Posted on 12/23/2004 3:55:21 PM PST by blackeagle
China has big plans for nuclear power, hoping to build 27 new reactors at a cost of $1 billion each in order to quadruple capacity by 2020.
That should take China to 36,000 megawatts, according to Zhang Huazhu, chairman of the China Atomic Energy Authority.
“It is not easy to realize the target of 36,000 megawatts by 2020. It means we should build 27 nuclear power generators each with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts by then,” said Zhang, also vice minister of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.
With nine nuclear power generators in operation, China had a total nuclear power capacity of 7,010 megawatts by the end of July, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Pillar 'of the power structure' He said the goal is for nuclear power to account for about 4 percent of China’s total output by 2020 compared with just 1.7 percent at present.
The new plants would be concentrated in the thriving but energy-thirsty eastern and southern coastal areas, Zhang said, though inland provinces had also drawn up plans.
“Nuclear energy will become one of the pillars of the power structure in the booming coastal areas,” he said.
All China’s existing nuclear power plants are along the east and south coast.
In July, Beijing approved to two nuclear power projects, the first in over five years. Each plant, one in Zhejiang and one in Guangdong, will have two 1,000 megawatt reactors.
Two other plants in the same provinces were in the approval process, Zhang said.
Foreign firms would be invited to tender for construction of two of the four plants, while the other two would rely mainly on China’s own technology, he added.
China’s government had attached great importance to the safety of nuclear power plants and its safety supervision and management system proved to be effective, Zhang said.
“Radiation dosage of employees in our nuclear plants are below one percent, much lower than the government’s limit,” he said.
Coal and hydropower Three-quarters of China’s 400,000 megawatts of installed power capacity, the world’s second largest after the United States, are fired by coal.
The country has suffered from its worst power crunch in 20 years this summer due to a galloping economy and a coal squeeze.
Engineers blocked the Yangtze at the Three Gorges Dam in June last year, filling the reservoir for a $25 billion hydro-electric project, the world’s largest, that is a point of national pride.
The commies are dealing with an energy shortage.
Why can't the US?
Answer: 'rats
We need to export the enviornmental wackos over there.
If they will build them like the rest of the things in that country, we are headed for a dozen Chernobyl's
And which displaced over half a million Chinese from their homes, IIRC. I guess that's one good thing to be said about communism; enviro-fascism doesn't exist in a totalitarian communist setting. Getting a new hydro plant built in the US these days is next to impossible.
We nuclear power...bury the waste in San Francisco.
We NEED nuclear power...sheesh!
And we can all thank Ex-(Praise God) President Clinton for giving the commies the know how to build these nuclear power plants.
The key mover in the uranium market tis CCJ. Not only has it been on a tear, but it plans a split in January.
Anybody know what type they're building?
I bet it's the French PWR design (originally from Westinghouse). Chirac was there recently on a trade mission to help spur the french economy - this could be part of that deal.
The Chinese Communists are on the right track, building new nuclear power plants to provide for their future energy needs. Of course they can just execute all the anti-nuclear environmentalists. Perhaps the day will arrive in the US where we will see the wisdom in thinking ahead and acting responsibly?
I bet it's the French PWR design (originally from Westinghouse). Chirac was there recently on a trade mission to help spur the french economy - this could be part of that deal."
No.
They have come up with a unique design for a smaller output plant that relies on a bed that does not require a cooling tower or rod heat management. I am not a technician and cannot articulate prcisely the description which was posted on Free Republic at some point.
However the initial take on their design is that it is safer and involves much less risk that conventional designs.
Point is that nuclear is the cornerstone answer to electric power in the next hundred years, assuming we do not run out of uranium.
If you have a reference on this I would be interested - I was a nuclear engineer in a previous life and hadn't heard that they had their own technology.
As for not requiring a cooling tower or some type of cooling, I would be extremely skeptical - they would need to find their way around the law of thermodynamics to pull off that trick. Even in the most efficient power plant that operates on a heat cycle, only about a third gets converted into electricity - the rest is waste heat.
According to a recent article in WIRED magazine, the design is a "pebble-bed"-type reactor, which is inherently safer. The idea is that there is a physical limit to how "hot" the reaction can get before the reactions is automatically damped.
Here's a nice article for those interested in more details. Has a lot of compelling features, plus the usual critics. Hopefully this design will be a winner.
I would like to see the Sierra Club and every other environmental wacko group fly to China and demonstate against nuclear power.
Yeah, I'd really like to see that.
A stock trading site I look at regularly has a number of people who are or have been trading uranium futures, stock in companies that explore for the mineral, or produce it. The general drift is that uranium is not exactly in abundant supply.
But for the material supply issue, if the Chinese design plays out, it looked to me as though it might be the electric power solution.
At present, in the US, most of the new plants are designed to burn Natural Gas. NG is in short supply--more difficult to find; more expensive to develop and produce; adaptable to power almost any energy requirement including vehicles.
The real coming energy crisis in the US is NG. We have some control over our consumption of crude--we have a significant capability to reduce our use for transportation fuel by building cars that use much less fuel. But even if you assume an Alaska Canada supply in a pipeline to be constructed before 2010, you are still tight unless you come up with another electricity source.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.