Tianwan 7 sends first power to China's grid, a Russian VVER-1200 in Jiangsu
Victoria Shinder2 min readUnit 7 of the Tianwan nuclear power plant in Jiangsu province, China, delivered its first electricity to the grid on 8 October, China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) announced, according to World Nuclear News. The connection came just over a week after the reactor reached a self-sustaining chain reaction and was brought to minimum controllable power.
The unit. Tianwan 7 is a VVER-1200, the Russian-designed pressurised water reactor, built under agreements Russia and China signed in June 2018 for units 7 and 8. Construction of unit 7 began in May 2021 and of unit 8 in February 2022; the two were scheduled to enter commercial operation in 2026 and 2027. CNNC said the parties completed reactor protection logic verification, criticality, turbine start-up and the generator short-circuit test, and that the unit will now go through further tests. Power will be raised in stages, with checks at each level, up to full power and commercial operation.
Where it fits on the site. Tianwan is owned by Jiangsu Nuclear Power Company — CNNC 50%, China Power Investment Corporation 30%, Jiangsu Guoxin Group 20%. Units 1–4, in commercial operation between June 2007 and December 2018, are earlier Russian VVERs; units 5 and 6 use China's own ACPR1000 design. Unit 7 finished hot functional tests on 30 December; cold tests at unit 8 were completed earlier this month.
The numbers when complete. With all eight units running, the site's installed capacity will exceed 9 GWe, generating more than 70 TWh a year, which CNNC puts at 57.4 million tonnes of avoided CO₂ annually.
Why it is notable. Tianwan is the clearest example of China building two reactor families side by side — imported Russian units and domestic designs — on a single coastal site. For Rosatom, the unit is one of the foreign start-ups it hoped to complete in 2026; for the Jiangsu grid, it is roughly another 1.2 GW of baseload arriving in stages over the coming weeks.
Source: World Nuclear News, "China's Tianwan 7 connected to the grid", 8 October 2026 — https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/chinas-tianwan-7-connected-to-the-grid