chinas challenge

China's Challenge

China is now the largest user of stainless steel in the world. Not only is it the largest; it also uses more stainless steel than the next two largest users: the United States and Japan, combined. With the Chinese economy growing at more than 10% per year, is it any wonder that demand for nickel, an important ingredient in most stainless steels, is expected to keep pace?

In the energy sector, nickel-containing stainless steels will be essential if China is serious about limiting its contribution to global climate change. The daunting challenge over the short term will be to limit the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere while meeting surging demand for electricity.

Every year the world consumes energy equivalent to about 10 billion tonnes of crude oil, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), and 91% of that total originates from sources that emit greenhouse gases. Those emissions amount to about 23 billion tonnes worldwide.

China is already both the second-largest consumer of energy and the second-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind the United States. The IEA estimates that by 2020, at present growth rates, China will likely be consuming more energy than the U.S. and its greenhouse gas emissions will have more than doubled to about 6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.

About 7% of the world’s total energy use is currently satisfied by nuclear power, a source that emits no greenhouse gases. In China, the figure is less than 0.2%, but that is set to change. China is leading the way in the construction of new nuclear reactors.

As the Special Report in this issue points out, China’s National Leading Group for Nuclear Power Self-reliance Development wants installed capacity to reach 40 gigawatts (GW) by 2020, compared with 8.7 GW today. That means 30 nuclear power plants will have to be built in China by 2020, by which time the country’s nuclear power industry will be generating 4% of its electricity.

If China could generate as much of its electricity using nuclear power as does France (where nuclear contributes 75%), its greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 would not be a major concern. But with abundant resources of inexpensive coal, this is not likely to happen.

Governments worldwide do need to decide how to store the waste materials generated by nuclear power and China is no exception. James Lovelock, in his best-selling book The Revenge of Gaia, puts the waste challenge into perspective: if the 23 billion tonnes or so of carbon dioxide that the burning of fossil fuels emits every year were to exist in a solid form, it would constitute a mountain nearly 1.6 kilometres high and 32 km in circumference at its base. "The same quantity of energy produced from nuclear fission reactions would generate two million times less waste, and it would occupy a sixteen-metre cube," he says.

The other nuclear technology that could lead to almost unlimited amounts of inexpensive, clean electricity within 40 years is nuclear fusion (see Nickel Magazine, March 1999). A consortium of countries, including China, the U.S., the European Union, Japan, Russia and South Korea, is financing a US$ 5.5-billion, international thermonuclear experimental reactor, or ITER. The facilities are being built in Cadarache in southeastern France. If all goes according to plan, this experimental reactor will be completed by 2015, and then another demonstration reactor could produce its first electricity in 2031.

But until then, as countries such as China continue to grow economically, nuclear fission is a viable way to install a reliable and secure supply of electricity that does not contribute to global climate change.