Barun Roy: The nuclear option

ASIA FILE

For countries such as China, Japan and South Korea, this is increasingly the only option to meet escalating energy needs.

As the nuclear debate in India gets more strident and politics fudges the main issue, it's moot to remember that three other countries in Asia "" Japan, South Korea and China "" have set themselves big nuclear energy goals to meet the ever bounding needs of their economies. There are 109 nuclear power reactors in the region today, 18 more are under construction, and firm plans are in place to build an additional 40.

Of course, for Japan and South Korea, the nuclear option is unavoidable. Both countries lack traditional energy sources of their own. While both have aggressive plans to develop renewable energy "" Japan already has 1,000 MW of installed solar capacity "" nuclear energy is a proven and stable resource they can tap here and now.

Japan currently has 53 nuclear plants with a combined capacity of 47,000 MW, accounting for about 33 per cent of its annual electricity needs. It plans to keep raising this level since the country's energy self-sufficiency, including nuclear, is still a low 19 per cent (against 50 per cent for France, for example, where nuclear power accounts for 80 per cent of its total electricity generation). Japan's long-term goal is to create 90,000 MW of nuclear capacity by 2050.

South Korea depends on nuclear energy for 45 per cent of its annual electricity needs and the proportion is to rise to 60 per cent by 2035. By that time, at least 28 nuclear plants will be in operation in the country, against 20 now.

But both for Japan and South Korea, as for all countries with growing energy needs, like China and India, there's an added reason why the nuclear alternative is important. Fossil fuels, in addition to not being cheap and inexhaustible, aren't clean. China and India can't go on burning coal, for example, simply because they have it in apparent abundance. By doing this, they will not only be polluting their own atmosphere but also the world's. That's the main issue. Global environmental constraints on the expansion of fossil fuels will only grow in the coming years, while population increases, rapid urbanisation, spreading transportation networks and the continuing need for strong industrial growth are bound to leave huge energy gaps. Only nuclear power can help fill those gaps in a meaningful way.

Naturally, faced with a more than 8 per cent annual growth in its energy demand, China is moving aggressively to build up its nuclear generation capacity. Ten nuclear plants are already in operation with a combined capacity of 7,600 MW, but Beijing knows it has a very long way to go. The current installed capacity is only about 1.5 per cent of the country's total annual electricity production, and even with 18 more plants to be built by 2020, having a combined capacity of 40,000 MW, the proportion won't be more than 4 per cent. In the face of a 47 per cent dependency on oil imports and given the government's recently announced commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1.5 billion tonnes by 2010, that's clearly not enough.

Keeping this in mind, Beijing has decided to allow domestic and foreign private companies to invest in nuclear power projects, though as minority partners. Last month, China finalised a contract with a consortium led by US-based Westinghouse Electric Co to build four nuclear power reactors in the eastern provinces of Jhejiang and Shandong, using, for the first time, a third-generation US technology. Welcoming the agreement, Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan described China's nuclear co-operation with the US as "crucial."

Activity picked up in August, when a new nuclear power station, built in co-operation with Russia, went into production at Tianwan in Jiangsu province. At the same time, construction began of northeast China's first nuclear power plant at Dalian in Liaoning province, and plans were announced for an inland plant in Hunan province. Once completed, the Hunan plant is expected to generate 4,000 MW of nuclear power, accounting for 10 per cent of the country's total nuclear capacity by 2020.

According to one report, China now has over 300 research institutions and production firms devoted to nuclear technology alone, employing about 50,000 people.

There's another reason, no less important for the long term, why nations want to promote nuclear energy. There's no surer way to reduce dependence on petroleum and cut greenhouse gas emissions "" from automobiles, for one thing "" than to develop a significant "hydrogen economy;" and nuclear heat can be a very cost-effective input for producing commercial hydrogen. Japan's Atomic Energy Research Institute has developed a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor that produces 950-degree helium gas and has plans to connect it soon with a hydrogen production plant. South Korea has a $1 billion R&D and demonstration programme, in association with General Atomics of the US, to begin commercial production of hydrogen by 2020. China has an ongoing collaboration with South Korea for the same purpose, in the face of continuing staggering increases in its automobile population.