Last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw the ground breaking ceremony of Russian-built nuclear power plants, a total of four nuclear reactors, two at Tianwan nuclear plant in eastern Jiangsu province and two in Xudapu in north eastern Liaoning province each with individual capacity of 1.2 GW1. These are expected to be operational by 2026-28. Energy cooperation has been the corner stone of Sino-Russian relations; nuclear cooperation which is added facet to this dimension received a massive boost with Russian based nuclear reactors forming the backbone of China’s so called civil nuclear cooperation arena of this partnership.
Facing the Western sanctions,
Russia has deepened its ties with China. Though reluctant to be a junior
partnership in this bilateral relationship, America’s inadvertent picking of
Russia and labelling Moscow as strategic adversary on par with China, has
become a strong glue for expansive Sino-Russian bilateral cooperation which now
includes-military, space, finance, investment, trade and even institutional
integration. Deeming the civil nuclear energy as a weapon to reach its agenda
of 2060 carbon neutral mission, China has been on nuclear reactor expansion
spree since 2012. Currently, China has quarter of global nuclear capacity which
includes 50 operable nuclear reactors and 19 reactors under construction2.
Currently nuclear energy accounts
for 4.9% of total power generation in China. To wean off from the carbon
dependence, China is aiming to increase the nuclear power contribution to 13%
by 2070. After acquiring the nuclear technology from US, France and Russia
initially, China made rapid strides in the field. For the first time in 2015
China developed indigenous nuclear reactor, Hualong One and began exporting the
nuclear technology. Having reached the set target of 70 GW by 2020 ahead of
schedule, China has set new limits of 200 GW by 2030, and 400-500GW by 2050.
Post Fukushima while the World shied away from nuclear energy and Germany
started phasing out nuclear reactors, China started rigorously betting on them.
China’s avowed interest in nuclear
reactors for pegging carbon emissions is worthy of praise. However, China’s
lack of transparency and opacity with respect to the nuclear records has become
growing cause of concern. Besides, Beijing’s recalcitrant approach for a
genuine talk on nuclear risk reduction initiated by the US is causing real
trepidation. Together, the latest nuclear reactors being built are Closed Fuel
nuclear breeder Reactors, CFR-600 that produce Plutonium, which upon
reprocessing can be used for producing nuclear war heads is now an additional
source of anxiety. Absence of any official clarification about the end-use of
the nuclear reactors whether it is serves civilian needs or nuclear deterrent
needs have sparked new apprehensions.
IAEA has announced that since 2017,
China has stopped making annual declarations on its civilian plutonium program
and stopped updating about the stocks of civilian plutonium as well3.
For long, the US, Europe and Japan
have been pioneering leaders in nuclear power generation and global nuclear
commerce. With steady decline of the competitiveness of this industry led by US
it slowly moved away while Russia emerged as the leader of nuclear sales
accounting for two-thirds of global sales. In the meanwhile, China doubled down
its efforts and started exporting its indigenous nuclear reactors to Pakistan, Argentina
and Britain. Reportedly, it is advancing the agenda under the BRI (Belt and
Road Initiative) and roped in 28 countries under of nuclear cooperation ambit.
China’s option of using Plutonium
for power generation is triggering a debate. Japan has also selected the same
path and for the past 40 years, having accumulated tonnes of Plutonium is
struggling to dispose it through non-breeder reactors. All these efforts have
showed that reprocessing is non-economical thus offering no logic to as why
China has opted this path. While Japan lacks the infrastructure and systems to
make nuclear weapons to use up the Plutonium, China has the wherewithal to
build nuclear war heads. At this juncture, China’s installation of new breeders
producing Plutonium for power generation is raising curious doubts.
Given China’s dual-use approach,
Korea, already wary of Japan’s holdings might speed up the process of using
Plutonium reactors. This will eventually push the region into Plutonium
reprocessing, which isn’t environmentally friendly, disposal is cost
prohibitive and will spur race for building nuclear war heads. While some view
that China’s determination to pursue Plutonium is an attempt to dominate the
“cutting-edge technology” one of the agenda of the 2049 centennial goals of
CCP, Plutonium is considered to have a negative economic value. Considering all
the possible alternatives, the singular motive which fits the Plutonium
reprocessing exercise of Beijing’s is the nuclear expansion agenda.
China’s intentions are under
scanner for the absence of any transparency regarding the stocks of Plutonium, refusal
to adopt moratorium on the use of fissile material production for weapons and its
joint efforts with Pakistan for stalling the negotiations on FMCT (Fissile
Material Cut-off Treaty) at the UN.
Timing of this development, when
tensions between the US and China are pitch high over Taiwan issue sparking the
fears of Cold war 2.0 and China’s refusal to join discussion on Prevention of
Nuclear war at the 65-member Conference on Disarmament at Geneva4 even
as Russia and the US agreed to extend the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction
Treaty) arms control treaty for five years is disconcerting. Also, the waters
of North East Asia are roiled with tensions and China’s latest move hints at
its objective of attaining strategic nuclear parity with the US.
Also, if China’s nuclear program is
so peaceful, what stops it from making the annual declarations to IAEA since
2017? Shrouded in secrecy, taking into
account only the military fissile stocks, US intelligence agencies underestimated
China to have 350 nuclear heads by Autumn 2020. Even Russia experts believed
that China has large stockpile. These estimates are corroborated by a report in
South China Morning Post that read, “a source close to Chinese military said
that its stockpile of nuclear war heads had risen to 1000 in recent years, but
less than 100 of them are active”5.
Known for bidding time and hiding
capabilities, China in the recent past has been increasing its strategic and
non-strategic defense deterrence which includes development of hypersonic
missiles, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), Multiple Independent Re-entry
Vehicles, hypersonic glide vehicles, submarine launched ballistic missiles
(SLBM), bombers and launchers. By some estimates China already has about 1000
nuclear heads and these numbers are going to double or triple by 2030. Given
its burgeoning propensity for armed conflicts, China must be sitting on a huge
stock of nuclear assets. With the unrelenting pace of installing of fast
breeder reactor, China is seeking to increase its Weapons Grade Plutonium
(WGPu). Records indicate that US has 1270 nuclear war heads. So, by
implication, China is reaching strategic parity with the US.
China’s defence of adopting fast
nuclear breeder technology falls short on the agenda of energy and environment.
It is time, all the five countries, US, Russia, China, Japan and South Korea
start sharing information on the civilian plutonium, enriched Uranium holdings
and production capacities with IAEA6. Else this is bound to
catalyse an uncontrolled chain reaction of nuclear proliferation.
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