Company warns of radiological issue at a Chinese nuclear power plant.

 

A French Company has warned that a Chinese nuclear plant has an "imminent radiological threat" due to a leak. The Hill. The Taishan nuclear power plant is operated by the French company Framatome, which has told US officials that China has raised the acceptable levels of radiation so the plant will not be shut down. It is unclear exactly what is happening but the US administration does not consider the leak to be a crisis yet. China claims that radiation levels around the plant are normal and are nothing to be concerned about. 

My Comment:

Something to keep an eye on. It's very unclear what the actual threat is from the articles I have read. It seems as though there is a gas leak of radioactive material but nothing so serious as the Chernobyl disaster. Even that though is a very serious issue and I wish there was more information out there. 

The problem here is of course China. The entire plant could have blown up and we would never hear about it. Indeed, I think the only reason we heard about this incident is because the French company that runs the plant sounded the alarm. If they hadn't I doubt anyone would have known this was happening. 

This should be mostly a local threat right now. I doubt that this radioactive gas is the kind of threat that can effect areas outside of their region. The people around the power plant though? They should probably be evacuated until this leak brought under control. Radiation is not something you want to mess with and I think China is playing fast and lose with the lives of people in the region. 

China is getting a lot of bad press lately and I think it's for good reason. I feel they are responsible for the coronavirus pandemic, either because they failed to handle it well or because they allowed it to leak from their lab through incompetence. And they barely averted disaster with their Three Gorges Dam. Now they have a nuclear disaster to deal with. 

My big fear is that the incompetence of Chinese could lead to more discrimination towards nuclear power. Nuclear disasters are rare with Chernobyl being the main one. I'm not bleeding heart environmentalist but I do think that nuclear power is dramatically underused and is a clean alternative to fossil fuels.