China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection hastened to declare over the weekend the country’s ambitious nuclear-energy expansion plans were unchanged by the worrying earthquake impact on Japanese power facilities. But that doesn’t mean that officials in China aren’t watching events in Japan with concern.
China Nuclear Plants in Shangdong.
Liu Tienan, a deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, who is also the chief of China’s National Energy Bureau, paid a visit Sunday to a key nuclear-energy research bureau, and said Chinese authorities do have much to learn from Japan’s unfolding crisis even as they press ahead with nuclear energy use.
Mr. Liu’s visit by itself was a clear sign of Beijing’s concern about events in Japan, and how the technology failings there in the wake of last Friday’s earthquake might factor into China’s own plans.
Mr. Liu put the stress on the safety of nuclear power during his visit, according to a statement summarizing the visit posted Monday to the NDRC’s website. He “urged the authorities to seriously analyze and summarize lessons learned from Japan’s nuclear accident, to ensure the safe development of nuclear power industry in the spirit of being responsible for the Party and for the people,” the statement said.
Mr. Liu’s comments echoed the dose of caution sounded by politicians elsewhere in Asia and globally, which suggest Japan’s problems will color everyone’s nuclear future.
There’s also unease in China about possible leaks of radioactivity, but none has been detected according to a test conducted in the East China Sea. Initial test results of the sampled water showed no abnormal signs, said Xu Ren, director of the environmental monitoring center of the State Oceanic Administration’s East China Sea Branch, according to a report by Xinhua. Another test will be made Tuesday.
Mr. Liu’s comments came a day after somewhat less anxious-sounding remarks Saturday by another Chinese official, Vice Minister of Environmental Protection Zhang Lijun, who was speaking to reporters at the tail end of the National People’s Congress meetings in Beijing.
“Some lessons we learn from Japan will be considered in the making of China’s nuclear power plans,” Mr. Zhang said. “But China will not change its determination and plan for developing nuclear power.”
Mr. Zhang spoke even as the problems at Japanese plants were escalating. And he could hardly be expected to signal a major Chinese re-think of its plans: the 12th Five Year plan—approved by the legislature on Monday–includes a four-fold expansion of nuclear power capability.
Nevertheless, Mr. Zhang’s words carried weight: “China not to change plan for nuclear power projects: government,” read the Xinhua news agency headline.
Mr. Zhang also emphasized that China was deploying more modern architecture in its plant designs than Japan has at the problematic Fukushima operations. He said cooling water in China’s plants would flow by gravity and wouldn’t require the kind of pumps that failed in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami. “It’s just like the flush toilet, no power is needed,” Mr. Zhang said.
In fact, China is adopting more advanced generation plant architecture, including the gravity induced cooling design. But its designs aren’t completely dissimilar to those used in Japan.
China’s response to the events in Japan will ultimately have global ramifications for the nuclear power industry. Some 40% of the global nuclear power capacity under construction now is in China.
The country’s relative shortage of uranium, and efforts to buy it, is supporting world prices of so-called yellowcake.
China is also pursuing new nuclear energy techniques.
Louisiana-based Shaw Group Inc., an energy engineering firm, said in a statement Sunday, it doesn’t foresee an impact on its projects in China or the U.S.
Among the recent contracts in place in China are those with Toshiba Corp.’s Westinghouse Electric Co., along with Shaw Group, for AP1000 technology (PDFs here and here).
The equipment used in Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima plants now under stress is at least a generation older.