The draft law proposes safety standards for nuclear facilities, emergency planning and response systems, and rules regarding information disclosure.
In a written response to the Southern Weekly, the Ministry of Environmental Protection wrote that "the fast development of nuclear power has given rise to immense pressure on maintaining their safety … The lack of a nuclear safety law has affected the further growth of China's nuclear safety standards."
In September 2013, the National People's Congress included a nuclear safety law in its five-year legislation plan, with the CNNSA as its main drafting department. By June 2016, the initial draft by the CNNSA had been revised into at least 15 drafts.
For Zhao Chengkun, former director of the CNNSA and currently the vice director of the China Nuclear Energy Association, the current draft, now under public review, is different in many aspects from the draft he reviewed two years ago. For example, in the beginning, different interested parties debated whether the law should also apply to military nuclear facilities.
"The military industry said that they need confidentiality if they are also subject to the law… But nuclear safety is about transparency of information to the public," Wang Jing, vice director of the expert team of the legislation and director at the Nuclear Policy and Law Center, Peking University, told the Southern Weekly.
Legislators eventually decided to create separate civil and military legislation. According to the draft, military use of nuclear power will be regulated by an alternate regulation drafted by the State Council and the Central Military Commission, China's top military authority.
Wang, the main author of the initial draft, said he has been thinking about the purpose of the law from the beginning. He said that China's nuclear industry is a relatively closed sector that is often regarded by the public as mysterious and dangerous.
The building of nuclear plants often faces opposition from locals. This August, for example, thousands of residents of Lianyungang, East China's Jiangsu Province protested against a nuclear fuel recycling project that was planned for their city, forcing the local government to suspend the project. Local residents told the Global Times at the time that there is already a nuclear waste plant in the city, and that it is "unsafe to see another nuclear project coming and besieging us."
Tang said enhancing public participation is the key to solve these misunderstandings. "There are lots of countries that have run nuclear reprocessing plants for years, with a very good safety record. However, probably because of bad publicity skills and public communication in China, many Chinese either don't understand nuclear plants or they still protest them out of their deeply held beliefs," he said.
Tang added that China is now selecting a location to process high-level radioactive waste, and the biggest obstacle they're facing is in public communication and how to gain public support and understanding.
Wang said that he has no objection to claims that China's nuclear safety is technically advanced. "However, what does the public want? From the public's, rather than the experts' perspective, will the law make the public feel safer?" he said.
Wang said the current draft, which clarifies the regulatory system and requires companies to set up a strict management and accountability system, "is better than no law," but that there is still room for improvement in terms of letting the public feel safer.
Vague rules
The section on information disclosure and public participation is regarded as a highlight of the law. According to the CNNSA, this shows that the public's right to know is reflected in the law.
But Wang says the section was based on the new Environmental Protection Law, which went into effect on January 1, 2015, that also has a section on information disclosure and public participation. The Environmental Protection Law, however, lacks enforceable measures or punishment on violations of information disclosure rules. "Will the nuclear safety law follow suit?" Wang said.
"In line with the law" is a common phrase in the section, but Wang said the law doesn't specify what kind of information should be disclosed.
"Even though the draft has a special section dedicated to information disclosure and public participation, the public's environmental rights can only be passively attained through the government's supervision and the nuclear industry's compliance. The questions about nuclear safety that the public is concerned about, such as the specifics of the nuclear facilities to be built by the government and nuclear companies, and how supervision can be carried out when officials in the nuclear safety department are lower in rank than officials in State-owned enterprises… if these questions are not answered, the range and extent of which the public participates in nuclear safety management and its result will be limited," Wang wrote in People's Daily on November 14.
