nuclear-news

discussions have already begun to surface over whether China’s latest nuclear renaissance is going too fast, and if China is capable of keeping its 27 nuclear power plants currently under construction – over a third of the nuclear power plants being built worldwide – under control, let alone exporting its nuclear technology overseas………

Not only is China fast in its pace to build more nuclear reactors, it’s also bold in using the most advanced nuclear technologies, some of which have never been used commercially before. This courted doubts over whether these technologies are reliable enough, since there are few precedents to draw experience from.

Since 2004, China has been approving projects using advanced nuclear power reactors, including US-based Westinghouse’s AP1000 and France-based Areva’s EPR (Evolutionary Power Reactor), many of which are now under construction. Dubbed generation III reactors, they are designed to withstand the crisis that damaged the Japanese nuclear plant.

Construction of these projects has not been smooth. Sanmen Nuclear Power Station in Zhejiang Province was expected to be the first nuclear power plant in the world that uses AP1000 technology. The first of the two reactors was scheduled to finish construction and start operation in November 2013, but construction is now over 18 months behind schedule. The plant won’t start operation until 2016 at the earliest, an official from China’s State Nuclear Power Technology, the company building the power plant, said in January.

The company has struggled to keep its schedule because of constant changes in design and new problems that emerged during tests, previous reports said.

In a statement by the economic planner of Zhejiang Province in 2013, its energy department said the delay has slowed down the province’s nuclear development and affected the power supply plan in Zhejiang. It has also undermined China’s overall plan to make AP1000 its major technology in new nuclear plants……..

Wang Yinan, a researcher with the Development Research Center of the State Council, said the risk is too high to build nuclear power plants in China’s inland, citing the dense population, the uncertainty of China’s nuclear power plants, China’s inability to deal with radioactive waste and the lack of stable water resources in inland areas to act as coolants.

She said hydroelectricity and other new energy means should be developed in inland areas. “Nuclear shouldn’t play an important role in China’s energy structure,” she said.

So far, all of the nuclear power plants in operation and under construction in China are located along the coast. ……

The lack of precedents of these projects and China’s push to launch more have had some experts call this experiment “the Great Leap Forward of nuclear power,” including He Zuoxiu, a Chinese physicist and member of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“The rapid speed of China’s nuclear expansion, and the direction it is expanding – to the most populous inland areas – is unprecedented…Besides, China’s nuclear industry has a tendency to exaggerate its achievements to the central government, so as to gain more funding,” He told the Global Times.

He also warns of a nuclear accident when the total number of nuclear power plants reaches 50 – the total number of nuclear plants built and under construction in China.

“According to past experiences, the likelihood of a disaster rises sharply after a country runs over 50 nuclear power plants, as is the case in the US and Japan,” he said……..http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/927146.shtml