 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
Baotou Nuclear Fuel Component Plant
CHIEF ENGINEER: Li Guan Xing
OTHER NAMES: Baotou Nuclear Material Plant, Plant 202, 202 Nuclear Fuel Fabrication Plant
LOCATION: Baotou, Inner Mongolia (109.59E/40.38N).
A military fuel element plant designed and built with Soviet assistance. It produces uranium tetrafluoride (UF4), natural uranium fuel rods for the Jiuquan Complex, enriched uranium fuel rods for submarine reactors, and hydrogen bomb materials, including lithium-6 deuteride and tritium. Also produces uranium fuel for plutonium production reactors. Baotou began production on 12 December 1962 and does not handle highly enriched uranium (HEU) or separated plutonium.
On 1 April 2000, construction was started on a 200 million yuan nuclear fuel element plant in Baotou which will provide fuel elements for the Qinshan nuclear power plants. The nuclear fuel element plant is designed to produce 200 tons of nuclear fuel elements annually and is scheduled to go into trial production in September 2001 and begin commercial production in March 2003.
URANIUM TETRAFLUORIDE WORKSHOP
Produces uranium tetrafluoride (UF4).
LITHIUM-6 DEUTERIDE WORKSHOP
Produces lithium-6 deuteride.
[Sources: John W. Lewis and Xue Litai, China Builds the Bomb, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988, p. 97; Robert Norris, Andrew S. Burrows and Richard Fieldhouse, Nuclear Weapons Databook, Volume 5, Boulder: Westview Press, 1994, pp. 338, 345; Yan Kong, "China's Nuclear Bureaucracy," Jane's Intelligence Review, July 1993, pp. 321, 324, 326; Risk Report, November 1995, p. 7; Richard W. Fieldhouse, Chinese Nuclear Weapons, p. 53; Lisbeth Gronlund, David Wright, and Yong Liu, "China And A Fissile Material Production Cut-Off," Survival, Winter 1995-96, pp. 151, 159; "PRC Begins Work on First Nuclear Fuel Element Plant," Xinhua, 2 April 2000 in FBIS, CPP20000402000014, 2 April 2000.]
This
material is produced independently for NTI by the James Martin
Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of
International Studies and does not necessarily reflect the
opinions of and has not been independently verified by NTI or
its directors, officers, employees, agents. Copyright © 2007 by
MIIS.
