Economic Aspects of Civilian Reprocessing in China

Currently, China is pursuing a long-term expansion of its nuclear power program and plans to reprocess the resulting civilian spent fuel, recycling the plutonium in MOX fuel for LWRs and in fast breeder reactors. China presently operates three civilian nuclear power reactors, but it plans to build about 20 reactors by 2020. A pilot civilian reprocessing plant has been built at Lanzhou, with a capacity 50 metric tons of spent fuel per year. This plant is ready to start operations now. A key decision now hanging in the balance is whether to proceed with expensive plans to build a larger commercial reprocessing plant, with a capacity of up to 800 tons per year, by 2020. At the same time, China started construction of an experimental fast reactor with a power of 25 MWe in May 2000, and will have to decide whether to build a 300 MWe breeder by 2015, as currently planned. This paper examines whether nuclear reprocessing makes sense for China, taking into account costs, spent fuel management, and proliferation risks. It discusses the status of China’s breeder and civilian reprocessing programs, estimates the cumulative of discharged spent fuel and storage capacity in China, and discussion of economics of reprocessing in China. It concludes that China does not urgently need to pursue civilian reprocessing in the foreseeable future. China should instead use interim storage for its spent fuels. Nuclear Power in China As a developing country, China’s current energy consumption per capita is only half of the world average level and one sixth of the advanced developed countries. It is estimated that the energy consumption per capita in China will need to increase about three times by 2050 to meet its economic growth and to increase living standards. China relies on coal for about 70 percent of its primary commercial energy use. China’s vast energy resources lie far from population centers and areas of high energy demand. Increasing China already large consumption of coal would place excessive strains on transportation system and the environment. To address these concerns, China is developing its nuclear power program. Nuclear power plants. China began its nuclear industry for defense purposes in the 1950s. Since 1979, China’s nuclear industry switched its focus to civilian nuclear power. In the mid 1980s, China decided to build nuclear power reactors. China’s first commercial plant, Qinshan ( a Chinese design 300 MW PWR) went on-line in 1991. In 1994, Daya Bay (two French 900 MW PWRs, went online. Now the three operating PWRs provide 2.1 GW of nuclear capacity, about one percent of total electric power generation. An additional 6.6 GW of capacity is under construction (see table 1), including Qianshan phase two (2X 600 MW PWRs), Qinshan phase three (2X700 MW CANDU), LingAo (2X980 MW PWRs), and Tianwan (2X1000 MW VVERs). These eight reactors will be on line before 2005. After testing a range of reactor types, China is moving to standardization and to self-reliance in design, manufacturing, construction, and operation. China is choosing the 1000 MW-grade PWR unit with 300 MW capacity for each