China
to build new generation nuclear reactor
AFP
BEIJING
Petroleumworld.com
02 22 06
China will begin building a revolutionary "pebble-bed"
nuclear reactor this year with the aim of making the technology
commercially viable by 2020, state press reported Wednesday.
Construction of the 190 megawatt reactor will begin near Weihai
city in eastern China's Shandong province with the production
of electricity slated for 2010, the China Daily reported.
The cost of the reactor, which the Beijing Institute of Nuclear
Engineering is developing, will be 370 million dollars, the paper
said.
The plant will be the first radically new reactor designed globally
in decades, previous reports said.
It will put China at the forefront in nuclear energy research
that offers a "meltdown-proof" alternative to conventional
nuclear power stations, the reports have said.
"Pebble bed" reactors are fueled by thousands of small
graphite balls with minute uranium cores which provide the fuel
for the nuclear reaction.
The technology is said to be proliferation proof, meaning that
spent fuel cannot be reprocessed to make weapons-grade uranium.
The new technology is still not commercially viable as costs remain
much higher than conventional pressurized water nuclear power
technology, Liu Wei, vice president of the Beijing institute,
told the paper.
"As the research evolves, the new technology could be competitive
in 2020 or 2030," he was cited as saying.
China Huaneng Group, parent of the Hong Kong-listed Huaneng Power
International Inc, will own half of the project, while the China
Nuclear Engineering and Construction Corp will take a 35 percent
stake and Beijing's Tsinghua University will take five percent,
it said.
The owner of the remaining 10 percent has yet to be determined,
it said.
The modular design of the reactor means that future 190 to 200
megawatt pebble bed reactors could be built in factories, then
transported to sites and assembled together to make a power plant
of up to five reactor modules.
AFP
02 22 06
Copyright
© 2006 AFP. All rights reserved
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