China is rapidly building more nuclear power plants because of climate goals

• Laura van Megen

  China Reporter

China will be fully committed to nuclear energy in the coming years. The government sees it as one of the solutions to meet the energy needs of China’s growing economy without emitting greenhouse gases. This is why nuclear power plants are being built at a rapid pace: the government announced the construction of eleven new reactors last month.

The step is essential to meet China’s climate goals. The energy sector must be climate neutral by 2050 and the entire country ten years later. It is a race against time and the energy requirement is increasing every year.

Geopolitically, China also benefits from nuclear energy. The country now imports about 20 percent of its total energy use, mostly oil, according to International Energy Agency (IEA). By focusing on nuclear energy, but also on renewable energy, China can become energy independent. One of the advantages is that it will not suffer from instability in oil exporting countries in the Middle East.

China has long played a leading role in the field of nuclear energy. It is the only country in the world that uses the latest type of nuclear reactor. These fourth generation reactors must be safer, more efficient and more economical.

The Chinese government plays a key role in this. “When a piece of equipment is declared a Project of National Importance, it gets all the support you can think of from the central government,” said Shanghai-based energy consultant David Fishman. That status brings with it research centers, scientific collaborations, supplies, and “unlimited cash flows,” Fishman said.

Low interest rates, up to about 2 percent, are provided by state-owned banks on loans to build nuclear power plants. Building permits are also issued quickly and environmental inspections of the power stations are completed quickly, so construction projects are usually completed within the agreed time.

China is suing that 90 percent of the components of its fourth-generation nuclear reactor are domestically produced. Starting with imported technology, clusters of (state-owned) companies worked together to gradually improve the technology. Almost the entire supply chain is located in China itself. Except for uranium, which mostly comes from Kazakhstan.

The two nuclear power stations that the Netherlands wants to build soon will not have fourth generation reactors, but ‘third generation +’. “Chinese and Russian parties are excluded,” said a spokesman for the Dutch ministry. However, the third generation + is still “the latest design in Europe”, says the spokesman.

On average, Chinese people are more optimistic about nuclear energy than people in Europe and North America. For them, the pros outweigh the cons. The nuclear disaster at Fukushima in nearby Japan has cooled positive sentiments, partly due to strong anti-Japanese propaganda from the Chinese government, which is keen to use Fukushima as a stick to beat. hit Japan.

Lin Kaizhi, a junior safety technician at the Ningde nuclear power plant in South China, said: “A nuclear disaster would lead to a leak, so we have to make sure we do all the steps well.” Despite the dangers, he believes that nuclear power should not be written off. “Compared to wind and solar energy, the energy yield is much higher.”

Fifty reactors are currently operating in China, which together generate about 5 percent of China’s total energy. By the middle of this century, both numbers should have tripled. The goals don’t seem unrealistic.

But nuclear energy cannot exceed about 15 percent of the total energy mix. This is the maximum that can be achieved before they run into capacity problems, Fishman reckons. “How many nuclear engineers can you graduate each year?”

Cooperation with local governments with national nuclear energy goals sometimes overrides the interests and rights of individual Chinese. Ms. Zhao lived where the Ningde Nuclear Power Plant is now. It was urgent for her and her others to move. “The police arrested hundreds of people. My cousin was detained for twenty days,” she says.

The residents received compensation, but she prefers not to think back to that time. “The nuclear power company was paying a lot to the local government, but we got almost very little,” she remembers.