"We didn't authorize the Chinese government to take our technology," adds Bruce Marlow, Areva's vice president for key accounts, based in California. But "I'm sure someone will copy the design." Already, the Chinese have come up with their own version of another Areva design—dubbed the "CPR-1000".
The key will be cost. The NDRC's Guobao noted that nuclear power plants in China can be as cheap as coal-fired power that has been modified to make capturing its carbon dioxide pollution easy. "In China the cost for a nuclear power plant is as low as $1,500 per kilowatt," he said.
"The relative cost of new energy is lower and lower because fossil fuel is more and more expensive," explained Lu Jinxiang, CEO of A-Power, a Chinese builder of power plants, during a visit to the company's Shenyang wind turbine factory. And "perhaps, in the future, there will be heavy taxation or strict limit on the combustion of coal."
Nuclear fuel
Areva has also signed a contract to supply Chinese nuclear operating companies, including China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group (CGNPC) and CNNC, with uranium fuel—20,000 tons of the fissile material between now and 2020 for $3.5 billion. And Areva, which handles used nuclear fuel recycling for France, is in discussions to help with China's own plans in that regard, including the possibility of building a reprocessing plant in the Gobi Desert in Gansu Province. "It shows their long-term commitment to nuclear energy," Adams says.
Much like Japan, China plans to make the most of its estimated 170,000 tons of domestic uranium supplies by setting up such reprocessing. Such nuclear fuel recycling involves taking used nuclear fuel rods, separating out plutonium and other fission by-products, and then combining the result with fresh uranium to produce usable fuel—known as mixed oxide (MOX) fuel.
Meanwhile, Japan has struggled to bring its Rokkasho reprocessing plant online, even with the help of Areva, and currently relies on France and the U.K. to recycle its used uranium fuel rods. And Japan's Monju fast-breeder reactor—which would allow both full fuel recycling and use for power generation—has been closed for years due to fires and technical glitches, including a refueling machine stuck in the reactor vessel that has shut the experimental reactor down.
It remains to be seen if China's effort will fare any better, although a pilot plant has been reprocessing limited amounts of used nuclear fuel since 2006 in Gansu. "For China we will do it in the form of recycling because we want to make the full use of our resources," CNNC Hua's said. "Right now, we just store those energy sources temporarily."
China is also expanding its efforts to acquire more uranium globally, purchasing the products of uranium mines from Kazakhstan to Niger and even Canada. And CGNPC hopes to purchase a London-based mining firm—Kalahari Minerals—for access to uranium mines in the African nation of Namibia.
Safety first
Nuclear power remains one of the few energy sources that can replace coal in China. The nation has already overtaken the U.S. as the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter largely because of the more than three billion metric tons of coal it burns annually—and several thousand miners die each year digging up the dirty black rock to feed China's energy needs, not to mention the health toll taken by choking air pollution caused by coal burning in the Middle Kingdom, estimated by the World Bank to cost the country $100 billion a year in medical care. "Any nuclear power plant you build is displacing a coal plant," Westinghouse's Candris says.
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15 Comments
Add CommentChina will take the rational approach of learning from the Japanese experience, make any adjustments deemed prudent, then press on with the safest, cleanest & cheapest long term base load power generation, unhindered by western hysteria & in the process become even more competitive on the world stage. Meanwhile we accept millions of deaths per year plus perhaps a hundred million serious injuries from car accidents yet blanch at the remote prospect of even the equivalent of one car accident in the nuclear power stations in Japan after the most extreme natural disaster imaginable. At the same time we continue with dirty fuel powered power production that causes at least three thousand coal mining deaths per year & untold thousands more from respiratory diseases.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExpanding on coal is exactly the direction the U.S. is taking – see Wyoming's increased coal production goals. Nuclear has always been an extremely controversial and feared source of energy (see, for example, http://bit.ly/93FFaJ)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, risk comparison shows that coal is de facto more dangerous: http://bit.ly/hqN0Ng. The health effects are simply less evident on the surface
We as citizen's punish politicians who look more than a few years down the road and present a plan. As a result our politicians are almost 100% attorney's, who have no problem lying to us as they stuff their pockets with Big Oil money. We vote for them as long as they don't steal too much.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe American space program is an example. Spend enough to give the folks a show but not enough to achieve any reasonable goals . Ten years from now Russia and China will be in a position to launch nukes at us from orbit, shoot down anything we send up, and there won't be a thing we can do about it.
