CCTV News: Today (April 8), the world's largest "Hualong No. 1" nuclear power base, Zhangzhou Nuclear Power Unit 2, was successfully completed, laying the foundation for subsequent unit nuclear fuel loading, grid-connected power generation and other work.

The full name of the "hot test" of Zhangzhou Nuclear Power Unit 2 is the thermal performance test. The purpose is to fully verify the performance of nuclear islands, conventional island equipment and systems in thermal operation under the conditions of simulated the actual operating conditions of nuclear power plants as much as possible, which is equivalent to a "big test" before the nuclear power plant is officially generated. According to Mei Bingyun, chief engineer of China National Nuclear Power Corporation, Zhangzhou Energy Co., Ltd., the No. 2 Zhangzhou Nuclear Power Unit has been completed. In the future, nuclear fuel loading and grid-connected power generation will be promoted in accordance with the plan, and unit No. 2 will be put into commercial operation in the fourth quarter of this year.

Zhangzhou Nuclear Power Plant plans to build 6 "Hualong No. 1" nuclear power units. Currently, Units 1 have been put into commercial operation. Units 3 and 4 are in a critical stage of civil construction. Units 5 and 6 are orderly promoting preliminary work. The total installed capacity of the six nuclear power units is about 7.2 million kilowatts. After all of them are put into production, each nuclear power unit will generate more than 10 billion kW of clean electricity each year.

Mei Bingyun also said that at present, "Hualong No. 1" has become the third-generation nuclear power technology with the largest number of units under construction in the world, marking that my country's nuclear power technology and comprehensive competitiveness have entered the world's first echelon.

China's 41st Antarctic Expedition Team completed its main tasks

This morning, the "Xuelong" polar scientific expedition icebreaker that carried out China's 41st Antarctic Expedition returned to Shanghai, and the main tasks of this inspection were successfully completed. At 9 a.m., the "Snow Dragon" docked at the Chinese polar inspection domestic base terminal located in Shanghai. The Antarctic expedition team consists of 516 people from 118 units at home and abroad, and is carried out in three ships in sections. In addition to the "Snow Dragon", the "Yongsheng" completed the inspection mission and returned to Hong Kong on January 23. The "Snow Dragon 2" is still performing a joint voyage from the Ross Sea and is expected to complete the inspection mission and return to Shanghai in June.

This inspection has made new breakthroughs in technological method innovation, independent research and development of polar equipment on a large scale, international exchanges and cooperation, and has set historical highs in terms of operation time and regional span.

The inspection team carried out the Qinling Station wintering inspection mission for the first time, and the Antarctic inspection in China has entered the era of "three-stop wintering". For the first time, a clean energy system with complementary wind, light, hydrogen and multi-energy storage is applied in Antarctica. At the same time, aeronautical surveys have filled the basic data gap in some Antarctic ice sheets, and successfully collected samples of seabed sediments such as long gravity cores in the Amundsen Sea in Antarctica for the first time, providing strong support for my country and the international community to conduct in-depth research on the rapid changes in Antarctic, effectively responding to global climate change, and actively participating in Antarctic governance.

my country's solar photolysis hydrogen production has made new breakthroughs

150 years ago, science fiction master Verne predicted that water will become the ultimate fuel. For a hundred years, scientists from all over the world have been working hard to develop various technologies that can turn this prediction into reality. Recently, Chinese scientific researchers have used elemental replacement methods to increase the efficiency of photolysis of titanium dioxide hydrogen production by photolysis by titanium dioxide by 15 times compared with the past. The results were published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on April 8, Beijing time.

At the Institute of Metals, Chinese Academy of Sciences, researchers introduced that by using titanium dioxide as a photocatalytic material, water decomposition under sunlight and release hydrogen, this is a method of direct photolysis of solar energy to produce hydrogen that has been competing in the world, but this method has very low conversion efficiency. The research team conducted this research on the situation where titanium dioxide photocatalytic materials use low sunlight levels. Researchers introduced the "scandium" elements in rare earths into the crystal lattice of traditional titanium dioxide, solving the problems of internal atomic defects and irregular surfaces of traditional titanium dioxide materials, and forming a brand new semiconductor photocatalytic material. When sunlight shines on this material, the ultraviolet photons it absorbs can be increased from the original utilization rate of less than 2% to more than 30%. The efficiency of decomposing water and hydrogen production under ultraviolet light can be increased by 15 times. A new record for this material system was created. If it is made into a photocatalytic plate of 1 square meter, the green hydrogen generated by the light time of one day is about 10 liters. The next stage goal of the scientific research team is to further improve the efficiency of decomposition water under visible light, so as to achieve the level that can be used in an industrial manner.