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'Triga' successor, and the Swedes and Germans are also working on similar projects. Time scale? Well, I guess something like this will take 7 to 8 years to come to fruition and then it might still be more expensive than a PWR built to highest safety standards. But here is where China can show its responsibility to its own and Hong Kong's population. The right thing to do now is to cancel the Daya Bay PWR and wait for a 'Triga' or its equivalent to come on the market. At worst that might be a 10 year delay, at best possibly a 5 year delay. We ought to be able to wait that long.
Such an inherently safe reactor Hong Kong could live with if built in Daya Bay, 50 kilometers away. But for a PWR Daya Bay is just too close to Hong Kong and on the wrong side of Hong Kong. If it must be east of Hong Kong then it should be at least 120 miles away. Both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl showed that the postulated 5 kilometer radius for evacuation and 15 kilometer radius for precautions prescribed by the French for a PWR are insufficient. A catastrophic failure has effects thousands of miles away from the accident and evacuation in a 50 mile radius is almost a minimum requirement. Just how little we know about the effects of this sort of accident is shown by Chernobyl where the heroic firemen who went in right at the beginning to try and contain the fire were affected quite differently. Most of them are now dead, but one or two of them working side by side with those who had the most horrendous radiation injuries showed very little radiation effects and are hale and hearty. The doctors are completely puzzled why this should be, but the fact remains that the evacuation and other measures prescribed by the French Government at Gravelines are obviously insufficient.
In any case, an evacuation of Hong Kong is completely impractical. What does a worst case evacuation consist of? How many people have to be evacuated? To where and by what method? Planes, ships, buses, cars? Do we commandeer all buses and taxis the way the French did when they took their troops to the Marne in 1914, and how many people would that actually move? We have 14,000 taxis, 5 to a taxi that is 70,000 people and 3,000 buses average 100 people to a bus (and that is generous) that is 370,000 people total we could move that way. Half a dozen large passenger ships to move another 50,000 maybe. 10 or 20 jumbo jets could move another 50,000. So if we are lucky in 24 to 36 hours we might be able to move 500,000 people. But where would we move them to? Who could accommodate and feed that many people with 24 hours notice!
At last count there were nearly 6 million in Hong Kong. What happens to the rest, that 5 million?? Do we build fallout shelters for all of them? And if we do, how much would our electricity cost then??
And even if we did not have to evacuate we would have a major water supply problem. More than half of our drinking water is supplied by rain water. In a Chernobyl type accident Hong Kong could be completely without drinking and washing water for some considerable time.
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There is also the political aspect, and I am now not referring to our local politicians' ride on a populist bandwagon. Daya Bay is most unfortunately fast becoming a trial of strength between the Chinese Government and the population of Hong Kong, I am on record that I have always advocated confrontations between Hong Kong and China when this is necessary to make an important point about our liberties, but Daya Bay is the wrong issue and the wrong time to make into a trial of strength between the two very unequal partners, and I do underline the word 'partners' because it is essential that after 1997 Hong Kong and Beijing become partners. It is the wrong issue because both Hong Kong and China need cheap power, both have serious pollution problems with conventional power stations, and neither stands anything to gain from a confrontation at this particular point in time. On the contrary, both have a great deal to lose. So I appeal to all concerned, the Government in Beijing, the Chinese functionaries in Kwantung Province, and here too, the local appointed and elected politicians, and especially to the local so-called grassroots politicians, to forget emotion and politics and judge this issue entirely on its technical and economic merits.
Both technically and economically we are in a bind: Technically, because there are obviously a great many problems with engineered safety in nuclear power stations, and economically, because if all the necessary engineered safety is built into a PWR the electricity produced becomes far too expensive. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl have shown that taking calculated safety risks in the end, quite apart from the unacceptable risk to human life, result in completely unacceptable billions and billions of dollars in expenses.
For Hong Kong a possible solution is to pay for the work already done at Daya Bay (and we can afford HK$1,000 million for our people's safety) and ask the Chinese Government to move the PWR 200 km east of us, or, even better, 200 km west of us. But that would not solve the problem for the Chinese population near the new site.
So the only way out is an inherently safe engineered nuclear plant. It would not be face-saving for Beijing to now call a halt and wait for the first commercially produced 'Triga' plant. Such an action would be a technical decision logically arrived at and would not constitute a political victory or defeat for either side.
Our message to all concerned—the Chinese authorities, the Hong Kong Government, China Light & Power, travelling LEGCO members, et al must be: Wait for the inherent safety, wait for the redesigned nuclear reactors, even if that means a power shortage for 5 or 6 years in Hong Kong and a slower industrial development for Kwantung Province.
A nuclear accident in this area would wipe out the most successful commercial, financial, industrial development in China so far and set China back 50 years in its race to catch up with the developed countries and, incidentally, would kill and maim and handicap a great many of us. None of us can afford that.