Global warming a good excuse for building nuclear reactors?  

         In classroom, I am always telling my students not use clichés in writing. But in my column this week, I have to deal with two clichés: nuclear power and global warming.

         The earthquake and tsunami that hit northern Japan on March 11, 2011 created the worst nuclear crisis since the Chernobyl disaster. Three weeks after the nuclear crisis in Japan, smallest traces of radioactive dust have swept all parts of China except Tibetan Plateau. Chinese media are asking the fearful question: will our planet be ended by the nuclear power?

        You may blame the media for being so fickle and unreliable. Before the Japan earthquake,   the media had been blaming fossil fuel for making our earth hotter and advocating nuclear power as the clean and safer energy.

         But the Fukushima nuclear crisis has not changed the mind of China to implement its ambitious nuclear power program. Chinese energy and environmental officials are firm in their defense of nuclear power. They are losing no time in giving fresh attention to nuclear energy in the name of protecting our earth from being harmed by global warming.

         On Saturday, Chinese Minister of Science and Technology Wan Gang told a press conference that "more investment should be put into current research on nuclear energy."

         ”Some lessons we learn from Japan will be considered in the making of China's nuclear power plans,” Vice Minister of Environmental Protection Zhang Lijun said in a recent interview, “But China will not change its determination and plan for developing nuclear power.”

         At the annual National People’s Congress held last month, development of new generation of nuclear energy remains a top priority in the new state five-year plan(2011-2015) despite controversy caused by Japan's failures to control nuclear plants damages.

         At a recent Tsinghua University international conference on using low carbon energy to deal with climate change, Chinese energy scientists, policy people, politicians along with businessmen from such world giants as BP and Barclays Capital continued their campaign about climate change and demanding for clean energy such as nuclear power.

         “There are 443 nuclear power stations worldwide, 104 in the US, 58 in France, 54 in Japan, 13 in China, “The former minister of the State Bureau of Energy Zhang Guobao assured the public by telling the meeting, “China will build 26 more reactors by the year 2020.”

         In the aftermath of the radiation disaster of Fukushima，the issue of global warming will help rehabilitate nuclear energy plan in the eyes of the journalists, environmentalists and the public. Chinese policy people say the plan makes sense because it would mean less reliance on coal and fewer emissions tied to global warming. “China has been under increasing pressure for emission reduction in the next five years. China needs nuclear energy to reach the goal of combating climate change,” Mr. Zhang Guobao said.

         Assuaging the public panic about nuclear power because of the fallout of Fukushima, Chinese nuclear industry officials and their pundits argue that Chinese reactors are not exposed to earthquake risks. The nuclear scientists argue that Chinese reactors use a design different from the stricken Japanese reactors。

         China started its first nuclear power plant in early 1980s despite the big debate after the Three Mile Island incident. With the issue of climate change becoming a global agenda in the past decade, Chinese nuclear industry has enjoyed a renaissance. In recent years, Chinese leaders have joined the Western leaders, particularly since Copenhagen Climate Conference, calling for renewable sources including nuclear power, solar, wind and biomass, which do not produce carbon dioxide emissions, a key greenhouse gas that global warming activists are blaming. The growing pressure to confront global warming and reduce greenhouse gas emissions has given Chinese government the unarguable reason to expand its nuclear power industry.

         Since it might take a while for practical and large-scale use of solar and wind energy, Chinese energy officials said that it would not be possible for China to meet its targets on cutting carbon emissions without nuclear power.

         Chinese policy people also look at nuclear power not only as a way to tackling the global warming issue, but most importantly as a guarantee of future energy supplies in China, reducing reliance on oil and gas piped in from abroad. In the context that the western powers are fighting one war after another in the oil-rich Iraq and Libya, with oil prices rising and supplies diminishing, “The building of more nuclear plants would also be vital for reducing China's dependence on imported oil, which accounted for about 55 per cent of its oil supply last year,” Zhang Guobao said.

        Watching news from Fukushima every day, things seem be heading toward an uncertain path. But one thing is certain that the Chinese government is determined to continue the wave of constructing nuclear power plants in the name of bringing clean air to the earth.

         Managing director of Barclays Capital Mr. Theodore Roosevelt IV, who was present at Tsinghua conference on using low carbon energy a week ago, once said, “The earth is warming; the impacts—once only predictions—are now upon us and are likely to worsen; and human activity is largely to blame.”

         So far, the strongest impacts we felt were not earth warming but earthquakes, which are not caused by human activities and remain unpredictable. At the moment, the only human activities-caused impacts we feel around the earth are radioactive from nuclear plants that have been advocated by pundits as an effective weapon in protecting our planet.