Agence France-Presse,
BEIJING: China's military said Sunday that all nuclear facilities in the country's earthquake-hit southwest were “safe and secure.” “I can say in a responsible manner that all these facilities are safe and secure,” senior military officer Ma Jian told a news conference.
“There is no problem at all,” said Ma, deputy director of the combat department of the General Staff Headquarters of the People's Liberation Army.
Several nuclear installations are located in southwestern Sichuan province, the epicentre of last Monday's 7.9-magnitude earthquake, which has killed an estimated 50,000.
These include a manufacturing site for nuclear weapons which handles unstable chemical elements found in tritium, plutonium and uranium, as well as a nuclear reactor, according to experts.
French experts of the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) had earlier said that given the magnitude of the earthquake, damage to the installations could not be excluded.
It said that slight damage was likely for older nuclear installations undergoing de-commissioning owing to less stringent anti-seismic or earthquake construction regulations in the past.
The Paris-based monitoring organisation, citing memos from China's National Nuclear Safety Administration, said that the Chinese watchdog had launched a crisis action plan after the earthquake.
“All relevant NNSA installations within Sichuan province were immediately put on security alert,” said an IRSN statement.
The earthquake — which rattled buildings across China and in cities as far away as Thailand and Vietnam — is the country's worst natural disaster in a generation.
China has 11 nuclear power reactors, mostly in coastal areas, accounting for less than two percent of the country's total energy production.
But China has been looking to expand nuclear power to stem rising pollution and compensate for its reliance on coal, which was shown to be risky last winter when heavy snowstorms cut off supply.
An earthquake last year in Japan stopped operation of the world's largest nuclear facility northwest of Tokyo and caused a small radioactive leak.
