China's nuclear power capacity to hit 42 GW by 2015 - Power Engineering

Installed capacity of nuclear power plants in China will reach 42 giga Watts (GW) by 2015, accounting for around 10 per cent of the global capacity, China Nuclear Energy Association chairman Zhang Huazhu said yesterday.

While speaking at a seminar on ''Nuclear Power and Environment'' in Zhuhai City of Guangdong province, Zhang said that there will be 41 operating nuclear power units in China by 2015 or a little later.

"At that time, China will be building nearly 20 extra nuclear power plants," he said.

Currently, the country's six nuclear power plants and 15 operating reactors have a capacity of around 12.5 GW. It is about 1.8 per cent of China's total power generation, representing nearly 3.5 per cent of the world's total electricity generated by nuclear power.

There are 26 reactors under construction, which would add 30 GW to the existing capacity by 2015.

"With their good performances and the carefully chosen locations of the sites, China's nuclear power plants have little chance of repeating what happened in Fukushima," Zhang said, referring to last year's nuclear disaster in Japan caused by the massive earthquake and tsunami resulting in nuclear meltdowns, release of radioactive materials and large scale devastation.

Prior to the Fukushima catastrophe, China had targeted to increase the share of nuclear power in the country's overall electricity requirement to 6 per cent by 2020, which meant a total generating capacity of over 80 GW.

The country's ambitious plans for nuclear power generation was intended to reduce the rapidly growing economy's reliance on fossil fuel based power plants.

Further to the Fukushima disaster, and the consequent pause in approvals for new plants, the target has come down to around 60 GW by 2020.