7月12日，数以百计的示威者走上中国南方省份广东的江门市街头，他们中间一些人高擎的横幅标语上如是写道。当地政府做出了引人注目的让步，宣称他们将听取示威者的要求，并取消建造一座铀处理工厂的计划。对于热衷于发展核能与控制持不同政见者的中国政府官员来说，这次示威揭示了潜在麻烦的存在，实在令他们大感头痛。
Nuclear activism
中国的反核运动
Limiting the fallout
控制放射污染与压制异见
A rare protest prompts the government to scrap plans to build a uranium-processing plant. Is anti-nuclear activism on the rise?
一次罕有的抗议行动迫使政府取消了建造一座铀处理工厂的计划。反核运动趋于活跃了吗?
“OPPOSE nuclear pollution”; “Give us back our green homeland”. So declared banners raised by some of the hundreds of protesters who took to the streets of Jiangmen city in the southern province of Guangdong on July 12th. In a remarkable concession, the local government announced that it would heed their demands and abandon plans to build a uranium-processing facility. For officials in Beijing, keen to develop nuclear power and keep activism in check, the demonstration was an unsettling sign of potential trouble.
“反对核污染”、“还我绿色家园”――7月12日，数以百计的示威者走上中国南方省份广东的江门市街头，他们中间一些人高擎的横幅标语上如是写道。当地政府做出了引人注目的让步，宣称他们将听取示威者的要求，并取消建造一座铀处理工厂的计划。对于热衷于发展核能与控制持不同政见者的中国政府官员来说，这次示威揭示了潜在麻烦的存在，实在令他们大感头痛。
The protest was the first known major public rally against a project involving the nuclear-power industry since China began building nuclear plants in the mid-1980s. On July 14th residents gathered again outside Jiangmen’s government headquarters (see photo), worried that the $6 billion project nearby had merely been postponed. The city’s Communist Party chief, Liu Hai, emerged to reassure the citizenry that it had indeed been scrapped for good. It is rare in China for officials to concede so rapidly to public concern about such a large project. For one linked to nuclear power, it was unprecedented.
自从中国在20世纪80年代中期开始建造核电站以来，这次示威是外界所知的第一次反对与核电业有关项目的重大公开抗议活动。7月14日，一些当地居民担心，这项与他们的住所相距不远的60亿美元项目只是缓建而未下马，因此再次在江门市政府门前聚集(见题照)。该市党委书记刘海现身安抚市民，向他们保证这一项目已然不复存在。在中国，面对如此重大的项目，官员们对民众的担心做出如此迅速的让步实属罕见;而对于涉核项目来说，这样的让步更是史无前例。
Officials in Jiangmen probably feared that the protests could escalate to the scale of those provoked by large chemical-factory projects in the city of Xiamen in 2007 and Dalian in 2011. Those attracted thousands of people, and also resulted in concessions. Unrest in Jiangmen risked being fuelled by public opinion in nearby Hong Kong which, unlike the rest of China, has a long history of anti-nuclear activism.
江门的官员们或许担心的是，这些示威活动会愈演愈烈，达到因大型化工项目而引发的2007年厦门示威和2011年大连示威的规模。这两次示威的参与者数以千计，最后以政府方面的让步告终。江门事件也可能会让邻近的香港的公众舆论大哗，从而令不安定状况进一步激化。与中国其他地区不同，香港公众的反核主义倾向由来已久。
Until nuclear disaster struck the Japanese plant at Fukushima in March 2011, hardly anyone in China challenged the government’s ambitions for a rapid expansion of the nuclear industry. Green activism had been spreading, but it was focused mainly on chemical projects such as those in Xiamen and Dalian and on the dumping of factory waste. There were then 13 nuclear reactors in operation. Officials wanted 100 of them to be working by 2020.