China is run by engineers who take a paternalistic view of its citizens treating them as children who need clothing, food shelter and lots of spankings. The rest of the China's resources can be dedicated to building various infrastructures energy, transportation, agriculture dedicated to the nations needs decades in advance. A new bullet train, a massive nuclear power construction program, a booming space program and lots of green power products to sell to suckers in the west are some examples.
Faint hope but perhaps now somebody in the US (hello Dr. Chu are you listening?) will now get behind the US invented Molten Salt Reactor. We can spent $100B's on weapons R&D but we have nothing for something as fundamental as the nations power.
David LeBlanc at the U of Ottawa has redesigned the Molten salt reactor which would resolve all safety and cost issues with nuclear. This tech was actually build and ran in a reactor for many years - even flown around on an airplane. By using existing nuclear waste for fuel it could power the world for hundreds of years.
All it needs is $5B, 5 years, and a place to build em , and factory produced units would be streaming out fast enough to eliminate fossil fuels in 5 years.
Big Oil knows this and has purchased our US politicians (yes Dr, Chu we know) to make sure no development happens.
The Chinese have started a MSR program. They use our tech abandoned by our attorney politicians to reduce us to a third world nation stagnated by incredible "green" power cost while their economy booms on with limitless clean and green zero environmental impact nuke energy.
We want politicians to keep those big screen TeeVee's and Hummers coming in and have no interest in anything more than a year down the road. It wasn't always like this - probably a massive structure failure in the educational system has doomed Western Democracy.
For only $1 Billion, China can haver all the green power it wants using the invention of Gravity Control.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo fuel needed, no pollution.
Sorry, folks, but I think that if one looks closer China is being run for the entrepreneurial benefit of the communist party and their selected magnates.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf China's industrial infrastructure had been directed by competent engineers rather than bureaucrats would they now be suffering the extreme pollution problems produced by the exploitation of their coal reserves to produce cheap electrical power? I doubt that a bureaucratic leap to nuclear technology won't prevent the implementation of cheap construction methods.
Perhaps I'm being to harsh here - perhaps there'll only be a few facilities built on the cheap for the profit of some industrial magnate.
I understand that GM sold more cars in China last year than in the U.S. I suspect many are being driven by engineers. Who's driving all the Mercedes? I suspect it's the real decision makers. They're all magnanimously polluting their own urban neighborhoods, like Americans, but there's a much larger undeveloped potential market there. I don't think they're any better than we are!
The coal mining deaths are nothing...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPollution from coal plants causes 25,000 deaths every single year in the US alone (hundreds of thousands worldwide). They are also responsible for ~33% of US CO2 emissions.
Chernobyl caused anywhere from 100 to 10,000 eventual deaths. No other nuclear plant accidents have had any measurable impact on public health. Few, if any, will die from Fukishima.
Currently there is only enough uranium to allow nuclear reactors to run for 30 years, or 70 if expected ressources are found. Building new reactors will only shorten this period, which is uneconomical if they are built to last fourty years. If electric companies had to set aside funds so future generations could recondition highly radioactive wastes every 100 years for tens of thousands of years, investors would soon shy away...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthorium reactors could make current reactors obolete in 15 years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUh, no actually, it'll be almost 1000 years before uranium runs out, even if we don't breed or reprocess. Uranium is a ubiquitous element in the earth's crust that we've barely started looking for. Long-term uranium supply is simply not an issue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisREGARDING:
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“the current five-year plan for nuclear is to boost it from 10 to 50 gigawatts by 2015.”
50 gigawatts is 50 billion watts is 50 watts per person More or less. Not a lot.
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"In China the cost for a nuclear power plant is as low as $1,500 per kilowatt," he said.
Operate it for 20 years is about 175 thousand hours or 0.8 cents per kilowatt-hour for the construction. ($1,500/kilowatt/175,000 hours) Other expenses will apply such as clean-up and waste disposal and simple operations expenses.
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“Ten years from now Russia and China will be in a position to launch nukes at us from orbit, shoot down anything we send up, and there won't be a thing we can do about it.”
Even assuming this to be true, what difference does it make when a nuclear device can be brought in in a barge, boat, plane, truck, wagon or maybe even on a donkey? It can be stored within a few miles of a target and destroy it in a fraction of a second if the signal is given. Why worry about space delivery of nuclear devices when so many other options exist?
Remember, though, any radioactive products would travel around the world and include whoever supplied the problem.
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“Currently there is only enough uranium to allow nuclear reactors to run for 30 years, or 70 if expected resources are found.”
