Nuclear energy development in China: A study of opportunities and challenges

With rapid economic development, China faces a great challenge to meet its increasing energy demand. Currently, China's energy supply is dominated by coal consumption, while natural gas and oil are in relative short supply. At the same time, nuclear energy is a relatively clean energy without green-house gas emissions. Considering the growing cost of fossil energy and the limited resources in China, oil supply security, coal mining disasters, the domestic environment pressure, and global climate warming, nuclear energy is an inevitable strategic option. Generally speaking, nuclear energy development has a promising future in China. Its driving factors include the brisk electricity demand, environment impact pressure, oil supply security, and positive public acceptance. Meanwhile, the question still remains whether nuclear energy development in China is sustainable. Just like in other parts of the world, China is also bewildered by the problems of reactor safety, nuclear waste treatment, and risk of proliferation of weapons material. In addition, nuclear technology diversity, shortage of uranium resources, and weak market competitiveness of nuclear power in the short term are certain barriers that China's nuclear energy development also faces. There are also other worrying issues such as: whether public acceptance in the future will change? Whether the current approaches to nuclear waste disposal are still acceptable when nuclear plants gains scale? In this paper, some suggestions and recommendations are put forward on the measures to be followed to 1) enhance domestic nuclear technology development and imported technology localization; 2) reduce the cost of nuclear power and enhance its market competitiveness; 3) accelerate the process of cleanly developing nuclear technology; 4) accelerate the process of developing more efficient reactor and nuclear fuel cycle; and 5) conduct effective publicity work to uphold public acceptance. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.