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Overview of Nuclear Power Development in China Tong Jiejuan Sun Yuliang Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China Energy and power economy Continuous rapid economy growth in China has been taking place in the past years, along with the remarkable increase in primary energy and power consumption (Figure 1). According to the latest statistics[1] , the annual primary energy consumption in China reaches 2613 Mtoe in 2011 with an average annual increase of 9.02% over the period of 2000-2011. Electricity generation and consumption experienced even more vigorous growths in the past decade. Figure 1 Primary Energy Consumption and Electricity Generation (2000-2011) In order to catch up with the social-economic development, China has taken a series of reformatory measures in the energy industry. Energy supply capability has been improved significantly. For example, the installed electricity generating capacity in China has been developed with an average annual increase of 9.2% and reached 1056 GW in 2011[2] (Figure 2). According to the general social-economic development goals which Chinese government has set for the next decades[3], the per capita GDP by 2020 will quadruple relative to that in 2000, and by the middle of this century, the per capita GDP value will increase from the current value of about 3,000USD to 25,000USD, about the level of some moderately developed countries. Therefore, it is expected that primary energy and electricity consumption in China will continue to grow significantly in the next decades. Figure 2 Electricity Generation Capacities (2000-2011) Besides the challenges brought by the economic development demand, the challenges from the energy restructure are notable either. One of the most striking characteristics of China’s energy economy is its heavy reliance on coal (Figure 3)[1], which takes up about 70% in primary energy consumption. Hydropower contributes to 17.67%, and the rest