Fangda Carbon's application for the renewal of the civil nuclear safety equipment manufacturing license has been approved

This report from Lanzhou (Gansu Daily reporter Du Xueqin) recently stated that after a comprehensive review and on-site inspection by the National Nuclear Safety Review Center, all indicators of Fangda Carbon are compliant with requirements, and the “Civil Nuclear Safety Equipment Manufacturing License” held by the company has successfully completed its third renewal, valid until March 31, 2031.

Since obtaining this qualification in 2011, Fangda Carbon has focused on the field of nuclear-grade carbon materials, overcoming multiple key technical challenges. With hard-core technology, it has achieved a breakthrough from “0” to “1” in nuclear-grade carbon materials. In 2008, the company undertook a national major science and technology project, forming a multi-disciplinary expert team to tackle pain points such as low key performance of nuclear-grade carbon products and issues in the forming and sintering of large components. Through hundreds of batches of experiments, they mastered the core methods of raw material coke selection, innovated a segmented temperature-controlled sintering process, and established a complete manufacturing system, filling the domestic technical gap.

The carbon pile internal components independently developed by Fangda Carbon were successfully applied to the world’s first fourth-generation high-temperature gas-cooled reactor demonstration project at Shidao Bay, Huaneng Shandong, achieving performance at an internationally advanced level and marking a breakthrough in the application of nuclear safety-grade carbon materials in China. Subsequently, the subsidiary Chengdu Carbon Material initiated research on the localization of nuclear-grade graphite, and in 2019, collaborated with Russian institutions to conduct full irradiation tests. The 2024 tests showed that the samples performed excellently under extreme conditions, marking China’s nuclear-grade graphite research among the world’s leaders.

Building on years of technological accumulation in carbon products, the Fangda Carbon team overcame two core challenges: uniform distribution of boron carbide and thermal stress cracking. They achieved the transition of products from laboratory to industrial-scale production, successfully applying them in the 600-megawatt demonstration fast reactor project. By 2025, they completed the machining tasks for carbon pile internal components with high quality in just three months and passed acceptance in one go. Currently, Fangda Carbon and its subsidiaries hold nuclear safety manufacturing qualifications, leading the field of civil nuclear safety-grade carbon/graphite materials.