Business Intelligence for the nuclear industry

Industry Insight

China’s Scheduled Jilin Border Reactor Raises Fears in Korea

29 July 2010

China’s full steam ahead approach to greater nuclear energy capability is creating political and scientific tensions in North and South Korea. But with strong censorship amongst all three nations will there be the necessary dialogue to implement the best practices and geological designs for the sites in question? Paul French reports

By Paul French, Asia Correspondent

The announcement in the Government Work Report of China’s north eastern Jilin Province earlier this year has sparked off a round of controversy involving China and both the Koreas – the Republic of Korea (South) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North) involving conflicting arguments emitting from Beijing, Seoul and Pyongyang.

"To Do List"

The ‘Government Work Report’ is basically an approved “to do” list of projects issued by Communist Party administrators in their areas for the next few years.

According to Wang Rulin, the Deputy Governor of Jilin Province based in the capital city of Changchun, the so-called Chisong Nuclear Project, will be located in Jilin’s Jingyu County, involving an investment of RMB85bn and consisting of six 1.25 million kW nuclear power units.

The plant will be Jilin’s first nuclear facility and is scheduled to begin construction in 2012 with four 1.25mn kW nuclear power units using Westinghouse’s AP1000 technology to be installed in the first phase.

The Jilin Work Report also noted the construction of a 10mn kW wind power base and a wind power generation equipment manufacturing centre.

The project will be part overseen by Jilin Electric Power Corporation, part of the China Power Investment Corporation (CPI), a state-owned investment holding company tasked with organizing the production and marketing of electric power across China.

CPI owns 19 existing power plants generating in excess of 1000MW, including the Shandong Haiyang and Jiangxi Pengze nuclear power projects, Liaoning Hongyanhe Nuclear Power Project Phase I and reactors under construction in Guangxi, Liaoning and Hunan provinces as well as Chongqing Municipality.

CPI is involved in five nuclear power plants already in operation as well as, now, Chisong.

Controversial site

However, the construction site chosen for the Chisong Nuclear Project is controversial to many – Jingyu County is right on the PRC-DPRK border.

Jilin is a non-coastal province of China that borders North Korea and Russia to the east.

The economy is a mix of agriculture (rice, maize and sorghum mostly) and heavy industry including cars, trains and iron products.

Crucially the province retains many State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) that remain under government control.

However, controversially Jilin has always been subject to certain territorial disputes. The Primorsky Krai area was ceded to Russia in 1860 and now forms part of Russia’s Far East Maritime Territory with the provincial capital at Vladivostok.

There are also long simmering border disputes with North Korea that have recently flared up for a variety of reasons exciting nationalistic elements in both China and South Korea prompting a flurry of angry outpouring from the South Korean and Chinese Internet for and against the plan.

So far, there have been no public statements from Pyongyang, which relies on China for much of its energy and food aid, so we have little to no idea what people there know or think.

More than political conflicts at stake?

The centre of the controversy is Mount Baekdu (sometimes spelt Paektu), a volcanic mountain that sits almost right on the border between Jilin Province and North Korea. The Chisong Nuclear Project is located approximately 100 kilometres from the Baekdu. Korean geologists have been warning of a volcanic eruption within a few years on Mount Baekdu.

Added to this, Baekdu is seen as the birthplace of the Korean nation by both Pyongyang and Seoul and anything likely to damage it is perceived by nationalists as an insult to Korea and the Korean people.

It is also worth noting that any eruption at Baekdu would completely overwhelm the financially beleaguered North’s limited emergency disaster response capabilities.

Recently, the Korea Federation for Environmental Movements (KFEM), an NGO in South Korea that focuses on environmentalism and opposes the development of nuclear power, hinted at the possible eruption of the dormant Baekdu in the near future: ‘Many experts here and abroad have warned of the high possibility of the eruption, saying that the consequences could be much more serious than the recent one in Iceland,’ the group said in a statement to the Korean media.

Yoon Sung-hyo, a geologist at South Korea’s Pusan National University, also told the Korean media that there are “clear signs” of Mount Baekdu erupting in the near future.

Mr Yoon also claimed that Chinese geologists agree and are expecting the eruption to happen between 2014 and 2015 though due to free speech and media restrictions in China they are unable to go public about their concerns.

While the arguments continue over the Chisong Nuclear Project it appears China may also be about to start work on another potentially controversially located reactor. China National Nuclear Corporation has officially launched preliminary work on a plant in Sichuan province in China’s south west.

Central government approval has not yet been forthcoming and some are noting that Sichuan is also partially geologically unstable, as demonstrated tragically in the Wenchuan Earthquake in May 2008.

Image Credit: Mount Baekdu/Nick Bonner

Want to contact the author?

Paul French:  paul@accessasia.co.uk