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China Slowing Nuclear Buildout In Response To Fukushima

Posted by Unknown on from the safety-first dept.

Lasrick writes "Yun Zhou writes about the end result of China's long reconsideration of nuclear power safety in the wake of Fukushima. Important details about the decision to adopt designs created in China, and incorporate Gen III in those designs." The short version is that they won't be building more Generation II reactors, opting instead to only build Generation III reactors (which have passive safety systems). Instead of relying entirely on the AP1000, China is speeding up the design of their own Generation III reactors. Plans are still in place for 70GW by 2020, but that date will likely slip due to regulatory delays and the temporary construction moratorium.

19 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. Great... by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yet another area that China will be ahead of the US on before long. I realize that there's still a lot that the US has going for it. But it's feeling more and more like we are just sitting on our asses and admiring past achievements. It's getting rather embarrassing. Perhaps it's time to seriously consider learning Mandarin.

    1. Re:Great... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yet another area that China will be ahead of the US on before long

      The world economy is not a zero sum game. China's gain is not America's loss. When one nation makes progress, they tend to import more, and pull up other economies along with themselves. There is no rational reason for China and America to be rivals. But, unfortunately, there are plenty of irrational reasons.

      Perhaps it's time to seriously consider learning Mandarin.

      It is difficult. Especially the tones. For an English speaker, it is several times more difficult than picking up, say, Spanish. I have been working on it for years, and still get misunderstood whenever I talk to someone not used to a foreign accent. However, the writing system is actually fairly logical once you get used to it, and I can read and type (but not write) way better than I can listen or talk.

    2. Re:Great... by clarkkent09 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There is no rational reason for China and America to be rivals
       
      Access to scarce resources, including oil. Political/military influence in Asia (Japan, Korea, Taiwan etc). Human rights. China's vast industrial and military espionage programs against the USA. There are lots of things that USA has and China wants, rationally.

      --
      Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
    3. Re:Great... by cpu6502 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Americans have been saying negative things about the U.S. and how it's "best days are behind it" since the Progressive Party was born in the 1880s. After the civil war they claimed it was the gilded age (looks like gold but not really; just gold-plated crap). They also whined about the end of the pre-war agrarianism and replacement by industrialism with bad work conditions.

      In the 1920s there was a 1 year Depression, but things looked pretty good overall. But then we got hit by the 1930s Depression and some Americans started saying we should copy nations like Italy and Germany (seriously) who recovered almost overnight. In the 1950s they claimed we should be more like the Russians, after all they launched the first satellite. That must mean our schools suck!

      In the 60s people complained we should "make love not war" and in the 70s people went nuts with drugs & disco trying to escape the hell of gas lines & stagflation. Reagan swept-in with a great deal of optimism, but soon people were claiming "Japan will buy all our land and buildings." (See the movie Rising Sun for an example of the 80s mindset.) Reagan responded by demanding we need to copy Japanese HDTV and other inventions to regain dominance.

      The 90s was a crapfest with the Iraq War, terrorist attacks on WTC, Oklahoma City, and the USS Cole. The 2000s was more of the same. And NOW people are claiming the Chinese will buy-up all our land and buildings (I thought the Japanese were doing that in the 80s?).

      Complain, be afraid, worry our best times our behind us. It's been the American way since the civil war. FUD is the true national passtime.

      --
      My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
    4. Re:Great... by cpu6502 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That doesn't mean we have to be enemies, with the current administration building bases just a few miles off the Chinese coast. We should sell democracy through EXAMPLE not intimidation or bombing.

      And also trade so China becomes dependent upon us and the rest of the world, and would not want to attack their profitable markets. The idea that we have to fight over oil and political/military influence only benefits the War industries. Not us.

      --
      My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
    5. Re:Great... by demachina · · Score: 5, Informative

      Dictatorships tend to be a lot faster at doing just about everything. If they pick the right things to do and the right way to do it, its a win-win.

      The problems only start when they decide to do the wrong things or pick the wrong way to do it, because then you are in deep shit.

      One thing the Chinese have going for them is their central committee members tend to be degreed engineers and technocrats. That is head and shoulders better than the U.S. where the vast majority of the leaders are lawyers. Any time U.S. political leaders open their mouths they make technocratic dictatorships look pretty appealing.

      Another Chinese advantage is they had, until recently, none of the drags associated with environmental protection, property rights, worker safety, etc. If they decide they want to do something it gets done really fast, while in the U.S. things like new reactors wallow in red tape for decades. The down side is they've made the place unlivable with pollution, they throw people off their land and out of their homes and business at a furios pace and they kill and maim a lot of workers.

