China likely to scale down nuclear targets

China is likely to scale back its aggressive nuclear capacity targets after the central government imposed a project approval moratorium following the Fukushima disaster in Japan last March, Reuters reported. Industry officials speaking at a conference in Hong Kong said new projects are likely to resume next year, but that too much time has been lost to meet the target of 86 gigawatts by 2020. The unofficial 86GW target was derived from the pace of new project approval in Beijing; observers pointed out that projects under construction would have delivered 40GW (up from the current 10.9GW of capacity) by 2015. Li Yongjiang, vice president of the China Nuclear Energy Association (CNEA), said that if the country resumes construction in 2012, the maximum capacity would be 60-70GW. “The 86-GW target was still a very tight target in the first place,” he said. Officials have also suggested that China may stop work on second-generation reactors, leaving the field concentrated on implementing third-generation technologies designed by France’s Areva (AREVA.Euronext) and US-based Westinghouse (owned by Toshiba; 6502.TYO).