Developing nuclear energy poses challenges for policymakers who must ensure that nuclear facilities and radioactive materials are safe and secure. In the second half of the conversation that Carnegie-Tsinghua’s Tong Zhao moderated, Xiamen University’s Ning Li and Carnegie’s Mark Hibbs contemplated the future of China’s nuclear energy development, and the two discussed the national security implications of China’s nuclear energy development. Li explained that our globalized world renders inescapable the threats of nuclear terrorism, resource scarcity, and energy insecurity. China, however, has established the necessary institutions and safeguards to ensure its program’s safekeeping. This ambitious program will lead to lower energy prices, a benefit that should outweigh concerns about increased dependence on foreign sources of uranium and other materials. 

China’s plan for addressing post–fuel cycle issues has received little attention. Matters such as storing spent fuel, disposing of waste, and decommissioning retired nuclear reactors raise concerns for skeptics of sustainable, affordable nuclear energy. These issues have created problems for many countries that have the world’s most advanced nuclear operations. 

China will face the same problems in the future. Still, experts hope the country’s latecomer status will allow the government to learn from past lessons and take advantage of new and better solutions to these challenges. The Chinese government has put off addressing these issues, while experts and scholars are making important progress through symposiums and research on nuclear waste management solutions. Hibbs and Li agreed that while China broadly has a strategy to safely manage spent nuclear fuel, the government needs to take immediate steps to develop a clearer, more detailed plan to handle these impending issues. 

Tong Zhao

Tong Zhao is an associate in Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program based at the Carnegie–Tsinghua Center for Global Policy. His research focuses on strategic security issues, including nuclear arms control, nonproliferation, missile defense, strategic stability, and China’s security and foreign policy. Zhao was previously a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow with the Managing the Atom Project and the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

Ning Li

Ning Li is the dean of the School of Energy Research at Xiamen University and director of Asia Development for TerraPower, a company founded by Bill Gates to develop innovative nuclear energy technologies. He was formerly a project leader and a technical staff member of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and was the deputy coordinator of the U.S. Department of Energy U.S.-China civilian nuclear energy cooperation program.

Mark Hibbs

Mark Hibbs is a senior associate in Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program, based in Berlin. Before joining Carnegie he was an editor and correspondent for nuclear energy publications including Nucleonics Week and Nuclear Fuel, published by the Platts division of the McGraw-Hill Companies for over twenty years. From the late 1980s until the mid-1990s, Hibbs covered nuclear developments in the Soviet bloc, including research on the USSR’s nuclear-fuel-cycle facilities and its nuclear-materials inventories. Since the mid-1990s, his work has focused emerging nuclear programs in Asia, including China and India.