«One Belt - One Way»: Characteristics of the Largest Partner Companies of the Project

The global economic development project, called «the Silk Road», as well as «the One Belt — One Road» initiative, implemented on the basis of an initiative of the PRC government, combines many areas and individual projects. Each of them — the northern, southern and marine ones, requires significant investments and sound political decisions. The PRC is working in this direction today, redistributing resources for development of each branch of «the Silk Road». The confidence in the need of developing not only the economy, but also the socio-social relations, the culture of the territories of penetration, creates special requirements for both direct developers and companies implementing projects in terms of the global initiative. In the annual summaries of economic and exchange news, of course, a special place is occupied by information about the leaders of the project. Among dozens of the leaders, one can single out the top three companies that have made a massive investment breakthrough over the past three years. Among these companies is the All-China Civil Engineering Corporation operating on the open market since 2007 after a series of structural transformations of the largest leaders in construction and oil sectors. The second place is occupied by the company «Chinese Railways», the number of personnel of which today exceeds 10 million people. The third place belongs to the Chinese Railway Construction Company, as the successor to the Chinese Railway Engineering Corps. These three leaders in this article are analyzed on the basis of exchange indicators (all companies have the form of public companies), as well as financial reporting indicators. To compare the activity intensity of the silk road investors, the article presents the data of the Russian PJSC «Gazprom».

Hope, Politics and Risk: The Case of Chinese Dam in Nigeria

The rise of Chinese infrastructure investment in Africa has raised a set of questions about whose development agendas are being fulfilled by such projects, where the power lies in these negotiations, and how local communities are impacted by the projects. Current assumptions see China as holding the power in these relations and that its state-backed transnational corporations unilaterally get their way. This paper challenges these simplistic assumptions by examining the case of a ‘failed’ Chinese project - the Zamfara Dam in Northern Nigeria – and in doing so makes a case for the role of African political agency in brokering Chinese engagement. The dam project was initiated in 2008 between the Zamfara State government and the China Geo-Engineering Corporation; funding was supposed to come from the Chinese ExIm Bank. After the initial assessment and community consultations that spanned three years, the project failed to take off. Primary data is used to understand the process of failure and shows that the dam was initiated based on political expediency rather than the actual drive for development. It was brokered between the elites of China, Nigeria and Zamfara state and so failed to gain wider legitimacy and accountability. Also, in the drive to see the project initiated statutory shortcuts were taken. Critically, consultation was not broadbased even among the state government officials and the communities. The initiation of the project did not follow the laid down procedure of the Federal Ministry of Water Resources. Given that largely political factors played a significant role in the failure of the project, it is suggested that motivation for and implementation of development projects of this nature should transcend political whims and caprices of politicians and ensuring more transparency and broad consultation.

Validation of the ATHROC Code With NUPEC Tests

Xi’an Jiaotong University (XJTU) has developed a containment code called ATHROC (Analysis of Thermal Hydraulic Response of Containment) for the design of a new advanced PWR (Pressurized Water Reactor) in China. In the present work, the well-known NUPEC (NUclear Power Engineering Corporation) tests are simulated to validate the code. NUPEC test M-7-1 and M-4-3 were separately simulated to investigate the mixing effect of hot gas and steam being injected at a low elevation with or without spray cooling in the dome. An analytical model consisting of 26 cells and 67 flow paths was established. In addition, 62 distributed heat structures and 1 lumped heat structure were also modeled in the simulation. The predictions of both simulated tests agree relatively well with the experiment data. The maximum relative errors of predicted temperature for M-7-1 test and M-4-3 test were about 10% and 3%, respectively. The peak pressures of the two tests were about 3.8% and 6.7% overestimated, respectively, and the peak helium concentrations were about 25% and 20% overestimated, respectively. On the other hand, thermal and helium stratification within the containment were well predicted.

OECD/NRC PSBT Benchmark: Investigating the CATHARE2 Capability to Predict Void Fraction in PWR Fuel Bundle

Accurate prediction of steam volume fraction and of the boiling crisis (either DNB or dryout) occurrence is a key safety-relevant issue. Decades of experience have been built up both in experimental investigation and code development and qualification; however, there is still a large margin to improve and refine the modelling approaches. The qualification of the traditional methods (system codes) can be further enhanced by validation against high-quality experimental data (e.g., including measurement of local parameters). One of these databases, related to the void fraction measurements, is the pressurized water reactor subchannel and bundle tests (PSBT) conducted by the Nuclear Power Engineering Corporation (NUPEC) in Japan. Selected experiments belonging to this database are used for the OECD/NRC PSBT benchmark. The activity presented in the paper is connected with the improvement of current approaches by comparing system code predictions with measured data on void production in PWR-type fuel bundles. It is aimed at contributing to the validation of the numerical models of CATHARE 2 code, particularly for the prediction of void fraction distribution both at subchannel and bundle scale, for different test bundle configurations and thermal-hydraulic conditions, both in steady-state and transient conditions.