在2011年3月日本福岛核电站灾难之前，几乎没有任何中国人执言抗谏中国政府迅速发展核电业的雄心。尽管环保运动一直在发展，但该运动的注意力一直主要聚焦于厦门与大连类化工项目和工厂三废的排放问题上。2011年3月中国计有13座核反应堆发电，中国政府想在2020年让100座反应堆投入工作。
Fukushima changed the public mood. Social media, especially Twitter-like weibo services, helped to spread distrust of nuclear power. In response to this, as well as to a global reassessment of the industry’s safety, the government called a temporary halt to nuclear power-plant building. In October last year it allowed such projects to resume, but said that work on about 30 of them that were to be built inland would remain on hold until at least 2015. China’s reactors (now numbering 17, some grouped together) are all along the coast, where there is unlimited seawater to cool fuel rods and disperse radioactive pollution in the event of an accident. The government cited public opinion as a reason for the moratorium: a very new ingredient.
福岛事件改变了公众情绪。社会媒体推波助澜，加剧了公众对核电的不信任感，其中尤以与推特类似的微博服务为甚。为应对这一状况，并对该行业安全性的全球性重估做出反应，中国政府暂时叫停了核电站的建造计划。去年10月，中国政府允许这些项目重新上马，但同时宣称，地点位于内地的大约30座新电站的建造工作将不会在2015年之前重行启动。中国现在正在运转的17座核电反应堆(有些电厂的反应堆多于一座)全部都在沿海地区，那里有无尽的海水，可用以冷却燃料棒，并可在发生事故时用以分散放射性污染。据当局声称，公众舆论是缓建这些核电站的一个原因――这一说法令人耳目一新。
Plans to build a nuclear plant on the south bank of the Yangzi river in Pengze county of Jiangxi province became a prominent topic of public debate. Local officials wanted Pengze to be the site of the first nuclear power plant to be built away from the coast. They had long earmarked a verdant strip of land close to a nature reserve roamed by a rare species of deer for what they hoped would become a proud new landmark. Jiangxi officials regarded it and another proposed power plant on a Yangzi tributary as the “two nuclears” that would become a driving force of development in an energy-starved province.
在地处江西省彭泽县的长江南岸建造一座核电厂的计划成了公众讨论的一个重要话题。当地官员想让彭泽成为非沿海地区第一座核电站的建造地点。为此，他们很久以前就在一个稀有鹿类出没的自然保护区旁指定了一处苍翠的长条形土地，希望这会在未来成为他们引以为傲的新地标。江西政府官员高度评价这座核电站和另一座座落在长江支流上的拟议中的电站，将它们视为促进这一能源匮乏的省份腾飞的“两大核心”。[page]
If all had gone to plan the Pengze nuclear plant would have begun to generate power in 2015. Its American-designed AP1000 pressurised-water reactors (a “third-generation” type, said to have more safety features than Fukushima’s) would eventually have a total capacity of 8 gigawatts; the equivalent of nearly two-fifths of Jiangxi’s entire capacity from other sources (mostly coal) at the end of 2012.
如果一切依照原有计划进行，彭泽核电站将于2015年开始并网发电。这座电站的反应堆是美国人设计的AP1000型压水式反应堆，属“第三代”反应堆，据说其安全性能超过福岛电站反应堆。该反应堆的最终总发电能力为80亿瓦，几乎相当于江西省2012年底从所有其他来源(主要是煤)获得的总发电能力的五分之二。
The state-owned companies behind these projects, as well as investment-hungry local governments, are not abandoning the idea of building them. Before Fukushima, hundreds of millions of dollars had already been poured into preparing the site for Pengze, including the relocation of villagers and levelling hilltops. The area remains fenced off and guarded. (“Any risk can be controlled, any irregularity can be eliminated, any accident can be avoided,” proclaims a large blue billboard on the perimeter.) In June a senior government adviser on nuclear energy said inland projects would “steadily” resume after 2015.
和渴望获得投资的当地政府一样，支持这些项目的国有企业也不曾放弃建造核电站的想法。在福岛核事故前，人们已经对彭泽项目地点的前期准备工作(包括重新安置乡民和铲平山包)投入了数亿美元的资金。这一区域周围现在还围墙高耸，保安密布;外围矗立的蓝色大布告宣告：“任何风险皆可控、任何无序皆可除、任何事故皆可免”。一位政府高级核能顾问6月份认为，内地项目将在2015年以后“稳步”恢复。
Residents of Mopan village on the opposite bank of the Yangzi are worried. “People didn’t pay much attention before Fukushima. After Fukushima there was terror,” says Hong Zengzhi, a doctor of Chinese medicine who can see the Pengze site across the river from the balcony of his clinic. Mr Hong says a village leader, who had disapproved of his opposition to the plant before work began in 2009, apologised to him after the disaster in Japan. Another villager, Wu Duorong, a retired veterinarian, worries about contaminated water flowing into the Yangzi. He penned a poem about the danger: “A river of springtime water flows east; a few families take pleasure but a hundred million mourn.”
