A Chinese city said Wednesday it would halt preparations for a possible Sino-French nuclear project after thousands of locals protested against it over the weekend, the latest official concession following environmental demonstrations.
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However, the Lianyungang municipal government announced today that it had chose to suspend site preparatory work.
A municipal government in China representing the coastal city of Lianyungang has suspended preliminary site work for a nuclear waste processing plant after local residents protested the site selection, the municipality’s Web site announced.
(CNNC) in collaboration with France’s Areva, was scheduled to start construction in 2020 and be completed by 2030, but reports that Lianyungang would be chosen as the site sparked protests starting last weekend among residents concerned about the health risks of nuclear waste.
Locals say that Lianyungang, a port city in the eastern province of Jiangsu, is a prime candidate, because a large new nuclear power station is being built by CNNC nearby.
Lianyungang, in the province of Jiangsu, is the location of the Tianwan nuclear project, which now consists of two Russian-designed reactors. State media say a unit of CNNC and its French partner have looked at more than 10 potential locations for the reprocessing center and did preliminary research previous year on Lianyungang.
The scheme to reprocess used nuclear fuel is under development by the China National Nuclear Corporation with technology supplied by the French firm Areva. The plant would be operated by Areva.
China’s reactors could instead take the USA route and bury waste underground, said Li Ning, a nuclear scientist and Dean of the School of Energy Research at Xiamen University.
In addition to the reprocessing plant, the site will also house a used fuel storage facility with the capacity to hold 3000 tonnes of fuel. The project was eventually cancelled.
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Huge protests in the northeastern city of Dalian in 2011 prompted authorities to announce the closure of another chemical plant, although it was apparently still operating two years later.
