CHINA is pressing on with its rapid nuclear power expansion despite the Japanese disaster.
It is operating 13 such plants now, and is already building 28 more -- 40 per cent of the total under construction worldwide -- with others in the pipeline.
Suin Qin, the president of China National Nuclear Corporation, the country's major operator of such reactors, told the People's Daily Online that "the nuclear accident won't have any serious impact, we won't alter our long-term development plans".
He said that clean energy -- with nuclear power to the fore -- would account for 11.4 per cent of China's energy by the end of 2015, up from the current 7 per cent.
Nuclear Power Qinshan, which is managing plant expansion, is issuing $100 million bonds today. And China Guangdong Nuclear Power group obtained a $25 billion credit line from the Agricultural Bank of China on Monday.
Zhou Xi'an, a director at the National Energy Commission, has described this as "a golden time for China's nuclear power development".
Last year, China -- which is now able to meet less than half its nuclear power needs from its own mines, and has become one of the biggest buyers of Australian uranium -- more than tripled its imports, to 17,000 tonnes of uranium.
The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences recently forecast that Australian annual exports would increase within five years from $772m to $2.9bn -- although the price of uranium on the spot market has slumped to half its peak four years ago.
Xiao Xinjian, a nuclear industry expert at the Energy Research Institute affiliated with China's National Development and Reform Commission, told the China Daily that if Japan's crisis proved seriously destructive, global nuclear power development might stall for a year or two.
"But the crisis is unlikely to derail global development of nuclear power stations because nuclear power is still the trend in the energy industry," he said.
"It is an effective way to provide clean energy and fight climate change."
Xu Mi, a nuclear-industry expert with the China Institute of Atomic Energy, said China's reactors used more advanced safety technology than the first batch of commercial reactors installed in Japan during the 1970s.
Xie Zhenhua, the vice-chairman of the NDRC, spoke on the issue at the weekend's closing ceremony of the annual session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. "We will draw lessons from Japan's nuclear accident, taking into account the threat earthquakes pose to nuclear power stations, in working out the energy plan," Mr Xie said.
