The German parliament voted this summer to close the country’s remaining nuclear power plants by 2022, while the Swiss parliament voted this summer to phase nuclear power out by 2034.
Economic stagnation in the United States and most other industrialised economies since 2008 has produced stagnant electricity demand, further sapping interest in nuclear power.
In Japan itself, the government has put on hold its plans to build further nuclear power plants, and the government faces a political battle to continue operating existing reactors. Emerging economies like Brazil and particularly India are still planning nuclear reactors. But the Indian leaders introduced legislation on September 7 that is supposed to increase the independence of nuclear regulators from the industry, though critics are sceptical.
That leaves China poised to build more nuclear reactors in the coming years than the rest of the world combined. But questions abound whether China will be a savior for the international nuclear power industry, or a ferocious competitor that could create even greater challenges for nuclear power companies in the west.
Chinese regulators performed a four-month review of safety at all existing nuclear reactors and reactors under construction after the Fukushima meltdowns and declared them safe. Safety reviews continue at reactors where construction had not yet started at the time of the Fukushima accident.
Jiang Kejun, a director of the Energy Research Institute at the National Development and Reform Commission, the top Chinese economic planning agency, said that the government was sticking to its target of 50 gigawatts of nuclear power by 2015, compared to just 10.8 gigawatts at the end of last year.
Jiang said in an interview that nuclear power construction targets for 2020 had not yet been set and might end up slightly lower than they would have been without the meltdowns in Fukushima. But he and other Chinese officials say that China’s rapidly rising electricity consumption makes nuclear power essential. They even try to portray the Fukushima incidents as salutary for the nuclear power industry, a view seldom heard elsewhere.
“Globally, I think Fukushima could be a good thing for nuclear power,” Jiang said. “We can learn a lot from that. We can’t be smug or too clever.” China allowed existing reactors to continue operating during the safety review from March to July and allowed construction to continue at reactors where it had already begun. Chinese regulators have also encouraged electric utilities to continue planning future nuclear power plants.
But one category of reactor has been delayed by the Fukushima incident. At reactors that had been approved before the Fukushima accident but where construction had not yet begun, the government still has not allowed construction to start while continuing to study whether further safety improvements can be made, said Xu Yuanhui, one of China’s top nuclear engineers for the past half century.
The delay applies to several conventional nuclear reactors plus Beijing’s project to build two reactors in northeastern China, using a new generation of technology known as a pebble-bed design. Critics and advocates describe it as safer than current reactors, though its cost-effectiveness unclear.
The two reactors in Shidao, in Shandong Province in northeast China, were approved days before the Fukushima nuclear accident began with an earthquake and tsunami March 11. But the 50-month timetable for building them cannot start until the government lifts its hold on construction. “By the end of this year, maybe we’ll have some information from the government side,” Dr Xu said.
Nuclear power represented only 1.1 per cent of China’s electricity generation capacity at the end of last year. With wind turbines and coal-fired power plants being installed at rates that far surpass those in any other country, nuclear power is on track to account for no more than 4 per cent of electricity capacity by 2015.
A big part of the appeal of nuclear energy for Chinese officials is that it supplies baseload power, meaning it is available 24 hours a day and seven days a week to meet needs. China passed the United States last year as the world’s largest installer of wind turbines, but wind still accounts for only 3.2 per cent of China’s installed electricity generation capacity and less than 2 per cent of electricity generated.
Coal remains by far the dominant source of electricity in China, producing three-quarters of the country’s electricity. Nuclear power mainly displaces coal as a source of baseload power. That has also made it popular with Chinese officials, as they have set increasingly ambitious targets to slow the country’s rapid rise in emissions of global warming gases, in which the country already leads the world.
Large-scale storage
Until reliable, large-scale storage of electricity is perfected for renewable energy sources like the wind and sun, “they’ve got to continue using nuclear as a fundamental part of their fuel mix,” said James A. Maguire, the regional managing director for Asian infrastructure at Aon Risk Solutions, a risk management and insurance broker.
Coal is the most polluting major source of electricity in terms of emissions of climate-changing gases, while nuclear power is one of the cleanest. Coal mining accidents also kill more than 2,000 people a year in China, and large areas of the countryside in northern China have been heavily polluted.
China is paying particular attention to nuclear safety issues, however, because it has some of the world’s most densely populated rural areas. If a nuclear accident rendered even a small area around a power plant uninhabitable, many would need to be resettled.
China now has an unusually varied fleet of nuclear reactors, using French, American, Russian and homegrown technology. While awarding contracts to a wide range of multinational nuclear power plant contractors, it has required that they provide documentation on exactly how to build the reactors.
That will give China the ability to export reactors in a few years, in competition with industrialized nations, nuclear power industry experts warned. Demand outside China could revive if memories of the Fukushima accident fade or if worries about global warming become more pressing.
China is not only acquiring technology. It is also creating economies of scale by building dozens of reactors at the same time. As a population equal to New York City’s moves into China’s cities each year demanding air-conditioners and other electricity-guzzling conveniences, consumption is likely to continue growing by double digits.
“It’s the largest migration in history, so they need to build a lot of infrastructure,” said Dennis Bracy, the chief executive of the U.S.-China Clean Energy Forum, a bilateral discussion group formed by the Chinese government with prominent Americans from previous Republican and Democratic administrations. “I believe they will stay with nuclear as part of the portfolio.”