China as nuclear tip?

Press, 27 February 1984, Page 20

China as nuclear tip?

The nuclear industry in the West has often wished that the politically sensitive issue of what to do with the high-level radioactive waste produced by its activities would somehow go away. China has indicated that it would be happy to fulfil that wish — at a price. It has approached West Germany and Switzerland, offering to take over the storage of spent fuel from nuclear power the Chinese point of view, the offer makes sense. It would bring in valuable foreign exchange: perhaps more than $5 bS by he end of the century from West Germany alone. China has anyway to deal with nuclear waste of its owmlthas thinly populated £feas in

From ‘The Economist’, London

which to site storage facilites: eg, the Gobi desert. It does not have noisy environmentalist lobbies to object. It could leave the tricky business of international transport to Western suppliers. From the West’s point of view, there are caveats to the apparent convenience of such a deal. The Chinese are offering to store waste, not to dispose of it. There is no evidence that the Chinese, any more than anybody else, have watertight solutions to the ultimate disposal of high-level waste — nor that, any more than anybody else, they would rush to dispose of it before the stuff had been allowed to cool off (most authorities reckon a cooling-off period of 50 years is desirable). Spent fuel is a potential rjline: it

can be reprocessed to obtain more fuel, for power stations or for weapons. China may not need the stuff for weapons now. Later? China recently joined the International Atomic Energy Agency which enforces non-prolif-eration safeguards on the use of nuclear materials. But, like America, Britain and Russia before it, it specified that its military installations should be exempt from inspection. Nor has it said whether it would accept safeguards on civilian installations and waste-storage sites. Even if its present leadership were willing to make such a commitment, could it be enforced in future? Andropov was a mere 69 when he died. Mr Deng is 79. Copyright - The Economist.