从一度电到一吨汽 核能“跨界”应用打开万亿级绿色产业链From one kilowatt-hour to one ton of gasoline, nuclear energy's 'cross-sector' applications open up a trillion-level green industry chain

The "Opinions on Developing New Quality Productive Forces," issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council, points out that actively promoting an energy revolution, focusing on the goals of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, organizing demonstration and promotion of major application scenarios, and accelerating the green transformation of energy use in all walks of life is essential. The application scenarios for nuclear energy are continuously expanding; besides power generation, it can also provide heating for cities and steam for factories, and in the future, it may enter diversified industries such as hydrogen production and seawater desalination.

As the heating season approaches, in the urban area of Haiyang City, Shandong Province, 2026 will mark the 8th heating season served by "Warm Nuclear No. 1" for local residents. The heat source for household heating comes from the Haiyang Nuclear Power Plant more than 20 kilometers away, which is also the country's first comprehensive nuclear energy utilization project. This project extracts part of the steam that has already been used for power generation as a heat source, delivers it to thousands of households through the municipal heating network, and the entire process is completed through five independent circuits. The circuits are mutually independent and physically isolated; only heat is transmitted, with no water exchange, and users receive hot water just like that produced by traditional methods.

Liu Xianling, nuclear heating design engineer at the Shandong Nuclear Power Design Management Office, introduced that the heating for Haiyang and Rushan comes from the Haiyang Nuclear Power Units 1 and 2, which have been in operation for 8 years. The units under construction, Units 3 and 4, are part of the 'Warm Nuclear No.1' project; the main heating equipment and heat transfer pipelines have basically been installed, with completion planned for 2027. By then, the warm energy from Haiyang Nuclear Power will be transmitted over a hundred kilometers to Qingdao, allowing Qingdao residents to use heat from a nuclear power plant for the first time. In 2026, the heating area provided by 'Warm Nuclear No.1' will expand from 13.5 million square meters to 13.9 million square meters, serving 400,000 residents in the cities of Haiyang and Rushan.

Liu Fei, chairman of State Power Investment Corporation Shandong Nuclear Power, stated that Units 5 and 6 were approved in 2025 and are about to start construction. The design originally considered the 'cogeneration' function. Once completed in 2032, the heating capacity of all six units at Haiyang Nuclear Power will exceed 150 million square meters, sufficient to meet the clean heating needs of 25 county-level cities.

In addition to civilian use, the application of nuclear energy in the industrial field is also accelerating. In Xuwei, Jiangsu, the world’s first "Hualong One High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor" dual-reactor coupling project has already started construction. The high-temperature gas-cooled reactor has a high outlet temperature and is specifically responsible for further heating saturated steam to produce high-quality industrial steam required by the petrochemical industry. Once the first phase is completed, it will supply 32.5 million tons of industrial steam annually and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 19.6 million tons.

Chen Gang, Deputy Director of the Design Management Department of CNNC Su Neng Nuclear Power Co., Ltd., explained that Hualong One produces a large amount of steam, and the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor produces steam at a high temperature. By combining the two, one provides the baseline while the other improves quality, complementing each other’s strengths and jointly achieving combined heat and power supply. The significance of this project lies in opening a path for nuclear energy to move from single-purpose power generation to the coordinated supply of heat, electricity, and steam. According to CNNC, China is actively exploring new paths for comprehensive utilization of nuclear energy, promoting diversified applications of large pressurized water reactors, modular small reactors, and high-temperature gas-cooled reactors in urban heating, industrial steam supply, hydrogen production, and seawater desalination.

Beyond nuclear energy, the use of clean energy sources such as wind and solar power is also continuously expanding. Recently, the world's first commercial green ammonia fuel bunkering on a ship was completed in Zhoushan, Zhejiang. A bunkering vessel slowly approached a 210,000-ton ammonia-powered ocean-going cargo ship, injecting 1,000 tons of green ammonia fuel into the ship's tanks through pipelines. This green ammonia comes from Songyuan, Jilin, 2,000 kilometers away. The 'Qing Hydrogen No. 1' SinoHydrogen Songyuan Hydrogen Energy Industrial Park is the world's largest integrated green hydrogen-ammonia-methanol project, obtaining EU green certification upon commissioning and signing the world's first long-distance shipping green ammonia product sales contract. Li Jingguang, chairman of China Energy Engineering Hydrogen Energy Company, explained that this bunkering operation was carried out across multiple regions, linking all aspects from green ammonia production, land transportation, port storage, waterway transport, to ship bunkering.

In Songyuan, Jilin, the green ammonia produced by the “Qing Hydrogen No.1” industrial park is transported by road to the tank area of Nanjing Port, then sent through pipelines to the world's first dedicated liquid ammonia bunkering ship, the “Shenghang Yongle.” From there, it is transferred by the ship to the Zhoushan offshore anchorage for bunkering, eventually starting ocean-going commercial shipping. This enables the full-chain carbon footprint traceability of green ammonia. Wei Wendi, an engineer from the Technical Management Department of Nengjian Green Hydrogen-Ammonia New Energy (Songyuan) Co., Ltd., stated that currently, the first phase of the “Qing Hydrogen No.1” project has a daily green ammonia production exceeding 700 tons. The ammonia synthesis production line has already reached full capacity, which is equivalent to consuming 7 million kilowatt-hours of green electricity per day. The first phase of the project is equipped with 800 megawatts of renewable energy installations, including 750 megawatts of wind power and 50 megawatts of photovoltaic power, producing 45,000 tons of green hydrogen and then synthesizing 200,000 tons of green ammonia annually. On October 20, the second phase of the Songyuan project commenced construction. Upon completion, the combined annual output of green ammonia from the first and second phases will reach 600,000 tons.

[Source: CCTV]

[Editor: Xiao Neng]