Chinese towns spar over planned nuclear plant
February 16, 2012
By The Associated Press ELAINE KURTENBACH (AP Business Writer)
SHANGHAI - (AP) -- Residents of two towns in eastern China are at odds over plans for a nuclear power plant, in a dispute reflecting mixed attitudes toward the industry as work looks set to resume on projects suspended after Japan's Fukushima disaster.
http://easss.com/nuclear
The government plans to raise China's nuclear power capacity to 80 gigawatts by 2020, according to the National Energy Commission. That is below the 90 gigawatt target reported before the Japan disaster, and less than the current nuclear capacity of the United States, which was just over 100 gigawatts last year.
State media reports Thursday said work appeared poised to resume after inspections that were ordered following a magnitude 9.0 offshore earthquake on March 11, 2011. It triggered a tsunami that killed about 19,000 people along Japan's northeastern coast and knocked out power at the Fukushima plant, resulting in the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
Top leaders are expected to approve various revisions of safety guidelines and other regulations by March, the Shanghai Securities News and other newspapers reported, citing unnamed commission officials.
Despite widespread public concern over possible radiation contamination from the disaster and calls for improved safety precautions and emergency preparedness, China remains committed to building up nuclear power to help reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants and curb its reliance on costly oil imports.
China currently has 13 nuclear reactors that provide about 10 gigawatts of generating capacity and plans call for expanding that to about 40 gigawatts by 2015.
Nuclear power accounted for only 1.04 percent of all electricity consumed in China last year.
Although the government has generally pushed ahead with whatever infrastructure projects it wants, the Chinese public is becoming increasingly vocal in its concerns over potential environmental risks or other disruptions.
The planned nuclear plant in Pengze, a town on the banks of the Yangtze River in Jiangxi province, is raising complaints from residents of Wangjiang, across the river in neighboring Anhui province.
They say residents will be living dangerously near the plant and are petitioning to delay construction pending further safety studies.
The plant in Pengze, approved in 2008, reportedly was the first such project planned for an inland region: so far most of China's nuclear plants are on the coast.
Both Anhui and Jiangxi are inland regions that until recently remained relatively poor compared with faster-developing coastal province. Local officials would generally view such big investments as welcome sources of jobs and tax revenues.
So far, there has been no sign of public protest from residents in Pengze, who are busy building guesthouses to accommodate the thousands of workers expected to be employed if the project goes ahead, according to a report in the Shanghai newspaper Oriental Morning Post.
But across the river, a group of retired officials living in Wangjiang, led by a former judge named Fang Guangwen, have been getting national attention with their petition drive to have the project delayed or canceled.
An official in the Wangjiang county information office, who gave only his surname, He, said the situation had been reported to provincial authorities. He would not comment further and provincial level officials refused comment.
___
Associated Press researcher Fu Ting contributed to this report.
Showing posts with label Nuclear Plant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nuclear Plant. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Thursday, March 1, 2012
China grapples with its own ‘Kudankulam’ protests - Pengze nuclear power plant
China grapples with its own ‘Kudankulam’ protests
Venky Vembu
Mar 1, 2012
Firstpost
China is facing its own ‘Kudankulam’ moment: a people’s protest against a nuclear power plant that is still under construction, but has raised fears in the local populace ever since the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year.
http://www.facebook.com/nuclearfree
http://www.facebook.com/nukefree
The protest in Wangjiang village in Anhui province, one of China’s poorest, is directed at the Pengze nuclear power plant that is coming up in neighbouring Jiangxi province, along the mighty Yangtze river.
In that sense, it also has parallels with the ‘Mullaperiyar dam’ crisis in India, where the benefits from a project are seen to accrue predominantly to one State, whereas fears of a catastrophic accident are felt rather more in a neighbouring State.
Indicatively, to build the Three Gorges Dam, inarguably the most ambitious hydropower projects in the world.
