meters per hour and a daily fresh water production capacity of approximately 36,500 tons.

Facing northern cities that need heating, how to maintain both warmth and blue skies? Nuclear energy combined heat and power provides a new solution. Shandong Nuclear Power's "Warm Core No. 1" has completed seven heating seasons and currently provides zero-carbon heating to approximately 400,000 residents in Haiyang and Rushan, creating a new path for the low-carbon transformation of urban public services.

If steam and heating are used to utilize the thermal energy of the reactor, then in the production of medical isotopes, nuclear reactors are used to "refine" life-saving medicines.

For a long time, my country has been highly dependent on imports of medical isotopes, which has severely restricted the development of nuclear medicine in my country and increased the cost of diagnosis and treatment for domestic patients.

This deadlock is being broken. Relying on "Hefu No. 1", Qinshan Nuclear Power has successfully achieved large-scale production of medical isotopes such as carbon-14, lutetium-177, and cobalt-60, promoting the extension of application scenarios from single power generation to the field of medical isotopes.

When China's nuclear power plants are not limited to power generation, but extend into diverse business formats such as steam supply, heat supply, and pharmaceutical production, a huge new industrial space is being opened.

Through this industrial blue ocean, we see not only the continuous development of China's nuclear technology, but also the hard-core strength of a large manufacturing country to systematically integrate resources and open up the industrial chain when facing green transformation and breakthroughs in high-precision fields.

In a word, the advancement of China's nuclear power is not just about generating a few more kilowatt hours of electricity, but also starting to reassess the value of a reactor.