[It began, Ms. Qi explained, with the Third Front, the colossal defense program started by China in 1964 to create an industrial base in the country’s interior. China already had a nuclear reactor — the Soviet-designed 404 project in the northwestern province of Gansu. But as concerns grew about that reactor’s vulnerability to attack, in 1966 Premier Zhou Enlai personally approved the plan to build a replica of the 404 project underground in Fuling.]
By Amy Qin
 |
|
A replica of an atomic
bomb that China tested in 1965 is part of a tour of the 816
nuclear plant inside Jinzi
Mountain in Fuling. The project was China’s first
attempt to build a nuclear reactor
that could produce weapons-grade
plutonium without Soviet help.
Credit Gilles Sabrié
for The New York Times
|
FULING,
China — Tree-carpeted
mountains rise high in this sleepy Yangtze River district, best known for its
crunchy pickled mustard tubers. But one of these mountains is not like the
others.
On the peak of Jinzi Mountain in Fuling, a
single chimney stands sentinel over the adjacent Wu River. The chimney has been
idle since it was built decades ago. Only in recent years has the public
learned why.
Fifteen years ago, the local government
announced that inside the hollowed-out mountain lay the remnants of what was
once one of China’s most ambitious military infrastructure projects: the
top-secret 816 nuclear plant.
Initiated in the 1960s during the height of
tensions between China and the Soviet Union, the 816 project was China’s first
attempt to build a nuclear reactor that could produce weapons-grade plutonium
without Soviet involvement.
But there was one catch. To reduce the
possibility of an attack, Chinese officials and engineers made the unusual
decision to place the reactor underground, complicating an already challenging
engineering process.
Over the next 18 years, more than 60,000
workers participated in the risky project, and some died in the process. The
result was what is said to be the world’s largest artificial cave, able to
withstand the force of thousands of tons of explosives as well as a magnitude 8
earthquake. But when China began a sweeping civilian defense conversion of many
of its military projects in the early 1980s, work on the nearly finished plant
was abruptly called to a halt.
For 26 years, it functioned partly as a
chemical fertilizer factory before being revived for tourism in 2010 — an
improbable twist of fate for this quirk of Cold War history.
Still, for many former workers, the 816
project remains a source of bitter regret. Even as China charges ahead with an
ambitious — if controversial — plan to build nuclear plants around the country
and expand the use of nuclear energy, once-important military nuclear projects
like 816 have all but been forgotten.
“Back then, the project took so much from
these young men, including our livelihoods,” said Chen Huaiwen, 69, a former
soldier who worked on the excavation of the mountain from 1969 to 1974. “We
need to make this clear to the public. Otherwise it will have been a huge waste
of our efforts and manpower.”
To address these concerns, the 816 site
recently underwent a year of renovations. Since it reopened in September,
visitors — including, for the first time, foreigners — can now see about
one-third of the cave, which contains nearly 13 miles of tunnel roads.
On a recent afternoon, a group of tourists,
led by an energetic tour guide who came dressed in military fatigues and combat
boots, clambered onto a golf cart at the roadside entrance of one of the
tunnels. From there, the cart burrowed straight into the belly of Jinzi
Mountain, cool air whooshing by.
At the tour’s first stop, a cavernous hall
that once held the plant’s power-generation facilities, ominous doomsday music
blared while neon lights bathed the concrete-walled room in blue, red and then
pink. It was a scene that was perhaps more befitting of an underground rave than
a Communist history education tour, apart from a display that showed, among
other things, an image of a mushroom cloud from China’s first nuclear test at
Lop Nur in 1964.
Speaking into a microphone, Qi Hong, the tour
guide, explained: “This cave represents not only the efforts of the 816 workers
but also an important part of history in China’s national defense and nuclear
development.”
Standing around Ms. Qi were 30 or so mostly
older Chinese. Throughout the 90-minute tour, Ms. Qi led the group through a
maze of empty reactor halls, exhibition rooms and dim staircases, stopping
frequently to lecture so the elderly visitors could catch their breath.
Although most in the group had not heard of
the project until recently, they were old enough to recall the historical
circumstances that led the government to single out this picturesque place in
southwestern China — also the backdrop of the writer Peter Hessler’s
best-selling memoir “River Town” — as the site of a massive nuclear complex.
It began, Ms. Qi explained, with the Third
Front, the colossal defense program started by China in 1964 to create an
industrial base in the country’s interior. China already had a nuclear reactor
— the Soviet-designed 404 project in the northwestern province of Gansu. But as
concerns grew about that reactor’s vulnerability to attack, in 1966 Premier
Zhou Enlai personally approved the plan to build a replica of the 404 project
underground in Fuling.
Soon after, scientists, engineers, soldiers
and other supporting staff came from all around the country to this remote area
— then reachable only by boat — to work on the 816 project. They represented
some of the nation’s top talent, having studied at China’s leading
universities, as well as in the Soviet Union and Japan.
“The plant reflects the greatness of the
Chinese people,” said Xia Renhui, 66, a retiree from the northeastern city of
Shenyang who was touring the plant. “And now, China is even stronger. Obama’s
Army is not good enough to fight us!”
From the beginning, it was a top-secret
project. Locals and even many of the soldiers working at the site were unaware
of the project’s true purpose. The complex included schools, a market and a
hospital so the workers could live in total isolation. The nearby town of
Baitao disappeared from the map.
“All we knew was the code name 816,” said Li
Tingyong, a local resident and later head of the Fuling tourism bureau, in a
2010 television program about the 816 plant. “But we had no idea what it was a
code name for. It was very mysterious.”
Life was especially hard for the more than
20,000 young soldiers. Many had enlisted thinking they were heading to Beijing,
only to find that they had been assigned to work at the 816 project site. For a
small monthly salary of around 6 renminbi, or $2.44 at the time, the soldiers —
whose average age was 21 — were tasked with excavating the hard rock with only
small drills, dynamite and shovels.
It was dangerous work, and the pressure to
finish the project was immense. Soldiers worked around the clock, urged on by
the slogan “Fight the clock against imperialism, revisionism and
counterrevolutionaries!” Many were injured or died. Today official figures put
the number of fatalities at around 100.
“But I don’t believe it,” said Ms. Qi, in a
rare departure from her script, suggesting the real number was higher. “The
environment was too harsh.”
By the time the project was called off in
1984, 85 percent of the construction had been finished. Over all, total
investment in the 816 project is estimated at more than 746 million renminbi,
or about $359 million at the time.
But sunk costs aside, some experts say the
decision to abandon the 816 project was ultimately a sound one.
“The only good thing that happened with the
project was that they didn’t finish it,” said Hui Zhang, a senior research
associate at Harvard University’s Project on Managing the Atom. “In terms of
the overall development of China’s nuclear program, the 816 project really did
not contribute anything.”
Still, for many of the people like Mr. Chen,
who gave years of their lives to the 816 project, a sense of loss and
resentment lingers.
“Ultimately we worked on the project because
we thought we were working for the nation,” Mr. Chen said in a telephone
interview as he traveled home to Shanxi Province after visiting the reopened
plant. “If we knew that in the end it would be made into a tourist site, we
never would have participated.”
Follow Amy Qin on Twitter @amyyqin.
Kevin Shen contributed research.
