I have heard some people say that China’s government does not have to deal with all the delays and inertia of our governmental system. They say that if the Chinese want to do something, they just do it. There may have been times in Chinese history when this was true and I did make reference to such things in a recent blog post. But, as recent events have illustrated, things are not quite that easy in China. They have said that they were going to put two hundred and forty million peasants in brand new cities by 2025. However, they have empty cities build during the current real estate bubble and they cannot fill them. Either the people do not want to live in them or they cannot afford them. These two constraints show that the opinions of the people and economic factors limit what the Chinese government can command.
Recently, in the city of Heshan in the southern province of Guangdong, the Chinese government announced that it was going to build a uranium fuel processing facility to help fuel all the new reactors they say that they are going to build in near future. There was such a backlash from the citizens living in that city against the construction of the facility that the local Chinese government backed down and agreed to cancel the project. This is only one example of local governments in China cancelling controversial projects after public outcry. This sort of protest action and official capitulation is going to make it difficult for China’s to carry out their bold ambitions for a new reactor fleet.
Two new French reactors are being built just sixty miles east of Hong Kong in the coastal city of Taishan located in China’s Guangdong province. In the U.S., the NRC mandates a accident risk zone around a nuclear power plant for food, water and air contamination with a fifty mile radius so Hong Kong is definitely at risk if there are accidents at the new reactors. In addition, the Hong Kong residents have freedom of speech and are able to easily and openly express their concern unlike the rest of the residence of the Pearl River Delta near the reactor site. The protestors are demanding more information about the new reactors and are considering further protests and resistance to the reactor construction.
The new reactors are a recent French design. There are several of these reactors being built in Europe by the French but they are behind schedule and over budget. At this point, this particular French design has not been put into operation anywhere in the world. The French company Areva has experiences a drop off in their reactor business since Fukushima and they are hoping that if the new Chinese reactors go into operation and function smoothly, it will help boost the French nuclear industry back into profitability. The residents of Hong Kong are unhappy about being involuntarily drafted into being test subjects for the new reactors design.
I remember an old saying about how hard it is to switch from driving on the left side of the road to driving on the right side of the road incrementally. It seems to me that China is in a similar position of trying to switch from a communist command system to a capitalist market driven system incrementally. The Chinese pay a lot of lip service to the “voice of the people” and now it looks like the voice of the people is having a significant impact on government projects.
Taishan reactor construction from China.org.cn:
