Insight Web Extra
December 2009—In an encouraging sign for global negotiations on climate change that get under way in Copenhagen this week, China and the United States—the world’s two largest carbon emitters—have announced national emissions reduction targets prior to the meeting.
The American commitment to an emissions reduction of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 is in line with energy legislation now being discussed in the U.S. Congress. The Chinese government
has offered a 40 to 45 percent reduction in carbon intensity per unit of GDP from 2005 levels by 2020.
China has also explicitly tied part of its carbon reduction strategy to an aggressive growth in new nuclear power plants. In the United States, the Senate is considering provisions that would promote nuclear power in energy and climate legislation that could become law as early as next year.
Although China currently gets only 2 percent of its electric generating capacity from its 11 nuclear reactors, it plans to build up to 100 more by 2030, equivalent to the number of U.S. plants now in operation.
As launch customer of the Westinghouse AP1000 design, China is already on the cutting edge of nuclear technology. Four AP1000s are under construction, and plans have been approved for six more. With infrastructure soon coming online to enable the domestic construction of AP1000 modules, China will be equipped to rapidly bring these units into operation.
For a country with such ambitious nuclear expansion plans, domestic supplies of uranium will no longer be able to meet demand. China expects to require 10,000 metric tons a year for the next 10 years, a major jump from the current requirement of 2,000 tons, and much more than the current domestic output of just 800 tons a year. China already imports half of its uranium needs and is signing new long-term import agreements with countries such as Jordan, Canada and France.
In another strategy to make better use of its limited uranium resources, China is also moving ahead with fourth-generation nuclear technology. It has announced plans to build two indigenously designed fast reactors, one 800 megawatts in size and the other 100 MW. It also just signed an agreement in Beijing with Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin for work on a Russian-designed fast reactor, also of 800 MW capacity and similar to the Russian BN-800 due to start up in 2012 in Beloyarsk.
The conference in Copenhagen is the 15th meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, as well as the fifth and final meeting of signatories to the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol. High-level intergovernmental negotiations are expected to provide a pathway for the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
Although previous rounds of negotiations explicitly excluded nuclear energy from those technologies that countries, especially developing countries, could consider using to reduce their emissions, it is hoped that some formal recognition of nuclear power’s value in this regard will be made in Denmark.
Photo: The containment vessel bottom head for the Sanmen Unit 1 AP1000TM reactor being built in China—for scale, note the three workers underneath it. Photo credit: Westinghouse Electric Company.
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