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China Slows Nuclear Expansion
An anonymous reader writes "Hui Zhang and Shangui Zhao describe China's decision to move ahead with nuclear power. Following the Fukushima Daiichi accident, China slowed its rapid expansion of nuclear power and undertook a major reevaluation of safety practices. The government has now resumed approval of new nuclear power projects, and is cautiously moving forward. Good description of safety issues that remain."
They are suspending in-land construction, and are aiming at 58GWe instead of 80GWe of generation capacity by 2020. It's still more than the 40GWe they planned to build under their 2007 plans.
I also read that and was worried North Korea (*) had attacked them... but thought the wording was a bit weird.
* Maybe they feel like China backstabbed them for not supporting them in the recent "confrontation".
I agree, the fall out (no pun intended) of such an explosion in China will be felt the world over. The deaths alone from a failure will be astronomical. While I'm not opposed to nuclear power, I'm opposed to people doing it wrong.
21st Century Renaissance Man
Totally False.
The real reason is lack of interest. No nuclear power plant has been built without government funds or loans. The payback time is long and the returns relatively low. There really has no been a big commercial push for building these power plants. Natural gas on the other hand has seen lots of private growth.
No source for burying with corpses inside, but the wreckage was buried:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision#Reaction
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Interest doesn't equal intent. The financial situation just doesn't make sense for nuclear (at present). Given the (artificially, temporary) low prices of natural gas and the relatively inexpensive and rapid timeline of a natural gas fired electrical generation plant AND the increasingly favorable costs for wind / solar conventional nucs just aren't a hot item. Especially since the 'new and improved' Gen III plants don't exist in the US just yet so it's a bit of a stretch to call up Westinghouse and ask for a tour (want to fly to Beijing?).
Let's face it, current LWR technology just hasn't worked out all that well. Turns out it's expensive to build and maintain. They're insanely complex. Impossible to insure (unless the feds step in). Covered by tons of regulations (would you want it any other way given human avarice and greed?). Enormous capital expenditures. Basically they got outcompeted. Yeah, free market?!$&#*&>.
Now, lets move forward a decade or so. Westinghouse and the French company (I want to say 'Avarice' but that's not it) are working on Gen III reactors being sited in China. IF (big if) they pull it off, get a couple of years of installing them and running them without major issues AND natural gas prices climb (again - follow The Oil Drum or similar sites, tl;dr the depletion rate of fracked natural gas wells is truly enormous) and nobody figures out a reasonable strategy to turn solar power into baseload power, THEN nuclear might have a chance.
All they would have to do is figure out the the little problem of waste storage.
Certainly, much of nuclear power's issues are political rather than technical in nature but politics is "the art of the possible". If we were rational creatures, Mr. Spock would be President for Life and we'd have flying cars.
But we're not. So we can't have nice things.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
stop building nuclear power plants out in the open air and bury the damn things half a kilometer underground.
Takes care of explosions. (Even if it blows up, get your people out before it blows, seal the shaft and who cares?)
Takes care of terrorist attacks. (The terrorists are NOT going to dig half kilometer long tunnels to get to your fissiles.)
Takes care of leakage. (Its half a kilometer down so its not going in your water table.)
Takes care of waste disposal. (You just dig a bunch of side chambers.)
Takes care of expansion. (You just dig a bunch of side chambers.)
Takes care of exposure. (It never sees the light of day, it never gets above ground.)
You can build the cooling towers, the power distribution towers and the offices above ground but BURY all the rest way down deep.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is anti-nuclear.
Read about the plans for new nuclear reactors worldwide.
Over 60 power reactors are currently being constructed in 14 countries including China, South Korea and Russia.
Mainland China has 17 nuclear power reactors in operation, 28 under construction, and more about to start construction. Additional reactors are planned, including some of the world's most advanced, to give a five- or six-fold increase in nuclear capacity to at least 58 GWe by 2020, then possibly 200 GWe by 2030, and 400 GWe by 2050.
...then we're all fucked: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w26WMRstQUk
Why would you call the low price of natural gas "artificial"? The supply recently went up hugely, and demand has been flat at best through the economic downturn. Temporary, sure - all commodity prices are temporary.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.