China's suspended nuke project may resume this year

China may resume construction of nuclear reactors that were stopped earlier this year following Japan’s Fukushima crisis.

According to Xu Yuming, vice secretary-general of the China Nuclear Energy Association, some construction may restart by the end of the year, reports Bloomberg.

However, Xu revealed that country won’t be able to maintain its previous pace of nuclear- plant building because of the disruption.

“We were building new reactors more and more quickly from 2008 to 2010, and then suddenly this year there were none,” Xu said. “It’s not quite possible for us to start building at the average of eight reactors a year we saw in the last three years” during China’s 12th five-year development plan, which ends in 2015, he said.

China has completed safety checks on its plants and submitted the results to the State Council, or the nation’s Cabinet, Xu said at the conference. Inspectors concluded that China’s atomic plants are not exposed to conditions that may lead to accidents similar to Fukushima, he said.