Bellona nuclear digest. March 2024
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
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Publish date: May 9, 2014
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Interest in CCS has been substantial in China. China is especially interested in the commercial use of CO2. Such uses include Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), which can improve the business case for CCS development. Early deployment of commercial CCS in China through EOR will develop technological skills, familiarity and deploy necessary infrastructure.
In EOR, CO2 is pumped into depleting oil fields to boost production while at the same time storing some CO2 underground and benefiting the climate. GreenGen, a 400-megawatt power plant near the port city of Tianjin, is China’s most ambitious project to develop a climate-neutral coal plant. By 2020, GreenGen will be piping most of its CO2 emissions to offshore oil fields for EOR.
Chinese scientists have also recently been experimenting using CO2 to produce fertilizers, plastics, and biofuels, but the petroleum industry represents the biggest potential market.
China is also developing CO2 storage. Efforts are being undertaken by the state-owned coal company, The Shenhua Group, which geologically stores up to 100,000 tonnes of CO2 a year. This represents about 6% of the CO2 emissions from the Shenhua complex which turns coal into liquid fuels and chemicals. This project was supported by the US government with design recommendations.
Another significant source of CO2 emissions are China’s fossil-fuel based industries. These industries, in the process of producing chemicals and gas for instance, must isolate CO2 in a relatively pure form. This makes the CO2 far easier and cheaper to capture then from other, more diluted sources. CCS proponents in China encourage attempts at matching industrial plants that produce concentrated streams of CO2 with oil companies which can use the CO2 to enhance production of aging oil fields.
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has told the United Nations atomic energy watchdog that Russia plans to restart Ukraine’s embattled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, currently occupied by Russian troops and technicians, fueling worries about a serious nuclear accident on the front lines of a grinding military conflict.
Wednesday, April 10, 2024 | Brussels, Belgium – Today, the European Parliament approved the newly revised Construction Products regulation (CPR)...
Recent attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant "mark the beginning of a new and gravely dangerous front of the war," the UN atomic agency's director general said last week.