Nuclear fallout

Source:Global Times Published: 2011-3-15 8:45:00


The site of the second phase of Lingao nuclear power station in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province. Photo: CFP

By Fu Wen

The meltdown at a Japanese nuclear power station triggered by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake has raised safety concerns over current and future nuclear projects in China, which environmental activists are demanding be quickly phased out.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), citing information it had received from Japanese authorities, said about 185,000 residents in areas near the Fukushima Nuclear Station affected by Friday's quake had been evacuated by March 13.

Japanese authorities published test results showing that regions around the nuclear plant have seen unexpectedly high levels of radiation and asked residents living within 20 kilometers of the plant to stay at home to avoid radiation poisoning, Kyodo News Agency reported.

A meltdown occurs when a nuclear reactor does not have enough cooling water and energy generated by nuclear fuels cannot be released immediately. This leads to a meltdown of fuel rods, one of the most serious types of accidents that can happen in a nuclear power station.

The incident reminded the world of the Chernobyl accident, which took place in the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1986. The disaster began with a sudden power output surge, and when an emergency shutdown was attempted, a larger spike in power output occurred, leading to a reactor vessel rupture and a series of explosions.

The Chernobyl incident was seen as the worst nuclear accident in history, with radioactive plumes spreading to the western Soviet Union and many parts of Europe, killing thousands.

Environmentalists say China's nuclear plans should be reviewed, or suspended, but officials have rejected concerns over a possible disaster.

 

Learning lessons

The East China Sea Branch of the State Oceanic Administration said Monday that they have not found radioactive substances in the East China Sea from samples collected following the first explosion at the Fukushima Nuclear Station.

Zhang Lijun, vice minister of environmental protection, said China will learn some lessons from Japan as it builds its nuclear power plants.

"However, China will not change its plans or its determination to develop nuclear power," he was quoted by the Xinhua News Agency as saying.

Zhang told a press conference Saturday that China's 13 nuclear power reactors are working well and have not been affected by Friday's earthquake.

Most of China's nuclear power plants are located in the eastern coastal areas, including Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces.

An engineer surnamed Zhang at the Qinshan Nuclear Power Station in Zhejiang Province told the Global Times Monday that China uses different technology from Japan to generate nuclear power, and that the country's nuclear power reactors are strong enough to resist large-scale earthquakes.

"We have taken the largest earthquake to have struck into consideration when designing the nuclear power station to protect reactors, and currently we don't need to worry about safety problems in the station," said Zhang.

The engineer refused to go into detail about what technology domestic nuclear power stations were using to protect themselves against earthquakes, calling the matter a "State secret."

"We don't have any boiling-water reactors as used in the Fukushima Number 1 Nuclear Station, and none of the domestic nuclear power plants is built in earthquake zones," Chen Xiaoqiu, deputy chief engineer of the Nuclear and Radiation Safety Center at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, told the Beijing-based 21st Century Business Herald Monday.

 

Words of warning

From 2011 to 2015, China will launch nuclear energy projects with a combined generation capacity of 40 million kilowatts, according to the government's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15), the Xinhua News Agency reported.

"It does not matter where the nuclear power stations are located. We think there is a potential danger that control can be lost over a nuclear power station during any natural disaster or facility failure," Wang Xiaojun, a spokesman for Greenpeace in Beijing, told the Global Times Monday.

Wang urged government agencies to reconsider their strategy of promoting nuclear power to replace fossil energy, which requires huge investment and raises safety concerns.

While environmental watchdogs say there is no possibility of Chinese nuclear power stations being affected by earthquakes or other types of natural disasters, experts warned that Guangdong Province is at risk of active geological activity after scientists found a fracture zone that stretched into downtown Guangzhou in 2008.

Qiu Yan, former director of the Oceanic Geological Survey Center of the Guangzhou Oceanic Geological Survey Bureau, told the Guangzhou-based New Express Daily Monday that the Pearl River Delta region is squeezed by the western part of the circum-Pacific seismic belt and is a possible site for future earthquakes.

Qiu said that the Earth has entered its third quake-active period on record, which began with the devastating tsunami in Indonesia in 2004, and is expected to last more than 10 years.

Jan Beranek, Greenpeace International Head of Nuclear Campaign, said Saturday that Japan's accident is yet another reminder of the inherent risks of nuclear power, which will always be vulnerable to a potentially deadly combination of human error, design failure and natural disaster.

"We are calling for the phasing out of existing reactors, and no construction of new commercial nuclear reactors. Governments should invest in renewable energy resources that are not only environmentally sound but also affordable and reliable," said Beranek.

Lu Qizhou, general manager of China Power Investment Corporation, told the Beijing-based China Business News Saturday that it is time for China to develop stronger connections between nuclear power plants owned by different corporations to share information and support in the event of any natural disaster or emergency.



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