China wants more nuclear plants

Science Chic wrote: I vaguely recall a news story about Japan planning to replace the nuclear plants that were wiped out by the tsunami with ocean wind farms. I'm not as thrilled about plans for nuclear power generation until we figure out a safe solution of what to do with the radioactive waste, but recognize that it has to be a part of the solution of getting us off of fossil fuels for now. Good for China for working on this, they are consuming way too much coal as it is.

You seem to be in good company.

http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/1/ ... cants.html

James Lovelock: "We never intended a fundamentalist Green movement that rejected all energy sources other than renewable, nor did we expect the Greens to cast aside our priceless ecological heritage because of their failure to understand that the needs of the Earth are not separable from human needs. We need take care that the spinning windmills do not become like the statues on Easter Island, monuments of a failed civilisation."

FredHayek wrote: 70% of their electricity is provided by coal. Even the bigwigs are probably tired of the pollution in Beijing.

The piece just used air quality as a springboard but it made me chuckle and makes your point Fred.

http://reason.com/archives/2013/01/28/i ... horitarian

But when your air contains enough foreign matter to mold bricks, it's hard to claim the sky is blue.


"Beijing has some seriously bad air. How bad? On a scale of 1 to 500, the United States Environmental Protection Agency says anything over 100 is unhealthy and anything above 400 is an emergency. Recently, the pollution index for Beijing hit 755. For purposes of breathing, it's like being downwind of a forest fire while smoking a cigar.
China's communist rulers normally suppress news like that. In 2009, when the U.S. embassy in Beijing started putting air quality numbers on its Twitter feed, the government demanded in vain that it stop.

But when your air contains enough foreign matter to mold bricks, it's hard to claim the sky is blue. And lately, the authorities have decided censorship of the topic is futile.

Nuclear?
Tilting at windmills? (Pun intended.)
Conservatives like it as an alternative to fossil based fuels, but strangely, banks and business don't like it. No one wants to finance new nuclear power plants in this country, so they pretty much have to get the same goverment guaranteed loans as other alternative energy sources. Plus after the tsunami, who wants to insure nuclear power?
Easier in China, where you have a dictatorship to cut the red tape of getting new plants approved for enviromental reasons.