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Strategies & Market Trends : China Warehouse- More Than Crockery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (4184)	1/15/2005 11:49:05 PM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6370

China’s most ambitious nuclear energy program MIL, Jan 15, 2005. NYT AYA BAY, China - According to New York Times (Howard W. French) the view from this remote point by the sea, with lines of misty mountains stretching into the distance, is worthy of a classical Chinese painting. In the foreground, though, sits a less obvious attraction: one of China's first nuclear power reactors, and just behind it, another being rushed toward completion. There are countless ways to show how China is climbing the world's economic ladder, hurdling developed countries in its path, but few are more pronounced than the country's rush into nuclear energy - a technology that for environmental, safety and economic reasons most of the world has put on hold. In its anxiety to satisfy its seemingly bottomless demand for electricity, China plans to build reactors on a scale and pace comparable to the most ambitious nuclear energy programs the world has ever seen. Current plans - conservative ones, in the estimation of some people involved in China's nuclear energy program - call for new reactors to be commissioned at a rate of nearly two a year between now and 2020, a pace that experts say is comparable to the peak of the United States' nuclear energy push in the 1970's. "We will certainly build more than one reactor per year," said Zhou Dadi, director of the central government's Energy Research Institute, which has strongly supported the country's nuclear program. "The challenge is not the technology. The barriers for China are mostly institutional arrangements, because reactors are big projects. What we need most is better operation, financing and management." By 2010, planners predict a quadrupling of nuclear output to 16 billion kilowatt-hours and a doubling of that figure by 2015. And with commercial nuclear energy programs dead or stagnant in the United States and most of Europe, Western and other developers of nuclear plant technology are lining up to sell reactors and other equipment to the Chinese, whose purchasing decisions alone will determine in many instances who survives in the business. France, which derives about a third of its energy from nuclear power, is the only Western country committed to a large-scale nuclear energy program. It is in a building lull now, but will need to begin replacing aging reactors within a decade or so. Japan derives about 10 percent of its energy from nuclear sources and was once among the most favorably disposed toward nuclear energy. But a string of scandals involving comically shoddy practices, like mixing radioactive materials in a bucket, and near accidents have turned public opinion in many areas strongly antinuclear. That leaves China as the only potential growth area for nuclear energy. And for China, which still derives as much as 80 percent of its electricity from burning coal, the lure of nuclear energy is as obvious as the thick, acrid, choking haze that hangs over virtually all the country's cities. The problem with nuclear power, some experts say, is that China's energy needs are so immense - each year, by some estimates, the country plans to add generating capacity from all sources equivalent to the entire current energy consumption of Britain - that even the enormous expansion program will do little to offset the skyrocketing power demand. Courtesy NYT internationalreporter.com