How China became the king of new nuclear power, and how the U.S. is trying to stage a comeback
How China became the king of new nuclear power, and how the U.S. is trying to stage a comeback
China is the current king of new nuclear power construction. The US is attempting to launch a comeback, but its still unknown whether that will be successful.
China has 21 nuclear reactors under construction which will have a capacity for generating more than 21 gigawatts of electricity, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. That is two and a half times more nuclear reactors under construction than any other country.
I love that China is not planning to power all future demand with more coal and gas.
Our aversion to nuclear energy PR wise has been a disaster. It’s very difficult for the general public to fully buy into nuclear power with all the misinformation spread about it. Hope we start to slowly veer back towards it.
But it's not the general public who is averse to nuclear, they're as a whole, probably more in favour of it. The current Swedish governmrnt campaigned on it. It's nuclear companies themselves who don't want it. Which is partially why Sweden suddenly and quietly scrapped their plans.
Okay but how's their safety?
I've got no reason to believe they're doing anything dangerous. I found this piece which indicates that they did a review in the wake of Fukushima. Sounds like things were adequate but they also found things to improve. Do you have reason to believe China is not taking safety seriously in there nuclear energy program?
Following Fukushima, however, Beijing immediately suspended approval of all new nuclear power projects while it undertook a comprehensive safety review of existing and under-construction nuclear power plants, as well as research reactors and fuel cycle facilities, and developed its Twelfth Five Year Plan for Nuclear Safety. In June 2012, after gaining approval of the State Council in principle, the National Nuclear Safety Administration released drafts of the Nuclear Safety Plan (Chinese here) and the “Report on Safety Inspection of National Civilian Nuclear Facilities” (Chinese here) for public comment.
As discussed in the Safety Inspection report, the safety inspection took over 9 months and covered 11 areas of safety, including site selection and external event evaluation; flood and earthquake resistance capacity; extreme natural disaster prevention and protection; electricity blackouts and emergency plans; severe accident prevention and mitigation; environmental monitoring systems; and emergency response system effectiveness.
The report concluded that operating reactors “basically fulfill” China’s nuclear safety laws and regulations and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s most recent standards, that they have the capacity to respond to design-basis accidents and severe accidents, and that safety risks are under control. However, in spite of these conclusions, the inspection report and nuclear safety plan also identified areas for improvement. In particular, the nuclear safety plan lays out short- (by the end of 2012), mid- (by the end of 2013) and long-term (by 2015) tasks to strengthen safety for operating and under-construction plants, research reactors and fuel cycle facilities.
Do you have reason to believe China is not taking safety seriously in there nuclear energy program?
If the China government were doing the wrong thing, would Chinese scientists and engineers be safe to say so, or would they be subject to imprisonment and torture for disagreeing with their political superiors?
Without freedom of political speech there is no freedom to tell the truth on matters of political controversy. This includes environmental and safety issues.
China’s safety record in other energy sectors is poor. This is presumably not on purpose. What reason is there to believe it will be better at managing nuclear?
Probably on par with how the other safety stuff in the country is. Bad, not talked about, and actively suppressed if discovered.
The only reported incident has been from one of the European designed EPR reactors, which had a faulty fuel cladding that released some radioactive steam within the system.
Other than that, they've been pretty good. The main reason the reactors are safe is because we've designed them, especially with post-Fukushima improvements, to have a lot of passive safety built in by default.
Post-Fukushima improvements include, in addition to baseline passive nuclear safety, things like being able to take direct strikes from artillery without melting down. That's also in addition to the natural disaster proofing we've done for earthquakes, floods and tsunamis. We've generally done a good job of over-engineering our reactors so that we can minimize any potential disasters.
China is ahead because of their advanced manufacturing economy. They literally build every single reactor component in house and don't have to really rely on any outside companies for basically anything.
They have mostly North American designed reactors, ranging from CANDUs to their version of the Westinghouse AP-1000. Westinghouse basically went bankrupt trying to make the AP-1000 a viable reactor and when they started slipping, China came in and bought the schematics, modified them, and that's their primary reactor design these days.
If you look at all the reactors worldwide that are being built, the majority of them in Europe are massively behind schedule for various reasons that probably get ignored by the Chinese. For example, one of the reactors in France is multiple billions above budget and about a decade behind due to the lack of precision of the builders, forcing them to re-assess and re-build key structural components multiple times over.
Western intelligence should organize Chinese labor.
It is important to keep in mind that, because they are copying the Westinghouse AP-1000 design several times, they can keep costs low as most construction issues have already been ironed out. They also get to build expertise by having a long program rather than just building a one off.
Well, all the reactors in Europe are supposed to be of a similar design -- they had a big push to make the EPR reactors, which are a pressurized heavy water system, which is a bit old fashioned and requires a decent amount of passive safety to be built into the system. One of the first of those series to function was actually the one built in China which saw very few cost overruns and was generally finished within the original timeframe.