China struggles to secure uranium supplies after Jiangmen plant halted

The abrupt cancellation of a US$6.5 billion uranium processing project in southern China has left Beijing with a headache as it tries to secure the fuel required to sustain an ambitious nuclear reactor building programme.

China has been buying stakes in uranium mines in Asia and Africa, but without the capacity to enrich and process the ore it will still be dependent on foreign firms to turn it into useable fuel.

The project, set to be built in Jiangmen in heavily populated Guangdong province, where many of China’s existing reactors are stationed, was called off at the weekend following protests, with the sector still struggling to convince the public that nuclear power is safe.

The two biggest state-owned reactor builders, the China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGNPC) and the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), are now scouting for new sites.

“China’s processing capacity is undersized compared to the plants under construction, and so is its uranium and fuel supply, and that’s why the companies are busy revving things up,” said Li Ning, a specialist on nuclear power and dean of the School of Energy Research at China’s Xiamen University.

China currently has 15 reactors with an aggregate installed capacity of 12.57 gigawatts (GW), but another 30 plants are under construction and due to go into operation between now and 2016, adding another 29 GW to the total.

Gaining more control over the global fuel supply chain is crucial to China’s plans to increase total nuclear capacity to 58 GW by 2020, and will require not only overseas acquisitions but also more enrichment capacity.

The plant in Guangdong was expected to cost 40 billion yuan (US$6.5 billion) and would have provided a “one-stop shop” for uranium enrichment and the fabrication of fuel rods for Chinese reactors. It was expected to begin manufacturing nuclear fuel by 2020, with annual capacity eventually set to reach 1,000 tonnes.