As a solution to air pollution and climate change, nuclear power is attractive to Chinese authorities—but what about the public?
Yangliushan, Zhejiang Province, is a small town of around 2,000 residents. There isn’t anything particularly significant about it save for the fact it is the site of China’s first locally-constructed nuclear facility, Qinshan, which consists of multiple reactors built over many years—and the residents terrified of a cancer cluster in the area.
The first Qinshan reactor was put into operation in 1991, and the second Qinshan in 2001. A little over a decade later, a state media article cited a local doctor who pointed out that, according to official figures, the cancer rate in the nearby village was 1 percent, far higher than the 0.285 percent national average. He also suspected that if the figures had taken into account the many people that had left the area, the figure would be closer to 2 percent.
David Dawson is the former deputy editor of The World of Chinese.
