A Chinese city has suspended preliminary work on a proposed 100 billion yuan (US$15 billion) nuclear waste processing plant following protests by local residents concerned about health risks.
Reports that Lianyungang, a coastal city about 500km north of Shanghai, was set to be chosen as the site for the project due to start construction in 2020 sparked protests that began over the weekend.
The project, to be run by the state-owned China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC) in collaboration with France’s Areva, is scheduled to be completed by 2030.
“The Lianyungang Municipal People’s Government has decided to suspend site selection and preliminary work on the nuclear recycling project,” the local government said in a notice posted on its Web site.
It did not give further details.
In a report published on Monday by the Lianyungang Daily, the local government said “no final decision had been made” on the location of the plant.
It threatened to take legal action against “illegal elements” it accused of “fomenting social disorder” and spreading rumors about the project.
Lianyungang, in Jiangsu Province, is the location of the Tianwan nuclear project, which currently consists of two Russian-designed reactors. Two more units are now under construction and there are plans to expand further.
CNNC could not be reached for comment, but an official with the firm told state newspaper Science Daily on Tuesday that Lianyungang was just one of several candidates and the central government would make the final decision on the plant’s location.
China has ambitions to become a world leader in nuclear power. It had 30 reactors in commercial operation by the end of June this year, amounting to 28 gigawatts of capacity. It is aiming to raise that to 58 gigawatts by the end of 2020.
However, it is struggling to resolve bottlenecks in the industry, including fuel processing, waste recycling, grid access and a shortage of qualified staff.
The closed fuel-cycle technology being used for the proposed waste project would be similar to that used at a plant at Rokkasho in Japan, which has already been plagued by delays and cost overruns.
China’s reactors could instead take the US route and bury waste underground, said Li Ning (李寧), a nuclear scientist and dean of the School of Energy Research at Xiamen University.
“But the [Lianyungang] government gave in so quickly, and from that perspective, it does not bode well for the nuclear industry,” he said.
High-profile government-driven publicity campaigns designed to promote nuclear power have not stopped Chinese citizens from taking action against nuclear projects in the past.
In 2013, residents Heshan, Guangdong Province, took to the streets to protest against a uranium processing plant scheduled to be built in the city. The project was eventually canceled.
“These actions are happening more frequently, on a larger scale and in a more agitated way,” Li said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema