China has been building nuclear facilities at a rapid pace, and pressure has been mounting in the country to create a specific nuclear safety law. Experts say that apart from technical safety, transparency and participation are equally important in making the public feel safer.
China's National Nuclear Safety Administration (CNNSA) in October made public 16 safety failures that occurred in China's nuclear plants in 2016, all involving mistakes made by staff members.
Eight nuclear plants were mentioned in the announcement, including the Ningde, Yangjiang, Fangchenggang and Tianwanhe nuclear plants. Among them, six involved staff members breaching operational guidelines, six involved staff members pressing the wrong buttons, and four were caused by a lack of internal communication.
While the risky incidents sparked discussion on China's nuclear safety, experts say none of these incidents actually resulted in leaks of radioactive material or posed a direct threat to public safety. They argue that making public these operational mistakes is a way to boost nuclear transparency, improve the safety of China's nuclear industry and to grow trust in the sector.
Tang Bo, deputy head of the nuclear safety supervision bureau at the National Nuclear Safety Administration, said most countries in which nuclear power plants operate have a mistake feedback system. "Learning lessons from mistakes and correcting them is an important factor in ensuring the safety of nuclear plants. Besides, we should also learn from mistakes made by other countries. If we think these incidents are meaningful, we would inform the nuclear plants," he told the Southern Weekly.
China is expected to overtake France to have the second-largest number of nuclear reactors in the world by 2020. With 35 nuclear generators in operation and 21 more currently under construction, the safety of China's nuclear plants has long been one of the concerns for the country's citizens.
Although experts assure the public that China's nuclear plants are technically safe, the general lack of information disclosure and limited public participation have resulted in a dearth of trust on the part of the public, who often take to the streets to protest when a new nuclear plant is being built nearby.
Low risks
Tang said all of the 16 cases are rated "0" according to the International Nuclear Event Scale, a tool to communicate to the public the risk level posed by nuclear safety events. The scale classifies nuclear safety incidents at seven levels. The lower levels 1-3 are termed "incidents," and the upper levels 4-7 are called "accidents." Events without safety significance are rated 0.
This is also not the first time that the CNNSA has made public safety failures. In 2015, the administration launched a website on which it posted safety incidents that were reported to the administration.
Tang said that technically speaking the safety of China's nuclear projects have been proved by statistics. He said on average, each nuclear plant in the US reports 2.6 safety events to its nuclear authorities each year, while in China, that number is 1.6. "The World Association of Nuclear Operators evaluates nuclear plants worldwide every year, and all of the plants in China are in the middle to high level."
"So far, most of the safety events that have occurred in nuclear plants in China are rated 0. Not a single event at or above level 2 has ever occurred in China," Tang said.
Huang Xiaofei, spokesperson for the China General Nuclear Power Group, said the announcement is a meaningful step toward greater nuclear transparency. "This will boost the public's understanding of nuclear power, and the supervision also helps us to improve," he said in an interview with Xinhua.
Feeling safer
Making public these incidents is just a small step that China is taking to improve its nuclear safety. China is also working on a nuclear safety law, the draft of which is now under public review.
There has long been a consensus that a nuclear safety law is badly needed to ensure the safety of nuclear facilities in China.
"Though the country has the largest number of nuclear units under construction in the world, China has no law on nuclear safety. Our civil nuclear facilities have been running for decades without a law - this shouldn't have happened," Professor Zhang Zitai, Director of Center for Environmental, Natural Resource & Energy Law at Shanghai's Fudan University, told the Southern Weekly.
