China mulls converting coal-fired power plants to nuclear facilities

Retiring plants could be given a new lease of life and help China reach its decarbonisation goals under a bold proposal.

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Guohua Power Station, a coal-fired power plant, operates in Dingzhou, Baoding, in the northern China’s Hebei province. Engineers are looking into turning retired power plants into nuclear facilities to help reach its decarbonisation goals. Photo: AP

Published: 2:00pm, 15 Sep 2025Updated: 4:53pm, 15 Sep 2025

Targeting its overwhelming coal power capacity – enough to run the entire United States – China is investigating plans to convert retiring coal-fired plants into nuclear power stations.

Driven by decarbonisation goals and land scarcity, this “Coal to Nuclear” (C2N) strategy would look to use retiring plants’ grid and water access for compact, meltdown-proof reactors, potentially offering a faster path to clean energy than building nuclear sites from scratch.

And China could be the only country capable of doing this because its high-temperature gas-cooled reactor and molten salt thorium reactor, which can generate much hotter steam than ordinary reactors to power the coal-fired gas turbines with high efficiency, are already up and running.

These fourth-generation reactors could also have a greater chance of meeting site safety requirements and securing public acceptance, according to the researchers involved in the project.

China is home to over 1.19 terawatts of coal-fired power capacity, with roughly 100 gigawatts (GW) of coal capacity expected to reach retirement by 2030.

The C2N initiative, proposed by China Energy Engineering Group Co (CEEC), the nation’s top state-owned energy infrastructure builder, offers a direct path to decarbonisation while preserving valuable infrastructure, especially in the coastal areas.

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