Nuclear power: is it blessing or disaster in East Asia?

Dear Editor-in-Chief

Nuclear energy is economically feasible. Therefore, nuclear power plants produce about 16% of the world’s electricity nowadays. Calder Hall in the United Kingdom is the world’s first commercial nuclear power station in 1956 (1). In the United States, Shippingport was first operated since 1957. However, the accident like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl disaster had awakened people to the dangers of nuclear energy; especially Fukushima disaster caused the pollution of radiation recently (2). There are 435 operating reactors all over the world in 2012 (3). Sixty-two reactors are under construction and 160 reactors are in the plan. East Asia has a lot of operating reactors besides planned atomic plant (Table 1). Planned reactors in East Asia have a proportion over 40% of the whole world. Degree of nuclear accumulation is higher due to construction mostly on the coastal area.

Table 1:

Nuclear plants and population in East Asia

			Nuclear Power Reactors
Country	Population	Area (km2)	Operable	Under construction	Planned
Japan	127,799,000	377,944	51	2	10
South Korea	48,875,000	100,210	23	3	6
China	1,339,724,852	9,640,821	15	26	51
Taiwan*	23,234,003	36,162	6	2	0

The statistics is from World Nuclear Association, 2012.

The data about Taiwan is in 2008.

Germen government decided to close operating nuclear power plant and give more weight to renewable energy after Fukushima disaster. If East Asian countries have inevitable reasons to maintain nuclear energy for electricity, economics has to be balanced against environmental and safe concerns.