On November 15, China’s largest nuclear heating project—Warm-U-Clear-1 by State Power Investment Corporation officially started operation to provide heating, bringing warmth to 200,000 residents of Haiyang, Shandong province, the nation’s first ‘zero-carbon’ heating city.

As China’s largest nuclear heating project, the heating capacity of the project accounts for 92.8% of the total nuclear heating capacity in the country.

In 2019, Phase I (31.5MW) of the Warm-U-Clear-1 Project was put into operation and named as “National Nuclear Heating Commercial Demonstration Project’ by the National Energy Administration.

In 2021, Phase II (202.5MW) of the project was put into operation, making Haiyang the first ‘zero-carbon’ heating city in China, achieving a win-win result for the local people and government, the heating company, and the nuclear power plant while making contribution to ecological and environmental protection.

According to statistics, the three heating seasons since Warm-U-Clear-1 Project started operation have seen clean heating of 2.582 million GJ, reducing 230,000 tons of raw coal consumption and avoiding 420,000 tons of CO2 emission.

At present, Phase III (the 900MW long range and cross-regional nuclear heating project) of the project is progressing as planned. It is scheduled to be put into operation by the winter of 2023, when the heating area will reach 30 million square meters, meeting the heating demand of about 1 million people. Meanwhile, it will replace the raw coal consumption by 0.9 million tons, reducing the carbon dioxide emissions by 1.65 million tons, with contribution to carbon reduction 5 times that of Phase II. Moreover, the unit heating efficiency is expected to be increased to 55.9%, which is 1.5 times that of the original, making the environmental benefits, the energy efficiency and resource utilization improved greatly.