Asia may be swamping the world with its cheap exports, but the region as a whole offers a huge market for nuclear reactors and technology, driven by the fast-expanding, fuel-deficient economies of India and China.
In fact, Asia’s older economic dragons, such as South Korea and Japan, are already major nuclear energy users, and the anticipated expansion of the industry on the continent is part of a world-wide upsurge of interest in nuclear power.
South Korea, 40% dependent on nuclear power, has been pushing the development of the industry over the last three decades in a bid to cope with the country’s vulnerability to international oil and natural gas markets.
Since its first reactor opened commercially in 1978, South Korea now runs 20 nuclear reactors nationwide, generating 40% of the country’s electricity.
But recent plans could turn South Korea’s nuclear industry into one of the top five in the world, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology and its third comprehensive nuclear energy development plan for 2007-2011.
Japan is similarly nuclear-dependent, with its 55 nuclear power plants now supplying between 30% to 40% of the country’s electricity.
Japan seems determined to expand its nuclear dependency in the future, despite its far-from-perfect nuclear safety record in recent years.
The nation’s first accident occurred in 1999, when radioactive material escaped a uranium enrichment plant in Tokaimura village, north-east of Tokyo, killing two employees.
The latest accident was recorded in 2004 at Kansai Electric Power’s Mihama nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture, north-west of Tokyo. Non-radioactive steam leaked and killed four workers.
Such incidents have not dampened enthusiasm for nuclear energy in Asia’s newest economic dynamos, India and China.
India has an ambitious nuclear power programme that aims at ramping up the capacity for nuclear power generation from currently 2 720 megawatts to over 20 000 megawatts in 2020 and 40 000 megawatts in 2030.
A typical coal-burning power station has a production capacity of about one gigawatt of power, or 1 000 megawatts.
India already has 14 small and one mid-sized nuclear power plants in operation. In addition, eight nuclear power reactors are under construction, which will add over 6 000 megawatts.
With US Congressional approval for a landmark bilateral civil nuclear energy deal expected to pass, equipment and technology imports from US, France, UK and Russia should take off.
The programme is not without its detractors in India.
”Nuclear power technology has always been a chimera; it has been a great industrial failure,” said prominent anti-nuclear campaigner and Indian scholar Achin Vanaik, who described the nuclear option as ”wasteful and costly, unsafe and rejected by advanced countries”.
Vanaik cautions that setting up nuclear plants involves huge funds and was not economically viable unless massive subsidies were given by the governments, citing France and Japan as examples.
”Furthermore, dangers of nuclear accidents like Chernobyl and problems in radioactive waste disposal render it an unacceptable energy path,” he added.
The options, however, may be limited, given India’s huge energy demand if it wishes to catch up with its economic rival China.
Communist China aims to become the world’s leading country in nuclear energy technology within the next 30 to 50 years.
The government sees nuclear power as ”clean” energy technology and the best alternative to coal, which currently supplies 70% of China’s electricity and helps make it the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, after the United States.
China currently has nine nuclear generators in commercial operation with a total capacity of about seven gigawatts.
The government last week said it aims to increase the capacity of nuclear power stations to 40 gigawatts by 2020, accounting for 4% of total capacity.
It said this target will require China to build about 32 nuclear power units, each capable of generating at least one gigawatt, over the next 15 years.
Many of these new reactors are expected to use technology from countries such as the United States, Russia, France and Germany. China itself already helps to build reactors for other countries, such as Pakistan. ‒ Sapa-DPA