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Located at Guangyuan, Sichuan Province (105.52E/32.26N). Reportedly China's largest nuclear weapons production facility. It is not known whether this facility assembles nuclear weapons. Possibly manufactures nuclear weapon components. Constructed as part of the "Third Line" starting in the mid-1960s.
Guangyuan Plutonium Production Reactor and Reprocessing Plant (Plant 821):
The Guangyuan facility is China's largest plutonium production reactor and reprocessing plant. It became operational around 1974 and was constructed as part of Mao's "Third Line" efforts to duplicate the Jiuquan facility in Gansu Province. Guangyaun, which uses Purex reprocessing technology, was also established to replace the troubled Jiuquan complex that used a Soviet plutonium separation process based on precipitation of sodium uranyl acetate. Jiuquan was closed in 1984.
The Guangyuan reactor had an initial power of 500 MWt and it was later increased to 1,000 MWt. By the end of 1991, the reactor produced an estimated 1-4 tons of weapons-grade plutonium.
According to a May 1999 report in Nuclear Fuel, Chinese officials decided that facilities within the Guangyuan plutonium production complex may be decommissioned and large volumes of reprocessing high-level waste (HLW) will be treated for disposal. China's Prime Minister Zhu Rongji reportedly ordained the decommissioning of the Guangyuan facility in order to help accelerate the restructuring of the CNNC and to cut its large work force.
Once the Guangyuan facility is decommissioned then China will not operate any plutonium producing facilities. It is widely acknowledged that China stopped producing plutonium in the late 1980s and that it has stockpiled large quantities of weapon grade plutonium.
[Sources: Mark Hibbs, "China said to be preparing for decommissioning defense plants," Nuclear Fuel, 5/17/99, p. 11; Lisbeth Gronlund, David Wright, and Yong Liu, "China And A Fissile Material Production Cut-Off," Survival, Winter 1995-96, p. 159; Tracking Nuclear Proliferation, p. 52; Nuclear Weapons Databook, Volume 5, p. 338; Richard W. Fieldhouse, Chinese Nuclear Weapons, p. 11; Nuclear Weapons Databook, Volume 5, p. 338; Risk Report, November 1995, p. 7; Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996, pp. 76-77.]
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
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