China plans 'Shield 2015' nuclear safety drill

China is to hold a national-level nuclear emergency drill next year to safeguard nuclear security as the country is steering toward clean energy, according to the National Nuclear Emergency Response Office on Monday.

Code named "Shield 2015," preliminary plans put the drill in South China's Guangdong province under a simulated scenario of processing nuclear material for a reactor, according to Huang Min, a senior nuclear emergency response coordinator with the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND).

Guangdong was chosen due to its long experience in civilian nuclear power use. Shenzhen-based China General Nuclear Power Group celebrated the 20th anniversary of successful and safe operations at Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant, the first commercial plant in the country, on May 6.

It will be the second national nuclear emergency drill since "Shield 2009," which was held in November 2009 at Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant in East China's Jiangsu Province.

A SASTIND media officer, surnamed Liu, told the Global Times that the national drill was in line with the requirement from the newly revised 2013 National Nuclear Emergency Response Plan, which was a major breakthrough in the field. However, nuclear safety could not be rushed, she noted.

While authorities are still laying out general plans for the drill, there is no detailed schedule yet, said Liu.

A national drill will deploy emergency response resources from State, provincial and nuclear facilities with military cooperation, said Yao Bin, vice director of China's National Nuclear Emergency Response Office.

Since the 2009 drill, the office has coordinated more than 300 small-scale exercises across the country.

Monday also marked the sixth anniversary of the 8.0-magnitude Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan province.

There have been doubts as to whether nuclear projects can endure extreme natural disasters, particularly in the wake of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

"The 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan warned us to put more emphasis on extreme external factors, including earthquakes and tsunamis, while improving internal design and operation protocols," said Chai Guohan, chief engineer of nuclear safety with the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

China cautiously resumed its nuclear power development in October 2012 after a halt caused by the Fukushima crisis and a full security upgrade.

China has 19 active nuclear reactor units and another 29 are under construction. The Chinese government has stressed the importance of nuclear safety in an effort to increase nuclear power to fulfill its ambitious carbon emission reduction goal by 2017.

President Xi Jinping posed a "nuclear security concept" during the Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague in March. Exports of nuclear power equipment were included in the government work report in March.

China has not encountered any nuclear incidents above Level 2 since it started to develop nuclear power in the 1950s.

The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale is a seven-level measurement, with 1-3 categorized as an "incident," and 4-7 as "accidents." Fukushima is designated a Level-7 accident.