Uranium exploration gets ramped up

China is speeding up exploration of uranium resources and its efforts to develop indigenous technologies to make nuclear fuel assemblies as part of its 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) to have enough fuel to supply a massive program for nuclear power projects. Nuclear fuel assemblies are groups of rods that provide fuel for reactors.

The plan, made public recently after the annual two sessions, the political event that sets out the economic, political and social road map for the country for the coming year, said China will "optimize the nuclear fuel supply system" of developing nuclear power.

It also confirmed the country's target to double its current nuclear generation capacity of about 28 gigawatts to 58 gW by the end of 2020, which will raise China's uranium demand to about 15 percent of the global market, according to the World Nuclear Association.

The two biggest reactor builders, China National Nuclear Corp. and China General Nuclear Power Corp., have been buying uranium mines in Asia and Africa.

The CNNC is also exploring domestic uranium deposits and is building the first uranium production base with a capacity of more than 1,000 tons in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Uranium demand in China is expected to reach 20,000 tons annually by 2020, eclipsing production from domestic mines and China-owned mines overseas, the World Nuclear Association said.

At the same time, China is building two uranium processing plants in the north and south of the country, one in Cangzhou, Hebei province, and the other in a location yet to be decided in Guangdong province, where there are already many reactors, the CNNC said.

"Everything is going smoothly in Cangzhou," said Pan Jianming, a CNNC spokesman.

"We have finished the preliminary work and are now waiting for government approval, but we are still deciding where to build the plant in Guangdong."

The two processing plants are expected to provide a one-stop factory for uranium enrichment and fuel fabrication for reactors both domestic and abroad, experts said.

The Chinese companies are developing indigenous technologies on manufacturing nuclear fuel assemblies so if they are unable to enrich and process the ore, they can rely on foreign firms to fabricate the nuclear fuel.

To reduce the reliance, the CNNC is developing CF series fuel, a kind of fuel assembly, which is expected to go into commercial operation before the end of next year.

Pan said the current production capacity of nuclear fuel assembly for pressurized water reactors, a major type of reactor used in many Chinese nuclear power plants, rose four-fold last year compared with five years earlier.