Expert calls for nuclear safety law enactment
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E-mail Xinhua, March 6, 2013
A Chinese nuclear expert has called for the enactment of a nuclear safety law to better supervise the development of nuclear energy and guarantee its safety.
The supervision of China's nuclear energy safety currently depends on the Law on the Prevention and Control of Radioactive Pollution passed in 2003 and several administrative regulations that are not compatible with China's nuclear energy development, said Zhu Zhiyuan, executive vice president of the Shanghai branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
China is in urgent need of a nuclear safety law, as it has the largest installed nuclear power capacity currently under construction in the world, Zhu said Wednesday in Beijing on the sidelines of the parliament's annual session.
Zhu also urged the establishment of a higher-level supervision institution for nuclear power development, which will report directly to the State Council, or Cabinet.
China currently has 15 nuclear power-generating units in operation with a total installed capacity of 12.54 gigawatts (GW), while another 26 units currently under construction will add another 29.24 GW, according to a government energy policy white paper released in October 2012.
Nuclear power only accounts for 1.8 percent of China's total power output, far below the global average of 14 percent, although China plans to increase its installed nuclear power capacity to 40 GW by 2015, the paper said.
China suspended the approval of new nuclear plants and carried out a nationwide safety review after Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in March 2011. The government cautiously resumed nuclear project approvals in October last year in order to meet growing energy demand.
Construction on the fourth-generation Shidao Bay nuclear power plant in east China's Shandong Province was resumed in December 2012. The first unit of the Hongyanhe nuclear power station, the first nuclear power plant in northeast China, started operation in February.
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