China now has its own homegrown reactor technology, but some countries are growing wary of its nuclear power companies.
A reactor dome is installed at No. 3 unit of Fangchenggang Nuclear Power Plant, a demonstration nuclear power project using Hualong One technology, China's first indigenously developed nuclear reactor. Credit: Imaginechina/AP Photo
China is powering ahead with nuclear energy at home and abroad — even if some countries have doubts about its ambitions.
Just thirty years after bringing its first domestic plant online, China has already become the world’s third largest domestic producer of nuclear power. Now equipped with its own reactor technology, the country’s major operators have plans to construct plants in more than a dozen other countries. China is already second only to Russia as the world’s most prolific exporter of nuclear plants and equipment.
Yet the march of Chinese nuclear power is stoking national security concerns elsewhere, similar to those that have recently stymied major Chinese tech and telecoms companies like Huawei. The U.K. government, which once welcomed Chinese state-owned nuclear power operators, is reportedly mulling their removal from future projects. Other European countries, including the Czech Republic and Romania, have hesitated over involving China in their nuclear plant
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