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China Races to Expand Nuclear Power

Posted on: Tuesday, 19 July 2005, 03:01 CDT

QINSHAN, China - The shadows of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island no longer reach to the pine-crested hillsides of Hangzhou Bay, where China is rushing to expand a nuclear power station to meet soaring demand for electricity for its economic boom.

Driven by crushing fuel shortages, smog and ambitions to profit from its hard-won nuclear prowess, Beijing has embarked on a quest to more than double its nuclear power-generating capacity by 2020.

The push for more nuclear power means opportunities for U.S., French and Russian technology suppliers that are competing for as much as $8 billion in contracts for two new nuclear power plants - the biggest deals in years for the industry.

The French nuclear group AREVA, Russia's AtomStroyExport and Westing-house Electric Co. - the U.S. unit of British Nuclear Fuels PLC, which Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has offered to buy - are awaiting a Chinese decision on bids for facilities at Sanmen, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, and Yangjiang in Guangdong province, which borders Hong Kong.

"We are fully committed to transferring our advanced nuclear technology to China," Paul Felten, a senior vice president of AREVA's Framatome unit, said at a recent conference in Shanghai.

At Qinshan, a two-hour drive southwest of Shanghai, sites are being prepared for four new reactors to go with the five already operating at three different facilities.

"The excavation is almost finished," said Yang Lanhe, the general manager for Qinshan Phase II, China's showcase for domestically developed nuclear technology and equipment. He pointed out the window to a site cleared and waiting for construction to begin.

He and other executives at Qinshan speak of nuclear power with the conviction of true believers.

They point to China's accident-free record after 14 years of nuclear power generation. And they say technology has advanced far beyond that used decades earlier, when the 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania and the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl plant in the Ukraine sharply reduced public support for atomic energy in the West.

"We know and understand that nuclear power is a clean and good energy, and we think it would be good to increase its share" of China's power production, said Hu Haiyun, the Communist Party boss for Qinshan Nuclear Base.

China's nuclear program, dating back to the 1950s, began commercial operations only in 1991, at Qinshan.

For six years, beginning in 1997, dozens of potential projects were put on hold amid concerns over excess capacity, safety and the relatively high costs of nuclear-generated electricity.

There is a newfound conviction that nuclear power is the most practical option for reducing the country's reliance on heavily polluting coal-fired power plants.

"Build Nuclear Power, Enrich the People," says a slogan on billboards throughout the sprawling facility, built into a peninsula surrounded by farms and fishing villages.

China expects the share of its power supplied by nuclear generation to grow to 4 percent by 2020 from 2.3 percent today. To meet that goal, it must build about two new facilities every year.

China is concentrating its nuclear power facilities in heavily populated, industrialized coastal regions, where demand is highest and pollution levels are too severe to burn more coal.

China hopes to begin operating a prototype fast reactor by 2008, with commercial operations anticipated by 2020, CNNC said. It is the center of a top-priority $167 million national research project.

Chinese researchers also have been preparing to build a pebble- bed nuclear reactor, using a new technology fueled by small graphite spheres with uranium cores.

Source: Augusta Chronicle, The

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