HONG KONG – Still responding to the partial meltdowns last year at nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan, the Chinese government said on Wednesday that it had lowered its target for the construction of nuclear power plants by 2015, notably by not building further nuclear reactors at inland locations.

A white paper on energy policy released after a cabinet meeting said that the government planned to have 40 gigawatts of nuclear power capacity installed by 2015, and pledged strict safety standards. While the white paper and state-controlled media did not describe this as a reduction in the target, the country’s current Five-Year Plan sets a target of 50 gigawatts.

Jiang Kejun, a director of the Energy Research Institute at the National Development and Reform Commission, the top Chinese economic planning agency, had reaffirmed the target of 50 gigawatts in an interview in October of last year. That was when China resumed construction of nuclear power plants after a six-month hiatus following the Fukushima accident, which occurred after a tsunami flooded the Japanese nuclear power plant.

China had 12.54 gigawatts of installed capacity of nuclear power plants at the end of last year, the white paper said. So the new, lower target for 2015 still involves more than tripling current electricity generation from nuclear power.

“China will invest more in nuclear power technological innovations, promote application of advanced technology, improve the equipment level, and attach great importance to personnel training,” the white paper said. The International Atomic Energy Agency and even Chinese regulators had expressed concern  more than a year before the Fukushima accident that China’s nuclear power program was expanding so fast that it lacked enough skilled personnel to run so many reactors safely.

While China’s military nuclear facilities tend to be deep in the country’s interior, a decision by Mao to help protect them from foreign attack, China has tended to build civilian nuclear reactors at isolated coastal locations, on peninsulas where possible. According to Chinese nuclear engineers, this has been done to minimize the number of people nearby who might need to be evacuated in case of a serious accident, and to reduce the risk of contamination of fresh water supplies.

Prior to the Fukushima accident, the government had been planning to build civilian reactors in seven inland provinces as well, so as to place them close to large centers of electricity demand. Plans for further inland reactors have been put on hold, the government announced on Wednesday.

Nuclear power generates only 1.8 percent of China’s electricity, far below the global average of 14 percent.