The Pengze plant, which is not along the coast (unlike the one at Fukushima) but in an inland province, is one of an estimated 60 that China, ravenously hungry for energy, plans to commission by 2020 as it cuts back on polluting coal-based thermal power plants. Nuclear power accounts for barely 2 percent of China’s electricity production, but there are plans to ramp it up to 5 percent over the next decade.
If the protest at Wangjiang village intensifies, it could upset those ambitious plans, but given the nature of civil society protests in China and the low tolerance for such agitations, this may not get much traction once the government sets its mind to it.
Indicatively, to build the Three Gorges Dam, inarguably the most ambitious hydropower projects in the world, more than 1.2 million people were displaced – in many cases forcibly.
The dam that “tamed the Yangtze” – and realised one of Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s dreams – is now proving ecologically ruinous, but when the government wanted it done, it was done, even if the project was low on foresight.
In Wangjiang, villagers were awakened to the potential for disaster after Beijing reviewed safety procedures last year in the wake of the Fukushima meltdown.
But they didn’t organise street protests or demonstrations in the way the anti-nuclear protestors at Kudankulam project are doing.
Instead, they have been petitioning their local government authorities against the Pengze plant.
The local government leaders sent on the petition to provincial-level leaders (who in turn forwarded it to central level energy officials), and followed it up with a resolution passed in the local party congress voicing opposition to the Pengze plant.
The villagers, who are mostly farmers, accused Jiangxi province authorities of having fudged population density figures so as to secure approval for the plant.
Under Jiangxi provincial law, no approval can be given if more than 100,000 people reside within a 10-km radius of a nuclear power plant.
Wangjiang officials claim that that their village alone, which falls within 10 km of the plant has more than 150,000 people.
Protestors also cite the instances of recent seismic activity in the area – including an earthquake in 2011 that measured 4.6 on the Richter scale – to pitch their case that the plant is unsafe.
On the other hand, Jiangxi officials claim that the plant is supremely safe, and the only thing to ooze from the reactors will be economic prosperity for the surrounding local communities.
The safety of China’s nuclear plants was the subject of several WikiLeaks cables that were leaked, like radioactive waste, last year.
But as much as they reflected genuine concerns for safety, they were also seen to be an effort by the US energy giant Westinghouse to expand its marketshare in the lucrative Chinese nuclear power market by talking down the indigenous Chinese technology on the ground that it was dated and unsafe.
China, noted a cable from August 2008, is “vastly increasing the aggregate risk of its nuclear power fleet.” The cable, which took note of an interaction with Westinghouse China CEO, said that China’s indigenously built reactors – the CPR-1000, which were based on old Westinghouse technology from its AP1000 reactor – were gaining marketshare.
“Rather than building a fleet of state-of-the-art reactors,” the cable said, “China is assuring that they will be burdened with technology that by the end of its lifetime will be 100 years old.”
And by bypassing the “passive safety technology” of Westinghouse’s AP1000 – which shuts down a reactor automatically in the event of an accident and which it claimed was 100 times safer than China’s CPR-1000 – China was “vastly increasing the aggregate risk of its nuclear power fleet.”
Wangjiang villagers are perhaps giving voice to similar concerns about the safety of the Pengze plant – and to that extent are echoing the sentiment of the Kudankulam protesters in faraway Tamil Nadu. But that apart, the level of tolerance that the anti-nuclear ‘protestors’ enjoy in China will be a test of the leaders’ readiness to listen to anxiety over the plant.
For campaigners against the Kudankulam project, who perhaps feel that their grievances are not being heard, it may prove a contrasting case study in the nature of governmental response to popular protests.
Venky Vembu
Mar 1, 2012
Firstpost
China is facing its own ‘Kudankulam’ moment: a people’s protest against a nuclear power plant that is still under construction, but has raised fears in the local populace ever since the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year.
http://www.facebook.com/nuclearfree
http://www.facebook.com/nukefree
The protest in Wangjiang village in Anhui province, one of China’s poorest, is directed at the Pengze nuclear power plant that is coming up in neighbouring Jiangxi province, along the mighty Yangtze river.
