nuclear-news

Poor safety, corruption in China’s nuclear program

Nuclear Power Expansion in China Stirs Concerns The New York Times By KEITH BRADSHER 15 Dec 09 inside and outside the country, the speed of the construction program has raised safety concerns.
The last country to carry out such a rapid nuclear expansion was the United States in the 1970s, in a binge of reactor construction that ended with the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979. And China is placing many of its nuclear plants near large cities, potentially exposing tens of millions of people to radiation in the event of an accident.

In addition, China must maintain nuclear safeguards in a national business culture where quality and safety sometimes take a back seat to cost-cutting, profits and outright corruption — as shown by scandals in the food, pharmaceutical and toy industries and by the shoddy construction of schools that collapsed in the Sichuan Province earthquake last year.

“At the current stage, if we are not fully aware of the sector’s over-rapid expansions, it will threaten construction quality and operation safety of nuclear power plants,” Li Ganjie, the director of China’s National Nuclear Safety Administration, said in a speech this year.

A top-level corruption scandal is already unfolding in the nuclear industry. In August, the Chinese government dismissed and detained the powerful president of the China National Nuclear Corporation, Kang Rixin, in a $260 million corruption case involving allegations of bid-rigging in nuclear power plant construction, ……………China National Nuclear has sought to hush up the case involving the arrest of its president, deleting from its Chinese-language Web site even the most minor news releases that mentioned Mr. Kang.

China’s Rapid Reactor Expansion Raises Safety Concerns – NYTimes.com

December 17, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | China, secrets,lies and civil liberties | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear secrecy, nuclear wastes, radiation, radioactive