Following demonstrations by Lianyungang citizens, the city government has decided to halt work on a nuclear waste treatment plant in the area.

The municipal government shared the news on its Weibo microblog in the early hours of Wednesday morning, saying it had suspended preliminary site selection work on the project.

Lianyungang, in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, has for the past several days seen thousands of people take to the streets to express their discontent with the nuclear waste treatment plant that was potentially going to be built in their city. On Sunday the protests were beaten down by police in riot gear.

The municipal government organized a press conference on Sunday evening, in which it stressed that the project, a Sino-French plant, was still looking at multiple locations along China’s east coast. State news agency Xinhua reported last year that the plant was designed to process 800 tons of nuclear waste per year, and that construction was to begin in 2020.

(Header image: Residents protest against a nuclear recycling project in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, Aug. 8, 2016. Wu Yue/Sixth Tone)