In that sense, it also has parallels with the ‘Mullaperiyar dam’ crisis in India, where the benefits from a project are seen to accrue predominantly to one State, whereas fears of a catastrophic accident are felt rather more in a neighbouring State.
Indicatively, to build the Three Gorges Dam, inarguably the most ambitious hydropower projects in the world.
The Pengze plant, which is not along the coast (unlike the one at Fukushima) but in an inland province, is one of an estimated 60 that China, ravenously hungry for energy, plans to commission by 2020 as it cuts back on polluting coal-based thermal power plants. Nuclear power accounts for barely 2 percent of China’s electricity production, but there are plans to ramp it up to 5 percent over the next decade.
If the protest at Wangjiang village intensifies, it could upset those ambitious plans, but given the nature of civil society protests in China and the low tolerance for such agitations, this may not get much traction once the government sets its mind to it.
Indicatively, to build the Three Gorges Dam, inarguably the most ambitious hydropower projects in the world, more than 1.2 million people were displaced – in many cases forcibly.
The dam that “tamed the Yangtze” – and realised one of Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s dreams – is now proving ecologically ruinous, but when the government wanted it done, it was done, even if the project was low on foresight.
In Wangjiang, villagers were awakened to the potential for disaster after Beijing reviewed safety procedures last year in the wake of the Fukushima meltdown.
But they didn’t organise street protests or demonstrations in the way the anti-nuclear protestors at Kudankulam project are doing.
Instead, they have been petitioning their local government authorities against the Pengze plant.
The local government leaders sent on the petition to provincial-level leaders (who in turn forwarded it to central level energy officials), and followed it up with a resolution passed in the local party congress voicing opposition to the Pengze plant.
The villagers, who are mostly farmers, accused Jiangxi province authorities of having fudged population density figures so as to secure approval for the plant.
Under Jiangxi provincial law, no approval can be given if more than 100,000 people reside within a 10-km radius of a nuclear power plant.
Wangjiang officials claim that that their village alone, which falls within 10 km of the plant has more than 150,000 people.
Protestors also cite the instances of recent seismic activity in the area – including an earthquake in 2011 that measured 4.6 on the Richter scale – to pitch their case that the plant is unsafe.
On the other hand, Jiangxi officials claim that the plant is supremely safe, and the only thing to ooze from the reactors will be economic prosperity for the surrounding local communities.
The safety of China’s nuclear plants was the subject of several WikiLeaks cables that were leaked, like radioactive waste, last year.
But as much as they reflected genuine concerns for safety, they were also seen to be an effort by the US energy giant Westinghouse to expand its marketshare in the lucrative Chinese nuclear power market by talking down the indigenous Chinese technology on the ground that it was dated and unsafe.
China, noted a cable from August 2008, is “vastly increasing the aggregate risk of its nuclear power fleet.” The cable, which took note of an interaction with Westinghouse China CEO, said that China’s indigenously built reactors – the CPR-1000, which were based on old Westinghouse technology from its AP1000 reactor – were gaining marketshare.
“Rather than building a fleet of state-of-the-art reactors,” the cable said, “China is assuring that they will be burdened with technology that by the end of its lifetime will be 100 years old.”
And by bypassing the “passive safety technology” of Westinghouse’s AP1000 – which shuts down a reactor automatically in the event of an accident and which it claimed was 100 times safer than China’s CPR-1000 – China was “vastly increasing the aggregate risk of its nuclear power fleet.”
Wangjiang villagers are perhaps giving voice to similar concerns about the safety of the Pengze plant – and to that extent are echoing the sentiment of the Kudankulam protesters in faraway Tamil Nadu. But that apart, the level of tolerance that the anti-nuclear ‘protestors’ enjoy in China will be a test of the leaders’ readiness to listen to anxiety over the plant.
