Chinese nuclear safety must be fully scrutinized: but will it be in UK?‏

Letter to The Financial Times:

 Your report on the industrial implications for the UK of the first proposed Chinese designed nuclear power plant (“Nuclear energy: Beijing’s power play,” December 30

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/789e5070-974a-11e5-9228-87e603d47bdc.html#axzz3veAp9lgD) rightly raised safety concerns.

While Guo Ruiting, China General Nuclear (CGN) Power Corp’s deputy chief engineer for the Taishan EPR-design nuclear plant near Hong Kong - which would be the ‘reference plant” for the projected new build plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset, - may be “bullish” in calling his reactor “ the safest,” other Chinese nuclear safety experts are not so sanguine about Chinese nuclear safety

Nuclear industry veteran Li Yulun, a former vice-president of CNNC (China National Nuclear Corp) observed two years ago "Our state leaders have put a high priority on [nuclear safety] but companies executing projects do not seem to have the same level of understanding." (“China nuclear plant delay raises safety concern,” South China Morning Post, 7 October 2013, http://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/1325973/china-nuclear-plant-delay-raises-safety-concern

The world's first AP1000 third-generation nuclear power plant – the competitor for the Taishan  design - being built in Sanmen in China, has fallen behind schedule, and questions have increasingly been raised over its safety standards.

Just as the EPR and Japanese-design Advanced Boiling Water Reactor developed by Hitachi ( with US company GE) have had to undergo painstaking independent safety and security evaluation by the UK’s independent Office for Nuclear Regulation, so too will the Chinese nuclear plant design, in a process known as Generic Design Assessment.

This scrutiny may come as a rude shock to the Chinese nuclear plant manufacturers, who are used to what is effectively self-regulation inside China, as state-owned companies.

It will be especially interesting to see if the ONR subject the CGN reactor design to intrusive probing on its claimed security status, both in terms of physical robustness against external malevolent intrusion, and internally with its cyber security for its complex computer systems.