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Uncertainty lingers for China’s nuclear power policy

Uncertainty lingers for China’s power policy
By Leslie Hook in Beijing
11/15/2011
FT


Less than a week after the Fukushima disaster, China suspended approvals for new nuclear plants and announced a sweeping review of nuclear safety and atomic energy laws and regulations.


It was an abrupt U-turn for China’s technocratic leaders, a group of mostly engineers who have historically embraced nuclear power as a solution for China’s energy needs.



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China’s move was a blow to the global nuclear industry as the country had played a pivotal role in the global nuclear renaissance of the past decade. Twenty-seven reactors are under construction in China today, more than 40 per cent of the global total, according to data from the World Nuclear Association, and about 10 more were on track to be approved this year before the suspension.


Uncertainty now lingers over China’s nuclear sector. The government says it will resume new approvals after completing the Atomic Energy Law as well as new safety codes, but few details about those policies have emerged during the drafting process.


Zhang Guobao, a senior energy policymaker, has said the new rules may be completed next spring.


“You have to remember that China has not renounced nuclear power,” he recently told state media. “After next March we hope that the international and Chinese understanding toward nuclear will take a turn for the better, and perhaps resume its path of development.”


Despite such reassurances from Chinese officials, analysts have quietly lowered their forecasts for China’s nuclear installations over the next decade.


“We have cut down our nuclear power capacity target from around 86GW in 2020 to 56GW in 2020,” says Rajesh Panjwani, analyst at CLSA in Hong Kong.


Others point out that China’s pause in nuclear development could create an opening for more advanced technologies to enter the Chinese market.


“The suspension of new approvals will probably slow down the original plant build-up and may change the technology mix a little bit, favouring the third generation technologies that are intrinsically safer,” says Zhou Xizhou, associate director of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Beijing.


So-called “third generation” reactors are considered to be safer than previous reactors because they employ passive cooling systems making it much less likely that a nuclear meltdown or radioactive leak will occur.


Both Westinghouse’s AP1000 and Areva’s EPR – competing “third generation” designs – are being built in China. The AP1000 is the foundation for an indigenous Chinese third-generation reactor, the CP1000, which is expected to be the backbone of China’s new nuclear build-up in the decade to come.


China is also developing another promising nuclear technology: “pebble bed” reactors, so called because they are fuelled by pebble-shaped balls of thorium or uranium. These reactors are a fraction of the size of traditional reactors and are considered much safer to operate.


This summer construction quietly started on a demonstration pebble bed reactor project that, according to the World Nuclear Association, is the most advance modular project in the world and will eventually operate 18 small reactors in Shandong province.


China National Nuclear Corporation and China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group, China’s leading nuclear companies, have said little about the approval suspension beyond announcing that they had completed mandatory post-Fukushima safety reviews at their plants.


But they remain confident in China’s nuclear future. As Su Qin, head of CNNC, put it in a recent speech: “For China, developing nuclear power is not a choice, but a necessity.”