For campaigners against the Kudankulam project, who perhaps feel that their grievances are not being heard, it may prove a contrasting case study in the nature of governmental response to popular protests.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Human chain against nuclear plant in Turkey
Human chain against nuclear plant in Turkey
4/17/2011
A part of chain in the western quarters of the city
Human chain against nuclear plant in Turkey was the name of a peaceful protest.
Turkey plans to build the first nuclear plant in Akkuyu location in Mersin Province about 140 kilometres (87 mi) west of Mersin. The contract has been signed and the preliminary works at the construction site have already been started. But most of the residents of Mersin oppose the decision. The opposition sharply increased after the Fukushima I nuclear accidents in Japan.
http://easss.com/travel
On 17 April 2011 a human chain was formed in Mersin to protest the decision. It was planned that there would be 30 locations to form chains along the highway connecting Mersin to Akkuyu. But the participation was higher than the expected and several of these chains were merged with. The east end of the chain was in Mersin midtown and it reached some 20 kilometres (12 mi) west along the highway uninterrupted. Also the settlements at the west including the district centers of Silifke and Erdemli as well as Büyükeceli, the town nearest to construction site participated.
"The earthquake and tsunami in Japan proved how dangerous nuclear technology is," said Sabahat Aslan, a spokesperson for the Mersin Anti-Nuclear Platform. “We organized this protest to say ‘no’ to nuclear power plants, which will put future generations in danger.”
TURKEY Tr-National
Human chain formed against nuclear plan in Turkey's Akkuyu
MERSIN - Anatolia News Agency | 4/17/2011
People from the province of Mersin have created a 'human chain' in different parts of the city to protest plans to build a nuclear power plant in Akkuyu district.
People from the Mediterranean province of Mersin have created a “human chain” in different parts of the city to protest plans to build a nuclear power plant in the province’s Akkuyu district.
“The earthquake and tsunami in Japan proved how dangerous nuclear technology is,” said Sabahat Aslan, a spokesperson for the Mersin Anti-Nuclear Platform. “We organized this protest to say ‘no’ to nuclear power plants, which will put future generations in danger.”
According to Aslan, thousands of people gathered at 30 separate points in the province to raise their voices against the planned nuclear plant construction.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Counties face off over nuclear plant, Pengze, Jiangxi Province, China
Counties face off over nuclear plant
Global Times | February 09, 2012
By Zheng Yi
The Global Times
A campaign initiated by authorities in Central China's Wangjiang county, Anhui Province 安徽望江縣 aimed at halting the construction of a nuclear power plant in a neighboring county has drawn nationwide attention after a report handed to higher authorities was posted online recently.
Sun Bin, from the publicity department of the Wangjiang Development and Reform Commission, confirmed to the Global Times Wednesday that the government handed the report to the Anhui Development and Reform Commission in November, in a bid to stop the nuclear power plant from being built. Provincial authorities are planning to pass the report to the State government for a decision, according to Sun.
According to information on the official website of the Jiangxi branch of the China Power Investment Corporation, the nuclear plant, located in Pengze, Jiangxi Province 江西彭澤, is expected to start operations in 2015, and will have an annual capacity of 60 billion kilowatt hours, more than the entire capacity of Jiangxi's current coal-burning power plants. Preparation work for construction is complete, according to the website.
http://easss.com/nuclear
However, the project has met with strong opposition from across the Yangtze River in the neighboring county of Wangjiang.
According to the report, the plant would be in violation of a regulation issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, which states that nuclear power plants should not be built within 10 kilometers of cities with a population over 100,000 people. Several townships in Wangjiang are located within 10 kilometers from the plant.
"We all believe the plant is a time bomb," Sun told the Global Times.
The report also pointed out that the plant is located in a fault zone with frequent occurrences of earthquakes, a fact that was not mentioned in the plant's environmental evaluation report.
Construction on the nuclear plant has been suspended and is awaiting reevaluation after the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan in March, according to Zhang.
Calls from the Global Times to the Pengze nuclear power office went unanswered Wednesday.
