The year of 2016 has passed silently, however, in the nuclear industry, not even one new nuclear project declared by Chinese nuclear enterprises has been approved by the Central Government.
“All the nuclear enterprises are anxious to see their submitted new projects approved, but the decision-makers are still quite conservative to the nuclear safety issues.” An expert from the National Nuclear Power Expert Commission revealed to the reporters, “The query from different levels has deeply affected the decision of the Central Government.”
The fact that the new project approval has been postponed for one year is also related to the overall economic situation in China. At present, China is facing a slack demand for the electricity, and accordingly the requirements for the new power projects are not that urgent as well.
Taking the nuclear safety into consideration, the Chinese Central Government decides not to adopt the Gen-II and Gen-II plus technology in the nuclear power projects, while they turn to the Gen-III AP1000 technology introduced from the United States. However, this technology has not yet been verified. And what’s worse, as the world’s first AP1000 project, Sanmen Unit 1 has been postponed for at least 3 years due to the technical failures, which undoubtedly stirred more doubts in public regarding the availability and reliability of AP1000.
In view of this, the source disclosed that it could be also regarded as one of the factors that strand the new nuclear project approval.
*Currently, there have been several new projects declared and submitted to the government, including Liaoning Xudapu and Guangdong Lufeng featuring AP1000; Shidaowan, Sanmen II and Haiyang III featuring CAP1400. Among the new projects, Shidaowan Demonstration project has already passed the safety evaluation of NNSA. And the Media reported that, this project is expected to start the construction in the first quarter of 2017. However, the other declared projects have not even entered the approving procedures yet till now.