长江对岸磨盘村的村民对此心怀疑虑。从中医洪增至诊所的平台上可以远眺对岸的彭泽电站地点，他说：“福岛事故之前人们对核电站漠不关心;事故之后人们感到恐惧。”洪增至说，在项目于2009年开始之前，一位村干部不赞同他反对这一项目的看法，但在日本核灾难后向他道歉。另一位村民吴多荣是一位退休兽医，他对流入长江的受污水表示担心。他就这一危险赋诗道：“一江春水向东流，几家欢喜亿家愁。”
Despite such local misgivings, anti-nuclear activism in China has mostly remained low-key (with the recent exception of Jiangmen). Most environmental NGOs in China, aware of the political sensitivity of nuclear power, avoid the issue.
尽管当地人存有这样的担忧，但中国的反核分子大多持低调立场(最近的江门事件仅仅是一特例)。中国的大多数非政府环保组织知道核电的政治敏感性，刻意回避这一问题。
In late 2011, however, four former senior leaders of Wangjiang county, to which Mopan belongs, submitted a petition to the central government calling for the project to be scrapped. They said the area was vulnerable to seismic activity and the plant would pose a risk to local people. Wangjiang’s government echoed their views in a report that was leaked on the internet.
但在2011年底，望江县(磨盘村属此县)的四名前政府高官向中央政府递交请愿书，呼吁取消这一项目。他们认为这一地区缺乏对地震活动的抵抗力，因此核电站会对当地人民造成威胁。望江县政府在一份报告中认同这一观点，该报告已在互联网上披露。
Inter-provincial rivalry, some of it economic, may well have prompted the officials to speak out. Wangjiang county is in Anhui province, not Jiangxi. Pengze stands to gain much from the project, including the possibility of thousands of new jobs. Wangjiang, a half-hour ferry-ride across the Yangzi, stands to gain little.
包括一些经济方面的省际竞争可能是让这些官员大声疾呼的一个重要原因。望城县隶属安徽而非江西。彭泽县会因这一项目受惠匪浅，包括成千上万可能的新就业机会。但与对岸的电厂仅半小时渡船之隔的望江县则很难得到多少好处。
Not in my front yard
不可前庭驰马
The government in Beijing would be happy if anti-nuclear protests were to stay at the level of bickering between counties or even the occasional outburst of nimbyism, as in Jiangmen. But there is a risk that the success of Jiangmen residents in securing a change of heart could encourage others. “We can expect similar protests wherever a nuclear project is planned,” says Eva Sternfeld of Berlin’s Technical University, who has studied such activism.
中国的中央政府不在乎县与县之间斗嘴式的反核抗议，甚至连江门这类反对影响居民生活的后院式偶发抗议也不在话下。但却存在着这样的风险：江门市居民让政府改弦易辙的成功事例或许会让其他人争相仿效。研究这类示威活动的柏林工大艾娃•斯特恩菲尔德说：“我们可以预期，无论在哪里计划核项目，那里就会出现类似的抗议。”
As well as complicating China’s nuclear plans, such protests would raise fears in Beijing of something more worrying: an anti-nuclear movement becoming a cover for anti-government activity. Taiwan offers a precedent. In the 1980s opponents of the island’s authoritarian government rallied public support for their cause by tapping into public concerns about nuclear power. The Communist Party does not want to run that kind of risk.
除了会增加中国核电计划的变数以外，这类抗议事件也会让中国当局更担心让他们更为恐惧的事情：一次反核运动或许会成为反政府活动的掩护。台湾就有这种先例。20世纪80年代，该岛独裁政府的反对者就曾借用公众对核电的担忧，增进了人们对其事业的支持。中共不想重蹈覆辙。
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