{"id":4710,"date":"2013-07-13T09:28:07","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T13:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=4710"},"modified":"2013-07-13T09:35:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T13:35:02","slug":"china-ends-a-nuclear-treatment-plant-after-demonstrations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/07\/china-ends-a-nuclear-treatment-plant-after-demonstrations.html","title":{"rendered":"China ends a nuclear treatment plant after demonstrations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n“In order to respect the popular will, the government of” the city of Heshan\r\nrefused to proceed with a $9 billion uranium processing plant.\r\nThat happened after this, yesterday:\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n

\r\nThe cancellation, unusually fast, demonstrates the increasingly important attention\r\ngiven by the authorities to environmental concerns that are often expressed at the local level.\r\nSeveral projects of petrochemical plants and metal processing have recently been postponed or relocated.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nYes, I know the plant may just be relocated somewhere else.\r\nBut with enough such demonstrations it won’t be built.\r\nHow about some of this respect for the popular will about,\r\nfor example, the natural gas pipeline through Georgia from Alabama to Florida,\r\nor the new nukes at Plant Vogtle?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nLe Monde, today,\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\nP\u00e9kin annule un projet nucl\u00e9aire apr\u00e8s des manifestations<\/a>\r\n<\/td>\r\n\r\nBeijing cancels a nuclear project after demonstrations\r\n<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
\r\n

\r\nLa Chine a annul\u00e9 la construction pr\u00e9vue d’une usine de traitement de l’uranium dans une ville du sud du pays, annonce samedi 13 juillet le site de la municipalit\u00e9 de Heshan, au lendemain de manifestations qui ont rassembl\u00e9 des centaines de personnes.\r\n

\r\nLa Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 nucl\u00e9aire nationale chinoise (CNNC), un organisme public, projetait de construire un complexe de 230 hectares dans cette ville de la province du Guangdong, ce qui a \u00e9galement inqui\u00e9t\u00e9 les r\u00e9gions administratives sp\u00e9ciales voisines de Hongkong et Macao.\r\n

\r\n“Afin de respecter la volont\u00e9 populaire, le gouvernement de Heshan ne prendra pas en consid\u00e9ration le projet du CNNC”<\/em>\r\n, affirme la ville, \u00e0 propos du projet qui devait co\u00fbter 37 milliards de yuans (4,6 milliards d’euros).\r\n

\r\nL’annulation, inhabituellement rapide, t\u00e9moigne de l’attention de plus en plus importante accord\u00e9e par les autorit\u00e9s \u00e0 des pr\u00e9occupations environnementales qui sont souvent exprim\u00e9es au niveau local. Plusieurs projets d’usines p\u00e9trochimiques ou de traitement des m\u00e9taux ont \u00e9t\u00e9 r\u00e9cemment report\u00e9s ou relocalis\u00e9s.\r\n<\/td>

\r\n

\r\nChina has canceled the planned construction of a processing plant\r\nfor uranium in a town south of the country, announced Saturday, July\r\n13 the site of the municipality of Heshan, following protests that\r\nbrought hundreds of people.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nChina National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), a public body, planned to\r\nbuild a complex of 230 hectares in the city of Guangdong province,\r\nwhich also worried the neighboring special administrative regions of\r\nHong Kong and Macao.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“In order to respect the popular will, the government of Heshan will not\r\ntake into consideration the draft of CNNC,”<\/em> said the city about the\r\nproject, which would cost 37 billion yuan (4.6 billion euros).\r\n[$6 billion dollars]\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe cancellation, unusually fast, demonstrates the increasingly important attention\r\ngiven by the authorities to environmental concerns that are often expressed at the local level.\r\nSeveral projects of petrochemical plants and metal processing have recently been postponed or relocated.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/td><\/tr>\r\n<\/table>\r\n

