Nuclear power development in China and uranium demand forecast: Based on analysis of global current situation

There are 438 units of operable nuclear reactors all over the world with a combined capacity of 374,127 MWe today, which generated a total of 2560 TWh in 2009, accounting for 14% of total electricity generation. By contrast, the corresponding indicators in China are merely 11 units, 8587 MWe, 65.7 TWh and 1.9% respectively. Nuclear energy has been regarded as an important component of China's energy development strategy, and the development of nuclear power industry has been paid high attention by government. In order to speed up the development of nuclear power industry, government has increased the target of installed nuclear power capacity from original 40,000 MWe up to 70,000 MWe by 2020, as well as the under construction capfrom 18,000 MWe up to 30,000 MWe in the same stage. Based on the current development situation and the new national plan on nuclear power, prediction and analysis have been made for uranium supply and demand according to the future national nuclear power development, drawing the conclusion that China's uranium resources could not satisfy with the demand of nuclear power, and the degree of external dependence would reach as high as 90% or more, indicating that in less than 10 years, nuclear energy, instead of oil, would become the energy with the highest dependence on foreign. In the end of this paper, some suggestion has been proposed for development of nuclear power in China. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.