In late 2024, the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) began construction of two new large centrifuge enrichment plants (CEPs). These plants are expected to begin operations as early as late 2026. They will join the two large centrifuge plants that CNNC commissioned in 2023.
Today, CNNC is operating three large centrifuge enrichment facilities: Lanzhou (Gansu province, Plant 504), Hanzhong (Shaanxi province, Plant 405), and Emeishan (Sichuan province, the Emeishan facility of Plant 814). For more detail, see Hui Zhang, "China's uranium enrichment and plutonium recycling 2020-2040: current practices and projected capacities," in China's Civil Nuclear Sector: Plowshares to Swords?. The two new facilities will be Lanzhou Project 6 (Lanzhou CEP6) and Hanzhong Project 6 (Hanzhong CEP6), which will be located at a new Plant 405 site.
Lanzhou CEP6
Satellite images show that construction activity at the Lanzhou Project 6 plant started around October 2024. The construction was apparently completed in February 2026. Based on the experience of other CNNC CEP projects, the Lanzhou CEP6 plant is expected to be in initial operation as early as late 2026, and in normal operation in 2027. The layout of the Lanzhou site is shown in Figure 1.
As with Lanzhou CEP5, the Project 6 plant will use second-generation centrifuges and is estimated to have the total capacity of 1.5-2 million SWU/year. Considering that the capacity of the five plants at Lanzhou is about 4.4 million SWU/year, the operation of CEP6 will bring the total capacity of the Lanzhou facility to 5.9-6.4 million SWU/year.
Figure 1: Satellite image of the Lanzhou facility, taken on 26 February 2026. Location: 36.148139, 103.523472. Credit: Vantor.
Hanzhong CEP6
The Hanzhong Enrichment Plant (Plant 405) currently operates five centrifuge facilities. These include three Russia-supplied plants with a total capacity of 1.0 million SWU/year, built under Phases I, II, and IV of agreements with Russia (Phase III is the Lanzhou Project 1, with 0.5 million SWU/year capacity). There are also two larger indigenous centrifuge facilities officially referred to as the North Expansion Centrifuge Project I (Hanzhong CEP4) and the North Expansion Centrifuge Project II (Hanzhong CEP5). Figure 2 shows the entire Hanzhong site, and Figure 3 shows the layout of the five currently operating plants. The total capacity of these plants is about 2.6 million SWU/year.
Since 2015, CNNC has planned to build a new enrichment plant at Hanzhong, away from the current site. This is known as the New District Project. The project, however, made no significant progress between 2015 and 2023.
Recent satellite images show that the New District Project, which will be Hanzhong CEP6, is located at a new site, 4.7 km south of the current site (see Figure 2). Construction of Hanzhong CEP6 began in late 2024. The main enrichment building and associated cooling towers were completed in December 2025 (see Figure 4). The Project 6 plant is expected to be operational as early as late 2026.
Like Hanzhong CEP5, the Project 6 plant will use second-generation centrifuges and is estimated to have a capacity of 1.5-2 million SWU/year. Considering that the capacity of the other five plants at Hanzhong is about 2.6 million SWU/year, operations of the Project 6 plant will bring the total capacity at Hanzhong to about 4.1-4.6 million SWU/year.
Figure 2: Satellite image of the Hanzhong CEPs, taken on 14 December 2025. Location: 33.244169, 107.441433. Credit: Airbus, Google Earth.
Figure 3: Enlarged section of Figure 2 showing the layout of Hanzhong CEPs 1-5.
Figure 4: Enlarged section of Figure 2 showing the layout of Hanzhong CEP6. The main enrichment building and the associated cooling towers were completed in December 2025.
The table below describes individual plants at Lanzhou and Hanzhong.
China's enrichment capacity
Considering that the Emeishan facility of Plant 814 has a capacity of about 4 million SWU/year, China's total enrichment capacity will grow to about 14.4 million SWU/year by late 2026 or in 2027. This would be sufficient to provide enrichment services for reactors with a total installed capacity of 110 GWe, which, according to the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), China is set to achieve by 2030. Most of these reactors are light-water reactors, which are assumed to require about 0.13 million SWU/year per GWe. Also, satellite images show that CNNC still has enough space for several new CEPs at the Lanzhou site and the new Hanzhong site. This would allow expansion to meet the needs of reactors with a total installed capacity of about 200 GWe.