SECRET
4. We are also encouraging the Hong Kong Government to demonstrate to people there that it is actively seeking to inform itself, so as to reassure them about the safety implications of a project with which it is itself indirectly associated. A senior Hong Kong Government official is visiting our Departments this week to discuss such matters as monitoring, contingency planning and the relationship between local reactor management and nearby urban communities. He will also visit a power station in France of the type which is to be built at Daya Bay and which is similarly placed near a large centre of population.
5. The Governor has asked us to recognise that there will be a price to pay for the continuation of the project in terms of confidence among the people of Hong Kong; and that this price will be substantially raised during the 1990s, when the station is commissioned, He has invited Ministers
to consider whether they should point out to the Chinese Government the political benefits that could be obtained in Hong Kong if the Chinese were to decide now to move the project from Daya Bay or to convert it to a thermal
station.
6. Such a step would of course have the most far-reaching implications for our relationships with the Chinese and
French governments, as well as for British commercial interests. There would be wider consequences too in terms of perceptions in this country of the Government's attitude
to nuclear power, and of the risks associated with it.
SECRET
/7.