China starts to face reality, begins scaling back its nuclear energy plans [View All]

[bananas]

and they are still overly optimistic:

http://djysrv.blogspot.com/2011/09/china-restarts-progress-on-its-nuclear.html

September 4, 2011
China restarts progress on its nuclear energy program
Post-Fukushima safety checks are done, but the size of the new build will be smaller

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New build scaled back

However, the government said it would scale back the size of its new build. Last year China announced it would build the equivalent of 80 1,000 MW nuclear power plants. Now China’s National Energy Administration is saying it will complete an additional 30 GW of plants by 2015, and an additional 28 reactors in the next decade, for a total new build of about 60 GW.

Last December this blog wrote that it was unlikely that China would be able to complete construction of 80 GW of new reactor generating capacity in ten years.

The mandarins in Beijing will discover they're outrunning their ability to build out their plans for 80 GWe of new reactors in ten years. There are limits to how much concrete, steel, and nuclear engineering talent can be put into play in that short a period of time. They might build 25 GWE in ten years.

Improvements need in manufacturing quality and safety

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Another problem with safety is having enough trained nuclear engineers to run a credible program. The cables quote a former Westinghouse executive named Gavin Liu who is cited in them sometime in 2010 as saying “a bottleneck” exists in getting enough trained people to build the new reactors and regulate them in terms of safety.

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The cables reportedly compared the speed of construction, and lack of strong safety regulation for nuclear power, to the situation with China’s high speed railways. Last July a crash killed dozens of people. The cause of the accident is being blamed on China having put construction and start-up as priorities ahead of safety in operation.

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Links to some previous discussions posted here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x303602