CompanyGraph
China National Nuclear Power Co., Ltd.
601985 · SSE · China
Fissions domestically enriched uranium-235 inside licensed reactor vessels to drive steam turbines supplying baseload electricity to China's national grid.
China National Nuclear Power generates baseload electricity by sustaining uranium-235 fission inside reactor vessels, a process that cannot modulate output like a gas turbine and cannot recover lost generation hours once an unplanned shutdown occurs, forcing continuous staffing, cooling water supply, and unbroken fuel assembly availability as hard dependencies. Every one of those fuel assemblies comes exclusively from China National Nuclear Corporation, whose enrichment and fabrication throughput sets a hard ceiling on how many reactors can be refueled at any given time, so a disruption at that single supplier propagates through all sites at the same time with no alternative source to absorb the shortfall. The same vertical integration that insulates the company from international sanctions on Western reactor components eliminates the redundancy that would otherwise contain a domestic supply failure. Expanding capacity requires decade-long construction timelines, site-specific geological and licensing processes through the National Nuclear Safety Administration, and dedicated transmission infrastructure that cannot be accelerated by capital alone, meaning the policy pressure created by China's 2060 carbon neutrality commitment cannot shorten the construction lead times that govern how fast new generating capacity can actually come online.
How does this company make money?
The company receives regulated electricity tariffs paid by provincial grid companies, calculated on the basis of kilowatt-hours generated. Tariff rates are set by the National Development and Reform Commission and are structured to cover fuel costs, operations, and approved capital returns on nuclear plant investments.
What makes this company hard to replace?
Nuclear plant sites require decades-long construction and licensing processes through China's National Nuclear Safety Administration that cannot be expedited. Reactor decommissioning carries radioactive waste storage obligations lasting centuries, which prevents site abandonment once a facility is built. Existing grid interconnection infrastructure at each site is sized specifically for that plant's output capacity, making it non-transferable to a different generation source.
What limits this company?
China National Nuclear Corporation's uranium enrichment and fuel fabrication capacity sets a hard ceiling on how many reactor units can be refueled at any given time. Because fuel assemblies must be loaded in a specific sequence dictated by reactor physics, a constraint on fabrication throughput propagates directly into operational scheduling across all sites with no buffer from alternative suppliers.
What does this company depend on?
The reactor operations depend on five named upstream inputs: enriched uranium fuel assemblies supplied by China National Nuclear Corporation; continuous cooling water drawn from adjacent rivers or coastal sources; operating licenses issued by China's National Nuclear Safety Administration; backup diesel generators maintaining emergency power systems; and specialized nuclear-grade concrete and steel required for reactor vessel integrity.
Who depends on this company?
State Grid Corporation of China would lose baseload generation capacity if output were interrupted, requiring immediate ramping of coal plants to maintain grid stability. Coastal industrial zones in Jiangsu and Fujian provinces — home to aluminum smelters and semiconductor fabrication facilities that require uninterrupted power supply — would face electricity shortages. Regional electricity markets would experience price spikes as expensive peaking plants are called on to replace low-cost nuclear baseload generation.
How does this company scale?
Additional reactor units replicate the same steam-turbine electricity generation process using standardized fuel loading and control systems across sites. Each new nuclear site requires decade-long construction timelines, site-specific geological assessments, and dedicated transmission infrastructure — none of which can be accelerated through capital deployment alone.
What external forces can significantly affect this company?
International sanctions on nuclear technology transfers could restrict access to Western reactor components and safety systems. China's carbon neutrality commitment by 2060 creates policy pressure for accelerated nuclear deployment despite long construction lead times. Accidents at nuclear facilities elsewhere in the world — such as the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan — have historically triggered immediate public opposition and heightened regulatory scrutiny affecting new plant approvals inside China.
Where is this company structurally vulnerable?
Because China National Nuclear Corporation is the sole supplier controlling every stage of fuel production, any disruption to its enrichment or fabrication capacity propagates through all reactor sites at the same time. There is no alternative fuel source to switch to, so the same integration that eliminates sanctions exposure also eliminates the redundancy that would contain a domestic supply failure.
Supply Chain
Electricity Grid Supply Chain
The electricity grid is shaped by three structural constraints that no other supply chain faces simultaneously: electricity cannot be stored at scale and must be consumed the instant it is generated, power degrades over distance with capacity set by the weakest link in the transmission path, and grid topology was built over a century and cannot be quickly reconfigured.
Nuclear Energy Supply Chain
The nuclear energy supply chain is shaped by three structural constraints that most industries never encounter: regulatory and licensing timelines that stretch beyond a decade before a reactor generates a single watt, a fuel cycle where each step — mining, conversion, enrichment, fabrication — is restricted by both physics and international treaty, and a decommissioning obligation embedded from the moment a plant is approved, binding operators to costs that extend decades beyond the last kilowatt-hour sold.