Unproven and possibly faulty nuclear reactors are being built on Hong
Kong's doorstep and throughout China, a country not known for its transparency
or industrial safety
And in Indonesia, when Habibie had some influence, he
wanted to build nuclear power plants in Java on a site where an active volcano
regularly shook everything to the core
Fifty years ago, when China first revealed
its nuclear power ambitions, most in the West dismissed them as Maoist
propaganda, but there is nothing imaginary about the nation's current boom in
nuclear energy - and not everyone is happy about it.
Scientists and conservationists fear the
ever-increasing commercial and environmental pressure to expand the nuclear
power sector means not enough attention is being paid to safety. Within a
couple of decades, Hong Kong could be in close proximity to as many as 39
reactors, spread across Guangdong province. Two of them are nearing completion
just 140km west of Hong Kong, in Taishan, in what has been labelled by green
groups as the "most dangerous nuclear power plant in the world".
"China is developing its nuclear
capability too fast; they just don't have enough trained staff or adequate
independent safety infrastructure," says civil engineer Albert Lai
Kwong-tak, convenor of Hong Kong think tank the Professional Commons and a long-standing
opponent of nuclear energy. Yet, despite the reservations of campaigners, China
is not only the world's biggest market for nuclear technology but, according to
the World Nuclear Association (WNA), it is set to "go global".
"The only country that is building
plants to a significant degree is China," says nuclear industry analyst
Mycle Schneider, from his Beijing hotel room. And the driving force behind the
nuclear push is no mystery. The nation is trying to meet an increasing demand
for electricity while curbing its emissions of carbon dioxide. According to the
United States-based Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), from 1992 to 2012,
electricity consumption grew from 666 billion kilowatt-hours to 4,468 billion
kilowatt-hours - an average annual growth rate of about 10 per cent - and,
currently, non-fossil fuels account for only about 12 per cent of supply in
China.
The climate change agreement reached in Paris
last month seems only to have increased the political pressure to expand
nuclear energy production. China's senior climate negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, told
a news conference in Beijing last month that nuclear energy was
"essential" to meet the nation's 2030 climate change commitments.
"A more dynamic view is that there are
[many] nuclear reactors being built around Hong Kong, so immediately the risk
increases," says Lai. According to data provided by the WNA, as well as
the nine reactors already in operation, 18 are currently under construction,
planned or proposed for Guangdong. There are less definite proposals for a
further 12. (Nationally, 30 reactors are in operation, with 64 under
construction or planned and another 92 proposed.)
Lai is worried that, despite the track record
at the Daya Bay nuclear plant, which has been supplying electricity to Hong Kong
since 1994 and provides almost 25 per cent of the city's needs, nuclear power
is "not a mature technology". He says there are still no proven safe
means of disposing of radioactive waste and, despite pledges to build a
dedicated facility, all of Daya Bay's spent fuel rods are still in a temporary
facility about 5km from the main plant.
"In Daya Bay, we adopted French
technology, but we now have multiple technologies and much of it is
unproven," says Lai, echoing the official findings reported to China's State
Council in 2012 as part of a nuclear safety review in the wake of Japan's
Fukushima disaster: "China has multiple types of nuclear reactors,
multiple technologies and multiple standards of safety".
Albert Lai Kwong-takThe reactors being built in
Taishan appear to be among the most problematic. Construction of the plant was
begun by French nuclear energy giant Areva and the €8 billion (HK$67 billion)
contract with China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) to install two
third-generation European pressure reactors (EPR) there was heralded by Areva
as "the largest international commercial contract signed in civil nuclear
history". The unveiling of the deal, at a ceremony in November 2007, was
attended by the Chinese and French presidents in Beijing's Great Hall of the
People. In order to save time and money, according to Areva's official website,
the plant was to use technology that had been proven at two EPR plants already
under construction in Europe.
"Thanks to the operating experience
gained by Areva's teams on the two first-of-a-kind EPR reactors at Olkiluoto
[in Finland] and Flamanville [in France], the project schedule has been
shortened by 40 months," reads a statement on Areva's website.
It is astonishing that this statement has
remained on the website because there is no operating experience to speak of;
both Olkiluoto and Flamanville have yet to go online. Both are many years
behind schedule and billions of euros over budget. Olkiluoto is already the
subject of a complicated and expensive legal dispute between Areva and its
partners in Finland.