\r\nLeslie Hook wrote for the Financial Times today,\r\n\r\nChina cancels uranium plant a day after protests<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nThe surprisingly swift decision to cancel the project came after\r\nhundreds marched to city offices in the nearby city of Jiangmen on\r\nFriday that forced officials to pledge an extension of public\r\nconsultation by 10 days to 20 days. They also promised to improve\r\ncommunications concerning the processing plant and engage with\r\njournalists and community leaders to explain its plans.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nPublic hearings!\r\nThat’s what the people wanted:\r\npublic hearings in which the plant’s proponents would have to explain themselves<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nMore demonstrations had been planned for Sunday.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAcross the country, Chinese citizens are increasingly taking to the\r\nstreets to fight new industrial plants in their areas, a movement\r\nmade possible by smartphones and social media — as well as\r\nChinese users’ adeptness at skirting censors’ controls.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe worsening pollution of China’s air, water and soil has sparked\r\npublic health concerns and fuelled growing distrust of the local\r\ngovernments that are supposed to be responsible for monitoring\r\npolluting plants.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nProtesters in Jiangmen on Friday had said they had a duty to protect\r\ntheir home town.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“I would never want my students to have to study in such a\r\n[poor] environment,” said a 23-year-old teacher, surnamed\r\nXiong, who participated in Friday’s march.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nWhat about you, fellow American citizens?\r\nWhat sort of environment do you want for yourselves and those\r\nwho come after you?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\n“If the local government has nothing to hide, why didn’t they\r\ninform us how they planned to use the land months ago?” said\r\none young mother, surnamed Zhang, who wanted to take part in the\r\ndemonstration but could not get time off work.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nIf Sabal Trail Transmissions has nothing to hide,\r\nwhy don’t they show us a map of where\r\n\r\nthat 100 foot pipeline<\/a>\r\nis supposed to go, and tell us where they’re fracking the natural\r\ngas they plan to send through it?\r\nHow about our local governments respecting their people enough\r\nto help us find out?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nPublic concerns over nuclear plants and uranium processing\r\nfacilities have grown after the nuclear accident at Fukushima\r\nDaiichi, which was triggered by a disastrous earthquake and tsunami\r\nthat struck Japan in 2011.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWhat about public concerns over\r\n\r\nPlant Hatch leaking radioactive\r\ntritium into the aquifer we drink out of,\r\nthe existing nukes at Plant Vogtle contaminating the Savannah River<\/a>,\r\nand the new nukes at Vogtle\r\n\r\nsucking up more water than the city of Savannah<\/a>?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWe just demonstrated the people can win over the most entrenched monopoly.\r\nThe Georgia Public Service Commission just voted\r\n\r\nto more than double\r\nthe amount of solar power Georgia Power is required to purchase<\/a>,\r\ndespite\r\n\r\nKoch-funded astroturf opposition<\/a>\r\nand Georgia Power’s own proposal of zero new solar megawatts.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nLike\r\n\r\nthe Internet won<\/a> over entrenched telco circuit switching,\r\n\r\nrenewables are winning, nukes are dead, coal is crashing<\/a>,\r\nand\r\n\r\nfracking is going to fail with its polluted academics<\/a> and polluted\r\ngroundwater.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nLet’s get on with \r\na million solar rooftops<\/a>\r\nand\r\n\r\nwind off the Georgia coast<\/a>\r\nconnected by\r\n\r\na smart grid engineered by Southern Company<\/a>\r\nwith Georgia Power and all the EMCs taking a percentage for profit.\r\nWin, win, win, with sun and wind!\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nPS: Owed to D’un Renard.\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“In order to respect the popular will, the government of” the city of Heshan refused to proceed with a $9 billion uranium processing plant. That happened after this, yesterday: The cancellation, unusually fast, demonstrates the increasingly important attention given by the authorities to environmental concerns that are often expressed at the local level. Several projects […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[40,14,16,41,6124,104,32,23,73,24,55,36],"tags":[398,8717,8704,8706,8701,6656,8718,6655,8702,12,7,562,8737,105,107,8715,8713,6657,8731,8714,423,6,8727,8716],"class_list":["post-4710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-economy","category-environment","category-health-care","category-natural-gas-2","category-nuclear","category-pollution","category-renewable-energy","category-safety","category-solar","category-water","category-wind","tag-china","tag-community","tag-economy","tag-environment","tag-georgia","tag-guangdong","tag-health-care","tag-heshan","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-natural-gas","tag-nuclear","tag-plant-hatch","tag-plant-vogtle","tag-pollution","tag-renewable-energy","tag-sabal-trail-transmissions","tag-safety","tag-solar","tag-uranium","tag-valdosta","tag-water","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1dY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4710"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4716,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4710\/revisions\/4716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}