CHINA AND NUCLEAR ISSUES
AP Photo/Jorge Saenz
March 2012
Progress on Securing Nuclear Weapons and Materials: The Four-Year Effort and Beyond
Report
By Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor of Public Policy; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom, Eben Harrell, Associate, Project on Managing the Atom and Martin B. Malin, Executive Director, Project on Managing the Atom
On the eve of the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea, a new study finds that an international initiative to secure all vulnerable nuclear stockpiles within four years has reduced the dangers they pose.
March 22, 2012
China’s Plutonium Recycling: Policy Considerations
Presentation
By Hui Zhang, Senior Research Associate, Project on Managing the Atom
A presentation to the International Symposium on Nuclear Security and the Korean Peninsula on the policy considerations of China's plutonium recycling plans.
March 18-23, 2012
Rethinking Chinese Policy on Commercial Reprocessing
Presentation
By Hui Zhang, Senior Research Associate, Project on Managing the Atom
This paper will discuss the status of China’s nuclear power reactors, breeders, and civilian reprocessing programs. In addition, this paper will examine whether the breeders and civilian reprocessing programs make sense for China, taking into account costs, proliferation risks, energy security tradeoffs, health and environmental risks, and spent fuel management issues.
Bret Arnett, CC licensed
March 5, 2012
China’s Nuclear Energy Industry, One Year After Fukushima
Policy Brief
By Yun Zhou, Research Fellow, Project on Managing the Atom/International Security Program
It has been one year since the disastrous nuclear accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011. Experts now view Fukushima as the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.
In the aftermath, the Chinese government promptly reaffirmed that nation’s nuclear energy policy. Yet China also became the only nation among all major nuclear energy states that suspended its new nuclear plant project approvals. Before it would restart approvals, China said it would:
1) Conduct safety inspections at all nuclear facilities
2) Strengthen the approval process of new nuclear plant projects
3) Enact a new national nuclear safety plan
4) Adjust the medium and long-term development plan for nuclear power
Where is China on this path, and what is the future of its nuclear power industry?
March, 2012
Nuclear Modernization in China
Book Chapter
By Hui Zhang, Senior Research Associate, Project on Managing the Atom
This new, groundbreaking study by Reaching Critical Will explores in-depth the nuclear weapon modernization programmes in China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and analyzes the costs of nuclear weapons in the context of the economic crisis, austerity measures, and rising challenges in meeting human and environmental needs.
March 1, 2012
China’s Nuclear Power Industry after Fukushima and China's Nuclear Safety Practices
Presentation
By Yun Zhou, Research Fellow, Project on Managing the Atom/International Security Program
MTA/ISP Fellow Yun Zhou's presentation to the American Physics Society on safety in the Chinese nuclear industry
AP Photo
February 2012
"China's Commercial Reactors"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Nuclear Engineering International, China Supplement
By Jonathan Hinze and Yun Zhou, Research Fellow, Project on Managing the Atom/International Security Program
China's approach to civil nuclear power reactor development will determine the overall tenor of its nuclear power programme long into the future. Its approach, both domestically and through imports, is analyzed, with a focus on the next decade of deployment.
AP Photo
February 27, 2012
"Smart Nuclear Reduction"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
By Juliette Kayyem, Lecturer in Public Policy
"The nuclear debate in Washington is only about the past, about a notion of this nation as the better of only two options. It's as if the critics are wondering: why must we tinker with everything that made America once spectacular? Endless discussions about whether America is exceptional or not (and whether this president thinks we are or not) are preconditioned on a memory that equates the size of our nuclear arsenal with our own relevance. It is simplicity in its most perverse form. What makes us exceptional is our capacity to adapt to a world that has changed, not holding onto a world dynamic that ended long ago."
January 31, 2012
China's Underground Great Wall: Subterranean Ballistic Missiles
Op-Ed, Power & Policy Blog
By Hui Zhang, Senior Research Associate, Project on Managing the Atom
In a post to the Belfer Center's Power and Policy blog Hui Zhang considers the purposes of China's extensive system of tunnels for ballistic missiles, known as the "Underground Great Wall"
January 16, 2012
The Defensive Nature of China's "Underground Great Wall"
Op-Ed, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
By Hui Zhang, Senior Research Associate, Project on Managing the Atom
A study by Georgetown University's Phillip Karber claims that a vast network of tunnels in China, often called the "underground great wall," could hide up to 3,000 nuclear weapons. Writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Hui Zhang argues that the study leaps to unwarranted conclusions based on simplistic reasoning and questionable extrapolation from decades-old estimates of Chinese weapon levels. New information on fissile materials inventories and other authoritative data indicate that China has a nuclear arsenal of a few hundred weapons and that the underground great wall is meant to protect this small deterrent from a first strike.
