Work on China's nuclear power plants has begun to pick up again a year after the Fukushima disaster in Japan. But the meltdown on March 11, 2011, is still fresh on the minds of four retired cadres in Wangjiang County.
They petitioned against the Pengze nuclear power project in neighboring Jiangxi Province and ultimately convinced their local government to oppose the plan. This kind of official opposition to a nuclear undertaking is almost unheard of in China.
The Pengze plant would be China's first inland nuclear power facility. It is north of the Yangtze River, and only ten kilometers (6.25 miles) from the center of Wangjiang County. The nearest Wangjiang village is only three kilometers away.
Two months after the Fukushima mess, former Wangjiang County Party Committee deputy secretary Wang Jinzhou, former county people's court chief justice Fang Guangwen, former county people's congress deputy director Tao Guoxiang, and former urban-rural construction bureau director Wang Jize began collecting public materials on the Pengze plant. They then checked this information against national construction standards and regulations.
In July 2011, they completed an 11-page petition that called for the project to be halted and sent it to the State Council, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Anhui provincial government and the county government. The petition said the population data in application materials related to the Pengze facility was falsified, seismic data was unreliable and gifts were used to bribe villagers during a survey of public opinion.
The group first sent its petition to the county government. But it took no position until two organizations leading the project — the Jiangxi National Defense Science and Industry Office and China Power Investment Jiangxi — arrived in Wangjiang in August 2011 to undertake safety research and ask the county to provide geographic data. Fang said that it was at this juncture that the county for the first time expressed its opposition to building the plant in its vicinity. The county refused to provide the data.
Then, the Wangjiang government researched the plant more, and on Nov. 15, 2011, it completed a report that requested the project be called off. The county government gave its report to the Anhui Energy Bureau. But several months later, the county government had not received a response. Only when the document was linked to on a microblog, causing widespread concern, did the bureau say the county's report had been forwarded to National Development and Reform Commission, the nation's top economic planner. The NDRC has not commented.
Wang speculated that the delay was connected to the development of nuclear power in the province. “Anhui is preparing four of its own nuclear power projects,” he said.
The projects he referred to are the Wuhu Fanchang, Chizhou Jiyang, Anqing Congyang and Xuancheng nuclear power plants along the Yangtze River. The Jiyang site is less than 50 kilometers from the Pengze plant and less than 15 kilometers from a small town in Wangjiang County.
Before the Fukushima disaster, these projects met little resistance. The Chizhou prefectural government said in 2009 on its website that the public had input into the environmental impact assessment and a forum was held where 41 representatives of the public voiced their support for the project.
China temporarily slowed the pace of such construction following Fukushima. For instance, there have been no updated news releases about the projects in Anhui or the several dozen nationwide.
However, China is still determined to develop nuclear power. In November 2011, Anhui's latest energy development plan stated: “In accordance with the national strategic layout for nuclear power, at the same time as continuing to ensure work at the Wuhu and Chizhou nuclear power plant sites and the Anqing high-temperature gas-cooled reactor nuclear power project site, steadily push forward the preparatory work for nuclear power projects.”
And in mid-February 2012, Li Ganjie, director of the National Nuclear Safety Administration, visited the Sanmen nuclear facility in coastal Zhejiang Province and said the nation should be confident about the development of nuclear power.
On Feb. 23, 2012, the Hongyan River nuclear power plant in coastal Dalian, Liaoning Province, passed a preparatory safety assessment organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The plant's unit number one was the first Chinese nuclear power facility to apply for the installation of nuclear fuel since the Fukushima disaster.