The first "Hualong One" nuclear power unit in the Yangtze River Delta region, Unit 1 of the Zhejiang San'ao Nuclear Power Project, successfully connected to the grid on Thursday.

This achievement represents a critical step toward the goal of full commercial operation, China General Nuclear Power Group, the country's largest nuclear power plant operator by installed capacity, said.

The unit will now enter a load-test trial phase, with power-upward and performance tests to follow. It is expected to begin formal commercial power generation in the first half of 2026, it said.

The development comes at a time when the Yangtze River Delta is seeing a surge in the "intelligent economy", led by a cluster of top-tier artificial intelligence enterprises such as DeepSeek. The explosive growth in demand for computing power has resulted in a continuous rise in energy consumption across the region.

Once the entire project is completed, its annual power generation capacity is expected to exceed 54 billion kilowatt-hours. This is sufficient to meet the annual electricity needs of more than 5 million people, while also reducing standard coal consumption by over 16.35 million tons and cutting carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 50 million tons per year.

zhengxin@chinadaily.com.cn