A file photo of Reuters Breakingviews columnist Gu Wei. [File Photo: Reuters]

"China cannot really afford to abandon nuclear power. The country is already the biggest energy user, and its energy use is only going to increase in the future."

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Earthquake, tsunami, explosions at nuclear plants, and finally, radioactive leakage.

What happened to Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in the past few days seems to be a telling story for nuclear energy detractors who want to put an end to the current revival of nuclear power.

On Wednesday, China has suspended the approval process for nuclear power stations so that safety standards can be revised and has ordered inspections of all of the country's existing facilities, according to a report by Xinhua News Agency.

However, according to Gu Wei, a columnist of Reuters Breakingviews, developing nuclear energy is still the sensible thing to do for China.

"China cannot really afford to abandon nuclear power. The country is already the biggest energy user, and its energy use is only going to increase in the future. Yet currently nuclear accounts for less than 2 percent of China's energy use, but there is more than 25 percent in Japan, so there is still room to grow."

China has an ambitious plan to expand its nuclear capacity by seven-fold by 2020.

Gu Wei added that, currently in China, the alternatives to the nuclear energy, like wind and solar, are just not mature or scalable enough to play any sizable role in powering the world's factory.

Even Coal and hydro power, which China relies heavily on, are not problem-free. Although problems they caused seem easier to sneak away from public and media attention more than a radiation leak.

"Despite the headlines grabbing the news about nuclear disaster, either the U.S.'s Three Mile Island or Japan's current situation, they haven't really killed many lives yet. Yet China's reliance on coal brings unacceptable fatalities as well." Gu Wei continues, "Every year, more than 2,000 people died in China's coal mines. Even hydro power, like the Three Gorges Project, has its own problems as well by dislocating lots of people and now the risk of landslide is rising because of the project."

After all, Japan's calamity is proving to be a vital lesson for Chinese nuclear energy developers.

"China can learn from Japan to build better reactors to withstand higher internal pressure and which can cool more easily. They can actually benefit by having safer nuclear plants." Gu Wei said.

China has 13 nuclear power installations in operation and tests have shown that all of them are safe, according to Zhang Lijun, vice minister of Environmental Protection.