Dubious safety record taints CCP’s pursuit of deploying floating nuclear plants in South China Sea

FORUM Staff

The prospect of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) fortifying occupied reefs and artificial maritime features in the South China Sea with electricity generated by floating nuclear power plants (FNPP) is raising environmental, safety and geopolitical concerns. The CCP’s recent history of egregious discharges from land-based nuclear power plants overshadows its scheme to deploy barge-mounted plants in fragile marine environments.

Chinese nuclear power plants in 2022 released wastewater containing the radioactive isotope tritium at levels up to nine times greater than the amount expected to be found in discharges from the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, which was damaged in 2011 by a devastating earthquake and tsunami, the Tokyo-based Nikkei Asia news magazine reported in March 2024. Radioactive materials were assessed at 19 monitoring points at 13 Chinese nuclear plants, including the Qinshan complex in the eastern province of Zhejiang, Nikkei Asia reported, citing the China Nuclear Energy Yearbook.

Despite its dubious safety record, the CCP has criticized Japan for releasing treated water from the decommissioned Fukushima plant into the Pacific Ocean and has banned all Japanese seafood products since August 2023.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) already has created tension among states with territorial claims in the South China Sea, including Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, by dredging and militarizing previously uninhabited reefs, including in the Paracel and Spratly archipelagos, causing significant environmental degradation. Beijing’s arbitrary and expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea, which were dismissed by an international tribunal in 2016, also threaten international shipping and regional security.

Chinese engineers began building an FNPP in 2016 and announced the PRC would deploy up to 20 of the modular reactors in the South China Sea, including potentially at dredged features, Viet Phuong Nguyen, then a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, wrote in November 2018. The PRC tested a 60-megawatt prototype in the Bohai Sea off northeast China, Nguyen reported.

The PRC subsequently suspended plans to install FNPPs in the South China Sea over safety and feasibility concerns, leaving the initiative’s future uncertain, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported in May 2023. Meanwhile the PRC continued developing FNPPs to help open the Northern Sea Route off Russia’s Arctic coast.

Even in China, scientists are concerned about FNPPs. In a February 2023 report, researchers from the East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai and the Beijing Institute of Technology called for “an effective international regulatory framework” to address FNPPs’ environmental challenges.

“The swaying, heaving, and navigation of FNPPs may affect marine flora, fauna, and ecosystems,” they wrote. “When encountering tsunamis, terrorist attacks, maritime accidents, severe machine damage, fire/explosion, or nuclear leakage, FNPPs may seriously harm both human health and the marine environment.”

FNPPs carried on barges could produce electricity for remote military bases, desalination and heating operations, and oil rigs, observers said. The plants have about 25% of the generating capacity of terrestrial plants, Popular Science magazine reported. However, some critics call the technology “floating Chernobyls” in reference to the deadly 1986 nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union, which released radioactive material into the environment.

Mooring FNPPs at Chinese-claimed features in the South China Sea would have three key implications, according to research published in June 2023 by the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:

• Help solidify CCP control over contested areas, heightening geopolitical disputes.
• Enhance Chinese People’s Liberation Army capabilities, further militarizing the South China Sea.
• Pose safety hazards, with accidents, sabotage or severe weather jeopardizing human health and the marine environment.

At least five other nations are developing marine FNPPs, which have the potential to produce reliable clean energy when operated and maintained in accordance with global safety guidelines and transparency norms, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported in November 2023. Unlike power plants that use fossil fuels, nuclear reactors don’t produce harmful carbon emissions while operating. FNPPs also can be built in factories, assembled in shipyards and transported, speeding deployment and lowering costs.

Much work remains to ensure the safety of deploying such technologies in marine environments, including developing technological fail-safes and studying legal and regulatory ramifications, according to researchers, regulators and officials who discussed FNPPs at August 2023 workshops in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Manila, Philippines, sponsored by Kings College London.

The risks may outweigh the potential benefits, especially in the South China Sea, which contains vast fisheries vital for sustaining the population of much of Southeast Asia, experts warn. The harmful effects of marine environment contamination can surpass those associated with land-based nuclear plants, as can the challenge of containing accidental releases. Measures also would be needed to protect FNPPs from attack.

The CCP’s failure to establish a strong safety culture domestically and its record of irresponsible nuclear facility management — including dumping nuclear waste in Tibet — also increase the likelihood of a catastrophe, experts warn.