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China Slowing Nuclear Buildout In Response To Fukushima
Lasrick writes "Yun Zhou writes about the end result of China's long reconsideration of nuclear power safety in the wake of Fukushima. Important details about the decision to adopt designs created in China, and incorporate Gen III in those designs."
The short version is that they won't be building more Generation II reactors, opting instead to only build Generation III reactors (which have passive safety systems). Instead of relying entirely on the AP1000, China is speeding up the design of their own Generation III reactors. Plans are still in place for 70GW by 2020, but that date will likely slip due to regulatory delays and the temporary construction moratorium.
Are they building their new nuclear reactors with 50 year old technology on fault lines next to an ocean with an insufficient battery back up? That would be the only reason a sensible person would look at the Fukushima and decide not to build a nuclear power plant.
Americans have been saying negative things about the U.S. and how it's "best days are behind it" since the Progressive Party was born in the 1880s. After the civil war they claimed it was the gilded age (looks like gold but not really; just gold-plated crap). They also whined about the end of the pre-war agrarianism and replacement by industrialism with bad work conditions.
In the 1920s there was a 1 year Depression, but things looked pretty good overall. But then we got hit by the 1930s Depression and some Americans started saying we should copy nations like Italy and Germany (seriously) who recovered almost overnight. In the 1950s they claimed we should be more like the Russians, after all they launched the first satellite. That must mean our schools suck!
In the 60s people complained we should "make love not war" and in the 70s people went nuts with drugs & disco trying to escape the hell of gas lines & stagflation. Reagan swept-in with a great deal of optimism, but soon people were claiming "Japan will buy all our land and buildings." (See the movie Rising Sun for an example of the 80s mindset.) Reagan responded by demanding we need to copy Japanese HDTV and other inventions to regain dominance.
The 90s was a crapfest with the Iraq War, terrorist attacks on WTC, Oklahoma City, and the USS Cole. The 2000s was more of the same. And NOW people are claiming the Chinese will buy-up all our land and buildings (I thought the Japanese were doing that in the 80s?).
Complain, be afraid, worry our best times our behind us. It's been the American way since the civil war. FUD is the true national passtime.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
That doesn't mean we have to be enemies, with the current administration building bases just a few miles off the Chinese coast. We should sell democracy through EXAMPLE not intimidation or bombing.
And also trade so China becomes dependent upon us and the rest of the world, and would not want to attack their profitable markets. The idea that we have to fight over oil and political/military influence only benefits the War industries. Not us.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Dictatorships tend to be a lot faster at doing just about everything. If they pick the right things to do and the right way to do it, its a win-win.
The problems only start when they decide to do the wrong things or pick the wrong way to do it, because then you are in deep shit.
One thing the Chinese have going for them is their central committee members tend to be degreed engineers and technocrats. That is head and shoulders better than the U.S. where the vast majority of the leaders are lawyers. Any time U.S. political leaders open their mouths they make technocratic dictatorships look pretty appealing.
Another Chinese advantage is they had, until recently, none of the drags associated with environmental protection, property rights, worker safety, etc. If they decide they want to do something it gets done really fast, while in the U.S. things like new reactors wallow in red tape for decades. The down side is they've made the place unlivable with pollution, they throw people off their land and out of their homes and business at a furios pace and they kill and maim a lot of workers.
Some other down sides the Chinese have going against them:
Its a freaking dictatorship, there is no way in hell I want to live under their system. Of course at the rate the rest of the world is rushing towards totalitarianism, the U.S. and U.K. in particular, there may not be many free places left to live much longer.
The corruption and deception in their system is truly horrible. If they don't figure out a way to fix their corruption problem it will eventually destory them. Thanks to their deception problem you can't believe a single thing you hear out of the place. Their economic data, and a lot of their economic miracle, is fabrication. The build stuff, and misappropriate massive amounts of capital just to hit targets set from above. Its stimulus spending gone mad. If they are still missing their targets then they just lie.
Most of their companies run multiple sets of books so you can't believe anything they say or any of their reports. They often collude with their banks so dedicated ourside auditors don't even catch the frauds, because the bankers will tell the auditors numbers matching the cooked books not what the company actually has.
@de_machina
Access to scarce resources, including oil.
We compete for these resources with Europe, Canada, Japan, etc. as well. But we don't consider them our rivals. There is a non-confrontational way to allocate resources: markets.
Political/military influence in Asia (Japan, Korea, Taiwan etc).
This is only an issue if we are already rivals.
Human rights.
We should express our concern, but ultimately, this is an issue that will be resolved by the Chinese people. America is not going to "fix" China, and it is silly to think that we can.
China's vast industrial and military espionage programs against the USA.
The military espionage is only an issue if we are already rivals. The industrial espionage is between companies, not countries. The biggest industrial spies in America are other Americans.
There are lots of things that USA has and China wants, rationally.
And most of these things we can both have. We need to learn to enlarge the pie, not fight over the size of each slice.