Assuming once-through usage and that all known resources are all there are and that no form of breeder reactors will be built and---- Unreasonable assumptions. In fact uranium is all over in granite, seawater and other materials. Refining it from them is more expensive than other ores but not limiting and no reason to expect other methods will never exist. The cost of obtaining it is a small part of the total cost of the energy produced.
Suppliers don’t tend to look for more than they know they can sell if they already have a thirty year supply.
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Just thinking.
REGARDING:
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“when a disaster has happened, that containment and cooling is not enough. People will need to go in. “
That is definitely a design flaw. Sending people in should be avoided as much as possible. Machines are needed which are capable of going in, seeing what has happened and correcting problems. They can be robots or remotely operated vehicles or Heinleinian Waldos.
Human tissue is too easily damaged by ionizing radiation.
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“What leads to safety problems are years of industrial deregulation”
I sometimes wonder if overregulation might create a problem. If a regulation is not there for a valid reason, people might be tempted to throw it out. Regulators might ignore silly regulations if they knew they had no valid reason to exist but not know which ones are not silly.
If a valid regulation got thrown away with a bunch of silly, useless ones, trouble could ensue. I suggest we not regulate for the sake of regulating but require safe practices everywhere needed and spell out why they are needed.
REGARDING:
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”Do you think executives care about the risks? They want quick stock market gains. “
Very likely a valid complaint. The solution is to withhold stock option selling until five or ten years after leaving a company. That way the long term health of the business would in mind at all times.
It should help. Just as requiring the people who design and build reactors to live near them should keep things in perspective.
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“Does Mr. Gilbert realize that water does not run uphill without a pump? Water has to circulate to keep the cooling. You still need a pump to circulate the water or else it will evaporate into steam. You can prevent a meltdown by using 3 meter thick graphite containment in addition to steel.”
I imagine he understands that. I’m pretty sure what he has in mind is that flow will continue in the critical period after a shutdown and until the reservoir is drained.
As to the graphite, yes, you can avoid a meltdown as they did by using it at Chernobyl but it is apt to catch fire and spread the radioactive material to the far ends of the earth.
A meltdown mixes fissionable material with neutron absorbing material and kills and contains the fission reaction. You don’t want a meltdown but it is better than burning graphite.
REGARDING:
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“Well, you CAN be free from risk. It is simply to stop using nuclear reactors and start using renewables instead.”
To be honest, renewables are not risk free. They may be low risk but there is always a risk.
Biofuels include the danger of tractors turning over and snakebite. Wind turbines include the danger of falling. Hydroelectric includes the danger of drowning or dam failure. Solar has…what?…skin cancer or falling down or struck by lightning?
There will be some risk because humans are involved and sometimes do risky or simply stupid things.
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“All six reactors close together - again inaccessible if something goes wrong with any one of them“A real problem. Problems at one site affect all others close to that site. I imagine the reasons they were all placed together included: ease of transferring skilled personnel as needed from one reactor, easier to maintain security, needed materials on hand for all reactors and the fact that once you’ve got one in the locals’ backyard, five more are not all that much worse to get them to accept.
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“If you want to convince the world of your invention, publish it in a reputable physics journal. That's the only way it will be recognized as legitimate. Otherwise, it's just a scam.”
Total agreement. Or he could simply start producing all the vast amount of energy he promises. Nothing succeeds like success. In the absence of that, nothing stinks like…..
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Still just thinking.
And that is to say nothing about the radioactivity that is spread around by coal burning.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRadioactivity from Coal Combustion
The main sources of radiation released from coal combustion include not only uranium and thorium but also daughter products produced by the decay of these isotopes, such as radium, radon, polonium, bismuth, and lead. Although not a decay product, naturally occurring radioactive potassium-40 is also a significant contributor.
The population effective dose
equivalent from coal plants is 100
times that from nuclear plants
According to the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), the average radioactivity per short ton of coal is 17,100 millicuries/4,000,000 tons, or 0.00427 millicuries/ton. This figure can be used to calculate the average expected radioactivity release from coal combustion. For 1982 the total release of radioactivity from 154 typical coal plants in the United States was, therefore, 2,630,230 millicuries.
Americans living near coal-fired power plants are
exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near
nuclear power plants that meet government regulations
W. Alex Gabbard
Nuclear Physicist
Oak Ridge National Laboratories
See: http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html
for the rest of the story.
"going china syndrome"... ha ha ha. NOT. no, not clever since we may have this ongoing at fukushima.
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