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March 22 (Bloomberg) — Donald Straszheim, head of China research at International Strategy & Investment Group, talks about the nuclear power plant crisis in Japan and the ramifications for China’s nuclear energy program. Straszheim speaks with Scarlet Fu on Bloomberg Television’s “InBusiness.” (Source: Bloomberg)

March 18 (Bloomberg) — William Pearson of the Eurasia Group talks about the outlook for nuclear energy following the Japan earthquake and crisis at the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant. He speaks with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television’s “Surveillance Midday.” (Source: Bloomberg)

China will start building a nuclear power plant next month using fourth-generation technology that may be less susceptible to meltdown than Japan’s damaged Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant.

The “world’s first high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor” will be installed at Rongcheng in Shandong province, Cui Shaozhang, deputy general manager at Huaneng Nuclear Power Development Co., a unit of China Huaneng Group Corp., the nation’s largest power group, said in an interview yesterday in Singapore.

“There are differences between the Japanese and Chinese reactors,” Cui said. “Japan’s Fukushima plant was using old technology while Chinese reactors are more advanced.”

Japan is trying to prevent a meltdown at Fukushima, where the oldest reactor started operating in 1971, after cooling systems were knocked out by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

The Rongcheng plant will use helium, an inert gas, in its cooling system, and reactor cores will be able to withstand temperatures exceeding 1,600 degrees Celsius (2,912 degrees Fahrenheit) for several hundred hours without melting down, China Business News said this week.

“The Chinese government has encouraged us with the pre- condition of safety and efficiency,” Cui said, standing next to a model of the high-temperature reactor.

China, planning to build more nuclear reactors than any other country, said on March 16 it suspended approval of all new atomic projects until a safety review is carried out.

China Huaneng, China Nuclear Engineering Corp. and Tsinghua University are joint investors in the 200-megawatt Rongcheng demonstration project, according to Huaneng’s brochure. China National Nuclear Corp., the country’s biggest atomic plant builder, last July reported a successful test of an experimental reactor using fourth-generation technology.

China started operating its first commercial nuclear station in 1994. It currently has 14 reactors in operation, 26 under construction and 28 planned, according to data on the World Nuclear Association’s website.

The nation’s nuclear power capacity may reach 40 gigawatts by 2015 and exceed 70 gigawatts by 2020, Han Wenke, head of energy research at the NDRC, said last June. China had 10.82 gigawatts of nuclear power capacity at the end of 2010, the state-owned China Electricity Council said in February.

China Huaneng Group aims to produce about 35 percent of its electricity using cleaner technology by 2020 to cut pollution, President Cao Peixi said last March. The company plans to reduce coal consumption per kilowatt-hour of electricity by about 10 percent to 304 grams by 2020, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dinakar Sethuraman in Singapore at dinakar@bloomberg.net; Rakteem Katakey in New Delhi at rkatakey@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Clyde Russell at crussell7@bloomberg.net

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