China's power crunch has some officials calling for more nuclear reactors to hit clean targets. But building plants in arid regions will be tricky. The PRC's path to better atomic energy runs through solar and wind farms, says mak_robyn
, but there’s a hitch. There is widespread public opposition to more plants following Japan's 2011 Fukushima accident; authorities have unofficially banned building reactors inland. Last year, the country's 54 coastal reactors generated just 52 GW, or 5% of the total.
Officials are setting their sights on 70 GW by 2025. Anything more ambitious may be a stretch: the 2018 study, for instance, estimated over half of capacity would have to come from installations in the hinterlands. Unfortunately many of these regions are under mounting water stress, and some traditional reactor designs needper day. Monday’s 6.8 magnitude earthquake in Sichuan, the strongest in nearly a decade, highlights another huge risk.
A more realistic way to boost clean energy without slipping back into fossil fuels is to expand wind and solar capacity now, while pushing harder to roll out safer and less water-intensive nuclear technologies. In December, CNNC an experimental "pebble bed" reactor that uses gas instead of water; the government recently tested a thorium reactor that uses molten salt for coolant. It’s still early days, but the payoff could be immense.An electricity shortage in China's southwestern province of Sichuan has started to ease, according to state media on Aug. 28.
The National Energy Administration has started to adjust its power development plans for 2021-2025 in response, Reuters reported. The agency said it will accelerate the construction of new hydropower stations as well as the approval of nuclear plants and power transmission projects.Editing by Pete Sweeney and Thomas Shum
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