Mycle SchneiderRather than being the third plant
successfully using the technology, Taishan, surrounded by dense Pearl River
Delta conurbations, is more likely to be operating untested EPR reactors, the
first fully functioning ones on the planet, should they go into service. Both
units are two years behind schedule and last April the news got a whole lot
worse, when Pierre-Franck Chevet, head of French nuclear safety agency Autorité
de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN), reported that a "serious anomaly affecting a
crucial component of the nuclear power plant" had been detected.
"Some 92 nuclear power plants have
already been abandoned mid-construction and Flamanville could be added to that
list anytime soon," says Schneider. "They found a technical fault [in
the reactor casing] and it's the same situation at Taishan. The material has
not been manufactured to the correct technical specification. This is extremely
complex."
Chevet hastily flew to Beijing but the
outcome of his meeting has yet to be made public. He had added that unless he
was satisfied with the plans to rectify the problem, he could put a stop to the
EPR project in France, a decision that could have disastrous and far-reaching
ramifications for Beijing's nuclear ambitions and the French economy, which is
heavily reliant on the nuclear programme in China.
Pierre-Franck Chevet"The situation in France
is absolutely critical because the financial status of the key nuclear
companies could actually threaten the state," says Schneider. Areva is in
such a fragile financial condition, French state-owned power company EDF announced
last summer that it was to take over at least 51 per cent of Areva's reactor
business.
"The share price of Areva is just going
from historical low to historical low," says Schneider, who doesn't think
there is any quick fix to the EPR problem.
China is committed to third-generation
reactors on the grounds that they are safer and cheaper to operate than older
technology. If it is proved that one of the two key designs - the EPR - is
unworkable or unsafe, the nation's entire nuclear programme is likely to be reviewed.
In response to inquiries regarding the safety
of Taishan 1&2 and Chevet's dash to Beijing, ASN informed Post Magazine,
"P.F. Chevet was in China last July. The visit was dedicated to the
bilateral exchanges about safety", without providing any further
information.
TAISHAN
IS VEILED IN SECRECY, even though the safety implications directly
affect tens of millions of people and the fear is that the very high levels of
political and financial capital invested in the Chinese nuclear dream will
eventually outweigh any public safety concerns.
The principal evacuation zone established
after the Fukushima plant was damaged by the Tohoku earthquake in 2011 was
30km. Nevertheless, says Schneider, technical evaluations have found hot spots
of radioactivity 60km from the plant that were higher than those found in the
exclusion zones surrounding Chernobyl, the Soviet nuclear power plant that
melted down in 1986.
The finances of China's nuclear energy
programme are eye-watering and the stakes are high. The total assets of CGN,
which operates most of the Guangdong plants, are expected to have grown to one
trillion yuan (HK$1.19 trillion) by 2020, according to state media reports, and
the numbers affect economies outside China.
According to the NEI, the direct economic benefit to the
US of the recently renewed 123 Agreement to continue trading nuclear technology
with China is expected to be between US$70 billion and US$204 billion through
to 2040, when the agreement expires. Between 20,000 and 45,000 US jobs depend
on that trade and those jobs are potential political gold in an election year -
and the only customer for the American Westinghouse AP1000 reactor is China,
which is currently constructing four, in Zhejiang and Shandong provinces. The
third-generation AP1000 is also untested in the real world, and the reactors
being built in China are years behind schedule, too.
When, in November, Areva announced a possible
minority stake sale to another major player, China National Nuclear Corp, and a
partnership covering all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, some commentators
saw it as a bailout by the Chinese. Schneider finds it astounding that anyone
would seek a partnership with what he calls a "bankrupt company".
"Everybody is scared to death about losing
billions of euros if these plants don't open," says Schneider, adding that
all eyes will be on tests in France scheduled for this year and the ASN will be
under enormous pressure.
"You don't need to be an expert to
imagine the huge commercial pressure in play," says Schneider. "But
what does it mean when an almost bankrupt company is operating a nuclear
facility?"
IN
2011, 172,000 PEOPLE were evacuated from the exclusion zone
around Fukushima. Later that year, Nature magazine and Columbia
University, in New York, reported that two-thirds of the world's power plants
have 30km radiuses that each encompasses more than 172,000 people. If that
radius is widened to 75km, the plants at Longgang, in Shenzhen - Daya Bay and
Ling Ao - top the league in terms of number of people most at risk, each
threatening about 28 million people, including everyone in Hong Kong.
The same Nature article looked at key
risks for nuclear energy plants: the likelihood of external events
(tsunami/earthquake/terrorist attack, etc), the age of reactors and what
experts call "the culture of safety".
