AIBRIEF
Friday's cabinet sign off, the first batch of the 15th five year planning period, adds 8 units across four coastal provinces to a pipeline of 58 already under construction.
China's State Council on Friday approved eight new nuclear reactors across four provincial projects, committing more than 170 billion yuan (US$25.2 billion) to a buildout designed to push installed nuclear capacity from 68.5 gigawatts today toward 110 gigawatts by 2030.
The sign-off, the first batch of reactor approvals under the 15th five-year planning period (2026–2030), places two units each in Zhejiang, Guangdong, Liaoning, and Shandong, all coastal provinces with the cooling water and grid access that large reactors require.
The NDRC's power-sector five-year plan, released Monday, reaffirms the 110 GW by-2030 target as the spine of a "new power system" built around low-carbon stability. Installed nuclear capacity stood at 68.5 gigawatts at the end of June, per the national nuclear regulator, and 58 units with combined capacity of 69.5 gigawatts are already under construction according to the National Energy Administration. That pipeline is larger than the current fleet. The plan also targets a 50% non-fossil share of power generation by 2030.
Analysts read the nuclear push as much about energy security, Beijing's term for insulating the grid from fuel shocks, as about climate. The NDRC document explicitly folds data-center and AI compute demand into the load forecast.
Approvals are expected to land in tranches; the next batch has not been dated.