      Some other down sides the Chinese have going against them:

      Its a freaking dictatorship, there is no way in hell I want to live under their system. Of course at the rate the rest of the world is rushing towards totalitarianism, the U.S. and U.K. in particular, there may not be many free places left to live much longer.

      The corruption and deception in their system is truly horrible. If they don't figure out a way to fix their corruption problem it will eventually destory them. Thanks to their deception problem you can't believe a single thing you hear out of the place. Their economic data, and a lot of their economic miracle, is fabrication. The build stuff, and misappropriate massive amounts of capital just to hit targets set from above. Its stimulus spending gone mad. If they are still missing their targets then they just lie.

      Most of their companies run multiple sets of books so you can't believe anything they say or any of their reports. They often collude with their banks so dedicated ourside auditors don't even catch the frauds, because the bankers will tell the auditors numbers matching the cooked books not what the company actually has.

      --
      @de_machina
    6. Re:Great... by clarkkent09 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Would it be better not to worry and to be complacent and take what we have for granted? Didn't work out so well for the Romans.

      --
      Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
    7. Re:Great... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Access to scarce resources, including oil.

      We compete for these resources with Europe, Canada, Japan, etc. as well. But we don't consider them our rivals. There is a non-confrontational way to allocate resources: markets.

      Political/military influence in Asia (Japan, Korea, Taiwan etc).

      This is only an issue if we are already rivals.

      Human rights.

      We should express our concern, but ultimately, this is an issue that will be resolved by the Chinese people. America is not going to "fix" China, and it is silly to think that we can.

      China's vast industrial and military espionage programs against the USA.

      The military espionage is only an issue if we are already rivals. The industrial espionage is between companies, not countries. The biggest industrial spies in America are other Americans.

      There are lots of things that USA has and China wants, rationally.

      And most of these things we can both have. We need to learn to enlarge the pie, not fight over the size of each slice.

    8. Re:Great... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others." N. Machiavelli

      Nonsense. There are far fewer wars today than ever before in history, despite a larger population. No where in the world are two nation states at war with each other. Other than tribal and sectarian violence, the world is at peace, and increasingly likely to stay that way.

    9. Re:Great... by cheetah · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Basically everything you said is true.

      The biggest advantage(and disadvantage) that I think they have from a political stand-point is the ability to make and then execute long term plans. It is something that is really missing with most of the democratic west. Granted, I don't think they always make good long term plans, heck often they do rather foolish things... but they can at least tackle problems that require long term solutions.

      But I do think you are missing a one important point about China. You and I both agree that we wouldn't want to live with in dictatorship. But many Chinese feel that what they government has done has been for the best. Mainly due the the strength of the Chinese economy. While they do often fib on the exact numbers, it's impossible to discount that China has been growing the GDP at a rate of 10-15% per year for the last 20 years.

      It's this fact more than any other that has won the hearts of the people in China. So much of the communist governments legitimacy is riding on ever increasing economic prosperity. If the economy faltered badly... who knows what would happen.

      That is why the news from China isn't all that good. Most of the talk for the last few years has been about the "soft landing" that the Chinese Economy will soon make. It's just not possible for them to keep growing the way they have. It's much easier to grow a small economy than it is grow a large one. Most people expect that the "soft landing" will be a general slowing of the GDP growth rate to between 7-8%.

      But over the last few months it's starting to become clear that China isn't getting a soft landing. As you point-out official numbers have been downright faked in the past. But metrics do exist that outsiders can look at and that have been reliable; for instance growth of electricity usage. In the past electricity use has closely followed the GDP. But it has basically been flat over the last 3 months. Other items point to a "hard landing" in China.

      It's possible that this will all come to nothing and they won't slow that much... but I feel that long-term they can't have the massive corruption and mis-management if they don't also have the hugh GDP growth. I don't think the people would be nearly as happy with the government if they were frequently dipping into recession and had boughs of high unemployment like most other established economies. While also seeing the massive government corruption and mismanagement. Such periods of slow growth and recession are inevitable in the future even if they don't happen over the short-term.

  2. Why? by Das+Auge · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Are they building their new nuclear reactors with 50 year old technology on fault lines next to an ocean with an insufficient battery back up? That would be the only reason a sensible person would look at the Fukushima and decide not to build a nuclear power plant.