"Nuclear power plants will cause little pollution only if they are built more than 10 kilometers away from cities with dense populations, and they are safe for nearby residents if they release fewer than 250 mSv in radiation per year," Feng Weiheng, chief expert in radiation prevention at the Shanghai Environmental Protection Industry Association, told the Global Times Wednesday.
At present, six nuclear power plants have been put into use in China and another 12 are under construction, while preparation work on the construction of 28 plants is underway.
According to a State plan released in 2007, by 2020, nuclear power installed capacity will reach 40 million kilowatts.
Operations at a number of power plants were suspended after the Fukushima nuclear leak.
Global Times | February 09, 2012
By Zheng Yi
The Global Times
A campaign initiated by authorities in Central China's Wangjiang county, Anhui Province 安徽望江縣 aimed at halting the construction of a nuclear power plant in a neighboring county has drawn nationwide attention after a report handed to higher authorities was posted online recently.
Sun Bin, from the publicity department of the Wangjiang Development and Reform Commission, confirmed to the Global Times Wednesday that the government handed the report to the Anhui Development and Reform Commission in November, in a bid to stop the nuclear power plant from being built. Provincial authorities are planning to pass the report to the State government for a decision, according to Sun.
According to information on the official website of the Jiangxi branch of the China Power Investment Corporation, the nuclear plant, located in Pengze, Jiangxi Province 江西彭澤, is expected to start operations in 2015, and will have an annual capacity of 60 billion kilowatt hours, more than the entire capacity of Jiangxi's current coal-burning power plants. Preparation work for construction is complete, according to the website.
http://easss.com/nuclear
However, the project has met with strong opposition from across the Yangtze River in the neighboring county of Wangjiang.
According to the report, the plant would be in violation of a regulation issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, which states that nuclear power plants should not be built within 10 kilometers of cities with a population over 100,000 people. Several townships in Wangjiang are located within 10 kilometers from the plant.
"We all believe the plant is a time bomb," Sun told the Global Times.
The report also pointed out that the plant is located in a fault zone with frequent occurrences of earthquakes, a fact that was not mentioned in the plant's environmental evaluation report.
Construction on the nuclear plant has been suspended and is awaiting reevaluation after the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan in March, according to Zhang.
Calls from the Global Times to the Pengze nuclear power office went unanswered Wednesday.
"Nuclear power plants will cause little pollution only if they are built more than 10 kilometers away from cities with dense populations, and they are safe for nearby residents if they release fewer than 250 mSv in radiation per year," Feng Weiheng, chief expert in radiation prevention at the Shanghai Environmental Protection Industry Association, told the Global Times Wednesday.
At present, six nuclear power plants have been put into use in China and another 12 are under construction, while preparation work on the construction of 28 plants is underway.
According to a State plan released in 2007, by 2020, nuclear power installed capacity will reach 40 million kilowatts.
Operations at a number of power plants were suspended after the Fukushima nuclear leak.
Monday, October 31, 2011
China Daya Bay Nuclear Plant
China Daya Bay Nuclear Plant
China Nuclear Plant Workers Exposed to Radiation, South China Post Reports
By John Duce - Nov 16, 2010 7:44 AM GMT+0800
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-15/china-nuclear-plant-workers-exposed-to-radiation-south-china-post-reports.html
Daya Bay workers exposed to radiation Leak equivalent to two X-rays, plant boss says
Martin Wong and Cheung Chi-fai
Nov 16, 2010
Workers at the Daya Bay nuclear power station were exposed to radiation equal to two chest X-rays after a flaw developed in a pipe carrying hot water from one of the station's two reactors....
http://www.ecfchina.com/news/43036.shtml
http://www.china-defense-mashup.com/china-nuclear-plant-workers-exposed-to-radiation-south-china-post-reports.html
http://ffggippsland.blogspot.com/2010/11/china-nuclear-plant-workers-exposed-to.html
Daya workers in radiation scare but CLP denies harm
Dennis Chong
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=30&art_id=105003&sid=30313465&con_type=1
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