Lungmen Nuclear Power Plant

The Lungmen Nuclear Power Plant (Chinese: 龍門核能發電廠; pinyin: Lóngmén Hénéng Fādiànchǎng), formerly known as Gongliao and commonly as the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant (Chinese: 核四; pinyin: Hésì; lit. 'Nuke 4'), is an unfinished nuclear power plant in New Taipei City, Taiwan. It consists of two ABWRs each of 1,300 MWe net. It is owned by Taiwan Power Company (Taipower).

  • Lungmen Nuclear Power Plant
  • 龍門核能發電廠
CountryTaiwan
LocationGongliao District
Coordinates25°02′19″N 121°55′27″E
StatusMothballed
Construction began1999
Commission date
  • N/A (Unit 1)
  • N/A (Unit 2)
Construction cost
  • NT$280 billion
  • (US$9.4 billion)
Owner(s)Taipower
Operator(s)Taipower
Nuclear power station
Reactor typeABWR
Reactor supplierGeneral Electric
Power generation
Units under const.2 x 1,350 MW
Nameplate capacity2,700 MW
External links
CommonsRelated media on Commons

It was intended to be the first of these advanced Generation III reactors built outside Japan. The preceding four reactors in Japan were completed in four to five years. Taipower, however, did not award the contract to a single architect/engineering firm, but split the procurement amongst multiple vendors, complicating the project management and increasing costs. In 2000, the project was canceled due to political opposition when it was approximately 10–30% complete, but restarted in February 2001.

A national referendum was proposed in 2014 to decide if construction of the plant should continue, but the referendum was rejected from the ballot for contradictory and confusing language. Taipower submitted a plan to mothball Unit 1, which was by then complete, and freeze construction of Unit 2, starting in 2015. In 2018, Taipower started removing unused fuel from Unit 1 and returned the fuel to the United States. In December 2021, the proposal to continue construction of Unit 2 was narrowly rejected in a referendum. Given that Tsai Ing Wen of the ruling DPP opposes nuclear power and wishes to complete a nuclear phaseout by 2025 (one year after the 2024 Taiwanese presidential election), it is unlikely that construction will ever restart even though it is technologically feasible in principle and not without precedent to finish construction of a nuclear power plant after decades of no construction activity on a legacy construction project.

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