    1. Re:Why? by tragedy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It does say right in the summary that they are focusing on generation III reactors with passive safety systems. So they are specifically addressing the "50 year old" part you mention. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "insufficient battery backup", but I'm guessing you're referring to the problems powering and operating the cooling pumps. Addressed by the the passive safety systems.

    2. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      They were planning to build reactors with 30-40 year old (Gen II) tech, presumably because they saw some cost savings in using a "proven" design. (No patent license fees, for example)

      After the Fukushima incident, in which an older plant failed due to intrinsic safety flaws of its outdated design, they have reconsidered the merits of using older tech, and decided to use exclusively the newer tech (Gen III).

    3. Re:Why? by Sir_Sri · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Are they building their new nuclear reactors with 50 year old technology on fault lines next to an ocean with an insufficient battery back up? That would be the only reason a sensible person would look at the Fukushima and decide not to build a nuclear power plant.

      Probably close to all 3 of the above actually.

      Seriously.

      That fault line isn't a valid building location? No problem sir, how much to 'move the fault line' on that map? Done and done. China has a big coast, that's most of their economic activity, and if not a coast, a major river (which faces essentially the same weird random shit happening problem). Things like safe materials and locations aren't high priorities when you can bribe your way to safety.

      And 50 year old technology. Well are you going to sell them brand new technology? How new is our technology? For quite a while we weren't doing anything dramatically different with reactor designs in the west. So... maybe not a 50 year old design, but a design that is basically 40 years old? That wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.

      There are lessons every reactor can learn from fukushima about, as you say, battery backups and various types of alternate power arrangements and so on. But their 'generation II' reactors in many cases are technology from the 50's through the 70's give or take some minor updating but the core reactor tech didn't change much. Fukushima Daiichi used boiling water reactors which, from the article, are generation 2 reactors. Which is what the chinese are phasing out.

      Reactor technology didn't radically change much in the last 40 years, or even a bit longer than that. At least not in the core mode of operation (boiling water, gas cooled, pressurized water etc.). Add to that the fact that the chinese are probably doing a shitty job of actually building the reactors in some cases (where the japanese built it the way it was intended, the design just wasn't up to the disaster, would you want to have trusted chinese concrete with that problem too?) and you're begging for trouble. A lot of it.

      If you read up on the AP1000... while I'd be confident of westinghouse building them properly in the US, there's a LOT that can go wrong with that design if people try and cut corners. If I were the chinese government I'd be thinking they aren't really the best plan given corruption. Lopping off the head of a corrupt official doesn't put 100 000 people back in their homes.

  3. "The short version is ..." by ubrgeek · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wish more stories on /. started that way. ;)

    --
    Bark less. Wag more.
  4. Re:That makes sense... by Sir_Sri · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Stole? They're using AP1000 reactors from westinghouse. That's not theft, that's called buying. Now to get the contract Westinghouse agreed to a join project with the chinese on a new reactor design that the chinese will own the domestic IP to, but export is still westinghouse. Which is what is otherwise called a technology transfer or sale of technology.

    They're probably figuring building them in china, with corrupt chinese workers and officials is a recipe for disaster.

  5. Not surprised they are going this. by MtViewGuy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    After all, there are several parts of China that are quite earthquake-prone and given what happened at Fukushima, the Chinese will definitely build reactors with passive safety features so the reactor can be safely shut down even after a strong earthquake.

    That's why China is aggressively pursuing molten-salt reactor technology such as the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR), which are extremely safe to run even in areas of substantial earthquake danger. (It also helps that China has a large stockpile of thorium--a side product of their aggressive rare-Earth mining program. They Chinese might as well put good use to all that thorium.)

  6. Re:That makes sense... by SwedishPenguin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There seems to be a strange sentiment among some that "they" (i.e. everyone they don't like) should have to reinvent the wheel for any thing they do, ignoring of course how their own countrymen came about the knowledge in question in the first place. Knowledge belongs to humanity, not to the arbitrary groupings of humans called countries and companies.

  7. Re:That makes sense... by Sir_Sri · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Knowledge costs money to produce. Hence we have IP laws. If you design nuclear reactors for a living giving away your work with no ownership protection will put you out of a job very quickly. Westinghouse has (correctly) figured that the reactor business is go no where in the US, so they're basically willing to cannibalize any future business they could have had to get money now from the chinese, and then it becomes chinas problem if no one will buy the reactors. All those Westinghouse workers should expect to be out of a job within the decade.

    Quite a lot of people have fought, bribed and died over the borders of countries, they mean quite a lot to a lot of people. Even the company that pays me is important in that I don't have any money if they don't pay me.