Geely’s 2% stake in China’s San’ao plant is the first private money in a Chinese nuclear project

Geely Technology Group holds 2% of the company that owns the San’ao nuclear plant in Zhejiang Province, and that small slice carries a large distinction. World Nuclear News describes it as the first private capital in a Chinese nuclear power project, in a sector where state-owned enterprises have dominated every build. The carmaker’s parent sits in the same ownership table as China General Nuclear, which controls the largest share.

Help yourself and the planet: The Cool Down makes it easy to help yourself while helping the planet, with smart, simple changes to save more and waste less in your everyday life.

Get The Cool Down →

We may earn a commission if you sign up.

Nuclear plants in China are normally financed and owned by a handful of state groups. A privately held automotive and technology conglomerate appearing among the shareholders of a Hualong One site is a change of company, not of technology, and it arrived quietly as part of the plant’s ordinary progress reports.

The ownership table at Cangnan Nuclear Power

The project company is Cangnan Nuclear Power. CGN holds 46% of it, according to the World Nuclear News report on San’ao 2’s fuel loading, while Geely Technology Group has 2% and other state-owned enterprises hold the remainder. Put simply, the private stake is small enough that CGN and its state partners keep control of every major decision, from design choices to dispatch.

The same split was reported when the plant’s first reactor was declared ready for commercial service, in a 29 April 2026 article on unit 1. Because the project company owns all six planned reactors rather than one at a time, Geely’s 2% reaches every unit CGN eventually commissions at the site, not only the two now built or loading fuel.

The assets behind the stake are at visibly different stages. Unit 1 passed a 168-hour test run during commissioning before CGN declared it qualified for commercial operation, so it is already producing revenue. Unit 2 completed cold functional tests in October 2025 and hot functional tests in April 2026 before its fuel load, and it is not due to supply power until 2027. Unit 3 is at the stage of nuclear island construction. A shareholder in the project company therefore holds an interest in one earning reactor, one about to start, and several still being built.

For scale, 2% of the 54 TWh the full plant is expected to produce each year comes to roughly 1.1 TWh, a pro-rata calculation that assumes returns follow ownership share and that no terms in the shareholder agreement say otherwise. Those terms have not been published. The arithmetic is offered only to show the order of magnitude: a minor interest in a very large generating asset.

Geely’s 2% buys into Hualong One units at San’ao

San’ao is a six-unit Hualong One project, a domestically designed pressurised water reactor. Unit 1 has a net capacity of 1,116 MWe and entered commercial operation on 29 April 2026. Unit 2 finished loading its initial core on 2 November 2026 and is scheduled to supply electricity in 2027. Units 3 and 4 won State Council approval in August 2024, and unit 3’s nuclear island had its first concrete on 19 December 2025.

On completion, all six units are expected to deliver more than 54 TWh of electricity a year to Zhejiang and the wider Yangtze River Delta, a figure CGN publishes through its corporate site. A 2% interest in that output stream is a minority claim on a very large and very steady cash flow, which is the kind of asset a corporate treasury can understand.

The lead owner’s weight shows in its fleet numbers. When unit 1 entered commercial operation, CGN’s operating nuclear capacity rose from 33,040 MW to 34,248 MW, and its managed fleet grew to 30 units, counting associates. San’ao is therefore one project inside a much larger state-run portfolio, and the private stake sits inside a company whose parent already operates dozens of reactors.

State nuclear policy and the private door

China’s State Council gave its approval for units 3 and 4 in August 2024 as part of an 11-reactor package, a rhythm of approvals recounted in a World Nuclear News piece on earlier approvals and in the World Nuclear Association’s country profile of nuclear power in China. Both trace a sequence of state-level approvals for each new reactor, which is the setting the private stake entered.

The designation itself rests on a single description repeated in World Nuclear News coverage across two articles, in April and November 2026, and it is attributed to the project rather than to a named official. No ministry or regulator statement confirming the label was found in the search, so the claim stands as a reported characterisation of the ownership record.

None of the sources explains why Geely sought a stake or what terms it accepted, and neither Geely nor CGN is quoted on the subject in the material reviewed. The facts that are on record are narrow: the percentage, the owning company, the plant, and the designation of first private capital in a Chinese nuclear power project. Whether other private groups follow into units 3 to 6 is the question the ownership filings for those units will answer.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

Help yourself and the planet: Get The Cool Down →

We may earn a commission if you sign up.