Nuclear power remains key to China's carbon targets

Sponsored

Beijing - Rapid expansion of nuclear power remains a key element in China's five-year plan to reduce carbon emissions and promote more sustainable development, experts said on Monday, despite fears generated by Japan's struggle to control nuclear plants damaged by last week's devastating earthquake.

China's 2011-2015 economic plan targets another 40 gigawatts of nuclear power to add to the 10.8 gigawatts of installed capacity from 13 reactors.

'It is not too much to build 40 gigawatts in five years. The installations under construction now have already reached 20 or 30 gigawatts,' Zhou Dadi, the former head of a central government energy institute, told the German Press Agency dpa.

Zhou said China's accelerating construction of nuclear plants could add about 10 gigawatts annually to power generation capacity.

Some 25 reactors are under construction as part of a programme to increase installed capacity to 86 gigawatts, or 5 per cent of total electricity generation, by 2020.

'China has made clear its strategy of accelerating the development of technology over the next five years, and I am confident we'll reach the point that 2.2 per cent of the energy we use will come from nuclear power in 2016,' Zhang Guobao, a former head of the National Energy Administration, said last week.

'This is part of our efforts to reduce China's reliance on coal,' Zhang told the official China Daily newspaper.

Zhang said the building of more nuclear plants would also be vital for reducing China's dependence on imported oil, which accounted for about 55 per cent of its oil supply last year.

China aims to reduce carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product by 40 to 45 per cent by 2020, using measures including carbon taxes; energy efficiency programmes; improvements to public transport; development of electric vehicles; and the expansion of nuclear, hydro, solar and wind power.

Nuclear energy is forecast to contribute 10 per cent of China's emissions reduction over the next decade, the Paris-based International Energy Agency said in reports last year.

Carbon capture and storage will lead to 10 per cent of the emissions reductions, with wind power and solar power accounting for 6 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively, the agency said.

'Industrial efficiency and recycling' would make the biggest contribution to emissions reductions, at 18 per cent, it said.

The agency forecast that China would need to invest 250 billion dollars in nuclear power by 2030 and would expand its share of global nuclear capacity to about 27 per cent by 2050.

The operational reactors are dotted along China's eastern and southern coasts but preparations are under way for construction of the first inland plant in the central province of Hubei.

The 4-gigawatt Dafan plant under construction near Hubei's Xianning city will be built at a final cost of about 95 billion yuan (14 billion dollars).

Dafan is about 100 kilometres from the provincial capital of Wuhan, a sprawling conurbation of more than 9 million people.

Another plant that attracted local opposition is under construction just 70 kilometres from the eastern coastal city of Weihai.

But Friday's earthquake damage to Japanese nuclear plants has not prompted China to rethink its plans to develop dozens of new reactors close to coastal and inland cities, Vice Minister of Environmental Protection Zhang Lijun said on Saturday.

Chinese experts were closely watching developments in Japan but safety inspections on Friday at China's 13 operational reactors found no problems, Zhang told state media.

'Some lessons we learn from Japan will be considered in the making of China's nuclear power plans,' he was quoted as saying.

'But China will not change its determination and plan for developing nuclear power,' Zhang said.

Delegates to China's annual parliament, which approved the five-year plan on Monday, expressed some safety concerns but generally supported the government's plans.

'We cannot give up eating for fear of choking,' said Hu Weiwu, a computer scientist and delegate from the inland province of Hunan, which also plans to build a nuclear plant.

'Japan uses the first generation nuclear power technology while China will take the fourth generation so our technology is comparatively advanced,' Zhong Yanmin, the head of a company making electrical transformers in Hunan, told dpa.

'Even if there is no electricity, there is still protection (in the fourth-generation plants),' Zhong said, referring to the failure of generators powering cooling systems at the Japanese plants.

Sponsored
Distributed by Top News
artist photos