In July 2013, hundreds of people took to the streets in the southern Chinese city of Jiangmen to protest the proposed construction of a uranium processing plant in the region.

The $6 billion plant would have supplied fuel for the country’s rapidly expanding nuclear power industry. But the plan was dropped in the face of public opposition, the first case of its kind in China, said Keith Florig, a risk-management researcher at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business.

The protest, and its fallout, are important events in a country that has 22 nuclear power reactors under construction and more planned, as well as a growing international business selling nuclear energy technology to countries including Argentina, Britain and Pakistan. Mr. Florig said that this “rate of development hasn’t happened since the late 1960s and early 1970s in the U.S. and Soviet Union.”

At the same time, Mr. Florig characterized China as being underprepared for dealing with the public opinion issues that have plagued nuclear energy in developed countries.