Peaceful atom of China

In six years, the number of reactors in the country will double

Until 2020, 20 or more new atomic reactors will be built in China, the head of the National Nuclear Corporation of Qin Sun said on Wednesday in an interview with reuters in Beijing.

According to him, the total capacities of nuclear energy in the country will exceed the planned level of 58 Gigavatts by that time. Such an increase, according to the World Association of Atomic Energy (WNA) , will mean expansion of the total capacities of Chinese nuclear power plants more than three times to the current level.

Today, according to this association, almost 80% of all electricity in China is produced at coal power plants. They, combined, account for more than half of the current global consumption of energy coals. The emissions of these power plants mainly turned China into the world's largest issuer of “greenhouse” gases (more than a quarter of global volumes).

The World Bank, in a special study, estimated the total losses of China itself from air and water pollution at 5.8% of the country's annual GDP. And in January last year in Beijing, measurements of the content of the smallest relevant particles, and-the most dangerous, revealed a 40-fold excess of their concentration in the city air of those levels that the World Health Organization considers maximum permissible (25 micrograms per cubic meter of air).

According to the period from 2010 to 2015, more than $ 380 billion will spend on estimates of the state council of the country to finance various programs for the reduction of harmful emissions. And in August last year, Beijing announced plans to achieve by 2020 to reduce the volume of emissions of “greenhouse” gases in the country by 40-45% to the levels of 2005.

By that time, China also intends to increase by one and a half times - from the current 10% to 15% - the share of electricity produced at power plants that do not use hydrocarbon raw materials, Tsin Sun noted in today's interview . For comparison, the same amount of energy in the country is now produced by hydroelectric power plants.

The share of atomic energy in the total volume of electricity produced in China does not yet exceed 2%. At eight nuclear power plants operating in the country, 20 reactors work. Another 28 - are already being built (this is 40% of all now under construction in the world, according to WNA), of which more than 20 can be commissioned over the next six years. According to forecasts, by that time the share of nuclear power plants in the structure of the Chinese electric power industry can grow to 6%.

The relatively recent previous plans for expanding the capacities of atomic energy in China were sharply reduced - by almost 20% - after the accident at the Japanese NPP Fukushima in March 2011 as a result of an earthquake and tsunami. However, now, as expected, the Chinese authorities will issue annually 4-6 permits for new projects in this industry in the period until 2020, Reuters notes.

Last year, the China National Nuclear Corporation signed a contract for the construction of two new reactors in Pakistan. And in December, together with another Chinese company of this industry, she became a member of the project for the construction of a new nuclear power plant in the south-west of Great Britain. It is implemented by the International Consortium, headed by Elestricite de France.