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 AS IF CHERNOBYL NEVER HAPPENED ASIAN NATIONS PLUNGE AHEAD WITH NUCLEAR POWER, DESPITE PUBLIC FEARS |
BY SEBASTIAN MOFFETT Once touted as the limitless energy of the future, nuclear power lost favor in most of the world amid fears of Chernobyl-like accidents and doubts that radioactive waste could ever be safely discarded. But in Asia harnessing the atom remains a growth industry. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan--all poor in natural resources--see no alternative. Japan, for example, generates 33% of its electricity from nuclear power and plans to boost that to 42% by 2010. South Korea relies on the atom for 36% of its electricity and is shooting for 46% in 2010. Even mainland China, which has vast coal reserves and enormous potential for hydroelectric power, is building eight new reactors on top of the three it already has. The good news--at least for the rest of the world--is that the use of nuclear power will make Asia's growing contribution to the greenhouse effect less than it otherwise would be, since atomic reactors put out almost no carbon dioxide. But mishaps still hamper the industry. In 1995 one of China's two reactors in Daya Bay, near Hong Kong, had to be shut down temporarily when a control mechanism failed. And Japan's $6 billion prototype fast-breeder reactor, designed to produce more fuel than it uses, has lain idle since a leak was found in the plant's cooling system in December 1995. Neither of those incidents was anything close to a Chernobyl, but jitters have spread across Asia anyway. Popular opposition to a fourth reactor in Taiwan led the parliament to freeze the project's budget in 1996. In the Japanese town of Maki, north of Tokyo, an unprecedented public referendum last year went against construction of a nuclear plant in the neighborhood. It seems that what is good for economic development and good for the battle against the greenhouse effect is not necessarily welcome to people who will live in the shadow of the reactors. |