Age is a concern in China because nuclear plants are most
dangerous at the beginning as well as at the end of their life cycles. The 1979
Three Mile Island accident in the US occurred in a reactor that had started
operation only three months earlier, and the accident at Chernobyl occurred
after only two years of operation. A serious loss of coolant occurred at the
French Civaux-1 reactor in 1998, less than five months after start-up.
With regard to external threats, one of the
Guangdong plants on the drawing board is proposed for Huizhou, which, it is
envisioned, will have two AP1000 reactors up and running by 2025. Earthquaketrack.com
reports that no less than 16 earthquakes have shaken Huizhou in the past 30
years, the most recent, on August 31, 2012, having a magnitude of 4.4.
Nature explains that the "culture of
safety" is an intangible value but extends beyond legislation and
regulation to an innate appreciation of risk. Recent industrial accidents, such
as the explosion at the port of Tianjin last August and the mudslide at a
construction-waste site in Shenzhen last month, suggest such a culture isn't
particularly strong in China.
"We are very worried about Taishan and
the design flaws in the reactor vessel and we would like to know what CGN are
doing," says Frances Yeung Hoi-shan, energy group leader for Greenpeace
Asia. "We simply don't know. Investors were informed that the plant would
not open until 2017 but there was little detail."
It comes as no surprise that Greenpeace Asia
has consistently rejected nuclear power as part of Hong Kong's energy mix - the
parent group was initially set up to protest nuclear weapons testing, after all
- but it has a separate concern about the proliferation of nuclear plants in
Guangdong and how transparent the safety processes will be. In April, the
environmental group wrote to the Hong Kong government requesting information
about Taishan 1&2 and Yeeng was not impressed with the reply, which only
reaffirmed that any major incidents would be reported as an extension of the
protocol set up for Daya Bay and that "tests" were being carried out.
"Transparency is very important about these plants
because Hong Kong people have a right to know. The government is not proactive
enough. We can't just sit and wait to be informed when something does go
wrong," she says.
Says Lai, "If the French authorities had
not told us about the problems with the EPR, we would probably have never
known."
Daya Bay is owned under a joint venture in
which local power provider CLP has a 25 per cent stake, so it can exert
pressure at board level and even offer public visits to the site. Its influence
also extends to a limited extent to the four reactors subsequently built at the
neighbouring Ling Ao plant, says CLP, in which it has no financial interest.
"Besides being represented in the board
of the joint-venture company of Daya Bay, CLP has also played an instrumental
role in introducing international safety practices at the plant level,"
says Tang Chi-cheung, senior director, nuclear at CLP Holdings. He says his
company's involvement has improved public communication and has played a part
in "enhancing transparency". He emphasises the environmental benefits
of nuclear power, which, according to CLP figures, saves 7.5 million tonnes of
carbon dioxide emissions from being emitted each year in Hong Kong.
"To put the environmental benefit into
perspective, it is equivalent to planting a woodland area of 57 times the size
of Hong Kong Island," says Tang, who does not rule out sourcing
electricity from wholly Chinese-owned plants, including Taishan 1&2.
"It is too early to get into the
specifics of more nuclear imports given that it is a future decision to be
reached by the government and the general community," he says.
Tang expresses confidence in China's
regulatory body and says that, post-Fukushima, the central government "has
placed a priority on safety in its nuclear programme".
FIFTY YEARS AGO LAST MONTH, a
front page headline in the South China Morning Post read, "China:
'We can build N-power stations'". And it has - but nuclear is still
responsible for only about 2 per cent to the nation's energy mix, and industry
experts such as Schneider think China is possibly the last show in town for
nuclear power, as the "smart money" moves to renewable alternatives.
While no one is alleging negligence on the
part of the Chinese Nuclear Safety Administration and many agree that safety
has been tightened post-Fukushima, even advocates of nuclear energy express
reservations in private about the frenetic pace of growth and the lack of
transparency. Schneider says one senior Chinese academic confided in him at an
energy conference in Macau that he thought the speed of expansion was
"more than crazy".
One million signatures were obtained in
objection to Daya Bay before it opened in 1994 and a 2013 Hong Kong government
survey revealed that only 34.5 per cent of respondents were confident about the
operational safety of Shenzhen's nuclear power plants. Although a respected local
operator such as CLP, with a share price to maintain, can influence decisions
regarding safety at Daya Bay, such a mechanism does not apply to the other
plants in Guangdong, including Taishan 1&2.
"We need to get this right," says
Lai, because if the pace of expansion continues unchecked and the public and
media remain excluded from the apparent nuclear success story until a Fukushima
occurs in Guangdong, it may well spell doom for everyone in the Pearl River
Delta.
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