China Slows Nuclear Expansion

An anonymous reader writes "Hui Zhang and Shangui Zhao describe China's decision to move ahead with nuclear power. Following the Fukushima Daiichi accident, China slowed its rapid expansion of nuclear power and undertook a major reevaluation of safety practices. The government has now resumed approval of new nuclear power projects, and is cautiously moving forward. Good description of safety issues that remain." They are suspending in-land construction, and are aiming at 58GWe instead of 80GWe of generation capacity by 2020. It's still more than the 40GWe they planned to build under their 2007 plans.

Comments

Safety-first?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee Safety-first huh? Guess that Safety-first was on their mind when they built train lines and then when they derailed, buried the train, corpses and all.

As much as I'd like to believe the Chinese government won't screw this up, History has shown that the Chinese will cut corners or steal trade secrets from foreign companies to build domestic versions of things. This really really really should not happen with Nuclear technology.

A Chernobyl-like incident(reactor core explosion) is far more likely the result of bad reactor design, while a TMI/Fukushima-like accident(loss of coolant, reactor core meltdown) is more likely to happen due to shortcuts taken during operation, which IMO is far more likely to happen given how often Chinese are willing to risk the lives of their own people to make a buck.