Oxstones Investment Club™By HEATHER TIMMONS and VIKAS BAJAJ, NY Times,
NEW DELHI — Despite Japan’s crisis, India and China and some other energy-ravenous countries say they plan to keep using their nuclear power plants and building new ones.
The Japanese disaster has led some energy officials in the United States and in advanced European nations to think twice about nuclear expansion. And if a huge release of radiation worsens the crisis, even big developing nations might reconsider their ambitious plans. But for now, while acknowledging the need for safety, they say their unmet energy needs give them little choice but to continue investing in nuclear power.
“Ours is a very power-hungry country,“ Srikumar Banerjee, the chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, said during a press conference Monday in Mumbai. Nearly 40 percent of India’s 1.2 billion people do not have regular access to electricity, Mr. Banerjee said. “It is essential for us to have further electricity generation.“
And in China, which has the world’s most ambitious nuclear expansion plans, a vice minister of environment, Zhang Lijun, said on Saturday that Japan’s difficulties would not deter his nation’s nuclear rollout.
With those two countries driving the expansion — and countries from elsewhere in Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East also embracing nuclear power in response to high fossil fuel prices and concerns about global warming — the world’s stock of 443 nuclear reactors could more than double in the next 15 years, according to the World Nuclear Association, an industry trade group.
Not that Indian and Chinese officials are heedless of the risks of nuclear energy. India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, said Monday that his country’s Department of Atomic Energy would review all safety systems at India’s nuclear plants, “particularly with a view to ensuring that they would be able to withstand the impact of large natural disasters such as tsunamis and earthquakes.”
During a political conference in Beijing on Sunday, Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said, “Evaluation of nuclear safety and the monitoring of plants will be definitely strengthened.”
China’s nuclear power industry has 11 reactors operating and plans to start construction on as many 10 new ones a year during the next decade. China’s electricity consumption continues to climb 12 percent a year, even as usage stagnates in the West.
India, with 20 nuclear reactors already in operation, plans to spend an estimated $150 billion adding dozens of new ones around the country. Its forecast calls for nuclear power to supply about a quarter of the country’s energy needs by 2050, a tenfold increase from now.
One company that could benefit from the continued global push for nuclear energy is General Electric, a maker of reactors. Other big players include Areva of France and Toshiba’s Westinghouse unit.
But on Monday, at least, G.E.’s chairman and chief executive, Jeffrey R. Immelt, found himself on the nuclear defensive. G.E. was the designer of the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi plant in Okuma, Japan, that was damaged by last Friday’s tsunami and had a wide release of radioactive materials early Tuesday morning.
Mr. Immelt, who happened to be in New Delhi on a previously planned promotional tour for his company’s products and services, said at a press conference Monday that it was too early to predict what effect, if any, the events in Japan could have on the nuclear energy industry. G.E.’s stock closed down more than 2 percent on Monday, to $19.92.
“We just have to let discovery take place, and let countries reach their own conclusions,“ he said. “There has been an almost 50-year track record from nuclear power that people can look back on and make their own judgments on.“
Asked whether the Fukushima Daiichi plant’s oceanfront location had contributed to its vulnerability, Mr. Immelt replied, “On location and all that other stuff — let’s just let it take its course.“
So far, G.E. has not sold any nuclear plants to India. Most of the country’s existing reactors have been built locally with some Russian help, and contracts have been awarded for more Russian-backed plants. India also signed a nuclear reactor deal with Areva in December for $9.3 billion.
The United States has lobbied extensively to open India’s nuclear power market to American industry. Indian and American officials spent more than five years negotiating a nuclear energy agreement that was blessed by both governments and international nuclear agencies.
That deal, completed last August, is considered one of Mr. Singh’s major foreign policy successes and a cornerstone of his Congress Party’s pledge to help India’s economic growth.
But the pact included an unusual liability clause that makes nuclear power plant suppliers, not just operators, liable if accidents occur.
Despite American pressure to change that provision, the Japan disaster could encourage Indian legislators to keep it in place.
G.E. and Westinghouse have said they will stay out of the Indian nuclear market unless the country changes its liability law to conform with international standards.
Walt Patterson, an associate fellow at Chatham House in London, predicted that the problems at Japan’s nuclear plants would refocus attention on safety and away from the economic viability of atomic energy.
“The question mark about safety was really way down the agenda,” Mr. Patterson said. “This will bring it right back to the top of the agenda.“
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany on Monday said her country’s plan to prolong the life of the country’s nuclear power stations would be tabled while the German government reassessed the situation.
Switzerland on Monday suspended plans to build new plants and replace existing ones. The Swiss energy minister, Doris Leuthard, said in a statement that the “safety and well-being of the population have the highest priority.”
But at the same time, Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic all said they would stick to their energy policies.
Across the Middle East, countries have been racing to build up nuclear power, as a growth and population boom has created unprecedented demand for energy, and as Iran forges ahead with the Bushehr nuclear facility.
The United Arab Emirates has taken the lead with a plan to build four plants in the city of Braka, on the Persian Gulf, by 2017 to generate about a quarter of the country’s power by 2020.
The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation, the project’s developer, is “closely monitoring the situation in Japan,” a spokesman said Monday, although no reassessment of the effort is under way.
The emirates plan to use pressurized water reactors bought from Korea Electric Power Company of South Korea in a $20 billion deal, passing over French and American bids for the project.
One of the emirates, Abu Dhabi, chose Braka because it is near the water and an existing power grid, far from populated areas, and lies on a seismically stable landmass.
Because the Persian Gulf is an enclosed sea, planners say there is little threat of a tsunami in the event of an earthquake.
By contrast, Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant, also on the Persian Gulf, is much less seismically stable, which worries environmentalists. Any nuclear leak there would quickly reach the wealthy emirates of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and others because the gulf’s currents run clockwise.
The Iranian plant unloaded nuclear fuel in February after a computer worm infected the reactor.
Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Egypt are all also studying nuclear energy, and even oil-rich Saudi Arabia is considering a nuclear-powered city.
Most plants would be placed in seismically stable areas, although one planned by Jordan at the Red Sea port of Aqaba is on a major faultline.
Turkey on Monday said it would move ahead with plans for two nuclear plants, including one that may use Japanese nuclear technology from the Tokyo Electric Power Company and Toshiba. Numerous geological faultlines cross the country.
India’s nuclear energy establishment has faced stiff opposition to its ambitious plans from environmentalists and villagers at plant sites.
Many of the questions posed to energy officials at Monday’s press conference addressed a controversial nuclear project on the western coast of the country, north of Goa, a tourist destination.
As currently envisioned, it would be the world’s largest nuclear energy complex.
But analysts in India said the Japan crisis was unlikely to stir up significantly more public protest against nuclear plants here, given the pressing demand for more electricity.
“If 1 percent of the population was against nuclear power, you might now get 2 percent,“ said G. Balachandran, a consulting fellow at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis, a policy research organization in New Delhi. “I am really not concerned about the opposition that may develop around this.”
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