Focus this week: Tiandi Science & Technology Co.Ltd(600582) , Zhengzhou Coal Mining Machinery Group Co.Ltd(601717) , Warom Technology Incorporated Company(603855) , Suzhou Sushi Testing Group Co.Ltd(300416)
Core view of this week: recent macro environment fluctuations have a great impact on the stock price of the equipment industry. We believe that the short-term impact has not been eliminated, and the overall judgment continues to fluctuate. At present, the price rise of upstream resource products and the steady growth of the government are still two relatively determined main lines, and the relevant equipment sectors such as coal machinery, oil service, nuclear power and hydrogen energy are expected to benefit.
Spent fuel is very harmful to the environment, but it has reuse value. Spent fuel refers to the gradual consumption of fission nuclide uranium in nuclear fuel, which is not enough to maintain the fuel taken from the reactor after fission reaction. On the one hand, spent fuel reprocessing can recycle uranium and plutonium and reduce China’s dependence on uranium resources, on the other hand, it can reduce the threat to the environment. The half-life of spent fuel can reach tens of thousands of years, and radioactivity also poses a great threat to the environment. After treatment, the volume of high-level radioactive waste will be reduced to 1 / 4 of the original, and its long-term radioactive toxicity will be reduced by more than one order of magnitude.
China’s spent fuel reprocessing capacity is very scarce, and the future market space will reach 100 billion. According to the data of toubao Research Institute, the annual output of spent fuel per 1 million kw of nuclear power equipment capacity is about 21 tons. According to our calculation, the output of spent fuel in 2021 is about 1123 tons, and the cumulative output is 9841 tons. In contrast, China’s current spent fuel processing capacity is only 50 tons. According to our calculation, by 2030 and 2035, the annual output of spent fuel will reach 1876 tons and 2394 tons respectively. At that time, China will build at least two and three 800 ton treatment plants (or equivalent treatment capacity) respectively, so as to achieve the balance between spent fuel output and post-treatment capacity. It is estimated that by 2030, the market space for spent fuel reprocessing will be 300 billion yuan, including equipment investment of about 152.7 billion yuan. By 2035, the market space for spent fuel reprocessing will be about 450 billion yuan, of which the equipment investment will be about 229 billion yuan.
It is expected that the storage capacity of the reactor will reach saturation in 2025, and the reprocessing project belongs to rigid demand with high certainty. According to China business daily, China’s current nuclear power plants are designed to store spent fuel for 10 years. Then 200 tons of spent fuel storage capacity will be added for each 1 million KW unit. According to our calculation, by 2025, when the installed capacity reaches 70 million kwh, the spent fuel storage capacity of China National Nuclear Power Co.Ltd(601985) station will be saturated. Therefore, although the storage capacity of spent fuel increases with the increase of nuclear power installed capacity, the cumulative rate of spent fuel is higher than that of storage capacity. It can be seen that the contradiction between and spent fuel reprocessing capacity is becoming increasingly prominent. In fact, according to the annual report of Lanzhou Ls Heavy Equipment Co.Ltd(603169) 2021, the Daya Bay nuclear power plant has saturated the storage tank and began to transfer to Ling’ao phase II; By 2025, it is expected that more than 10 nuclear power plants will be saturated in reactor storage capacity.
China’s choice of spent fuel reprocessing technology is a foregone conclusion, and Purex is the mainstream technology at present. There are mainly two ways to deal with spent fuel in the world. One is directly buried after cutting and packaging. Sweden, Canada, Spain and the United States adopt this way. The other is the closed fuel cycle, that is, the separation of uranium and plutonium elements and the landfill after reducing the active nuclear radioactivity. At present, France, Britain, Japan, India and other countries adopt this route, and China also chooses this technical route. Purex is the mainstream technical route of spent fuel reprocessing at present. Its process flow mainly includes head end treatment (cutting, decapsulation, dissolution, filtration, etc.), extraction separation (separation and purification of uranium, plutonium and fission products), and tail end treatment (generation of uranium and plutonium oxide).
The localization of main equipment has a long way to go, and breakthroughs have been made in some fields. At present, China’s post-treatment industry has realized the localization of some equipment and entered the stage of market promotion, such as neutron absorbing materials and conventional mechanical and electrical equipment. Some products need adaptive development or improvement on the basis of existing nuclear power, such as remote operation valves, manipulators, hot chambers, etc. However, the process flow and main equipment of Purex technology are technically difficult, and localization still has a long way to go. For example, shear, dissolution reactor, centrifugal clarifier, pulse filter, extraction separator, glass curing device, etc.
Investment suggestion: it is suggested to pay attention to Jiangsu Shentong Valve Co.Ltd(002438) , Jingye intelligence, Lanzhou Ls Heavy Equipment Co.Ltd(603169) , Tongyu Heavy Industy Co.Ltd(300185) , Anhui Yingliu Electromechanical Co.Ltd(603308) .
Risk warning: the risk of performance fluctuation caused by discontinuous order acquisition, the risk that the promotion of spent fuel project is not as expected, and the risk of high customer concentration.
