China Slowing Nuclear Buildout In Response To Fukushima 109
Lasrick writes "Yun Zhou writes about the end result of China's long reconsideration of nuclear power safety in the wake of Fukushima. Important details about the decision to adopt designs created in China, and incorporate Gen III in those designs."
The short version is that they won't be building more Generation II reactors, opting instead to only build Generation III reactors (which have passive safety systems). Instead of relying entirely on the AP1000, China is speeding up the design of their own Generation III reactors. Plans are still in place for 70GW by 2020, but that date will likely slip due to regulatory delays and the temporary construction moratorium.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
They were planning to build reactors with 30-40 year old (Gen II) tech, presumably because they saw some cost savings in using a "proven" design. (No patent license fees, for example)
After the Fukushima incident, in which an older plant failed due to intrinsic safety flaws of its outdated design, they have reconsidered the merits of using older tech, and decided to use exclusively the newer tech (Gen III).
Re:Great... (Score:5, Informative)
Dictatorships tend to be a lot faster at doing just about everything. If they pick the right things to do and the right way to do it, its a win-win.
The problems only start when they decide to do the wrong things or pick the wrong way to do it, because then you are in deep shit.
One thing the Chinese have going for them is their central committee members tend to be degreed engineers and technocrats. That is head and shoulders better than the U.S. where the vast majority of the leaders are lawyers. Any time U.S. political leaders open their mouths they make technocratic dictatorships look pretty appealing.
Another Chinese advantage is they had, until recently, none of the drags associated with environmental protection, property rights, worker safety, etc. If they decide they want to do something it gets done really fast, while in the U.S. things like new reactors wallow in red tape for decades. The down side is they've made the place unlivable with pollution, they throw people off their land and out of their homes and business at a furios pace and they kill and maim a lot of workers.
Some other down sides the Chinese have going against them:
Its a freaking dictatorship, there is no way in hell I want to live under their system. Of course at the rate the rest of the world is rushing towards totalitarianism, the U.S. and U.K. in particular, there may not be many free places left to live much longer.
The corruption and deception in their system is truly horrible. If they don't figure out a way to fix their corruption problem it will eventually destory them. Thanks to their deception problem you can't believe a single thing you hear out of the place. Their economic data, and a lot of their economic miracle, is fabrication. The build stuff, and misappropriate massive amounts of capital just to hit targets set from above. Its stimulus spending gone mad. If they are still missing their targets then they just lie.
Most of their companies run multiple sets of books so you can't believe anything they say or any of their reports. They often collude with their banks so dedicated ourside auditors don't even catch the frauds, because the bankers will tell the auditors numbers matching the cooked books not what the company actually has.
Re:Thorium (Score:2, Informative)
they are. google it.