China's Nuclear Power: Peabody-Bed Reactor and Hydrogen Future

[Aquamarine]

While the West frets about how to keep its sushi cool, hot tubs warm, and Hummers humming without poisoning the planet, the cold-eyed bureaucrats running the People's Republic of China have launched a nuclear binge right out of That '70s Show. Late last year, China announced plans to build 30 new reactors - enough to generate twice the capacity of the gargantuan Three Gorges Dam - by 2020. And even that won't be enough. The Future of Nuclear Power, a 2003 study by a blue-ribbon commission headed by former CIA director John Deutch, concludes that by 2050 the PRC could require the equivalent of 200 full-scale nuke plants. A team of Chinese scientists advising the Beijing leadership puts the figure even higher: 300 gigawatts of nuclear output, not much less than the 350 gigawatts produced worldwide today.

To meet that growing demand, China's leaders are pursuing two strategies. They're turning to established nuke plant makers like AECL, Framatome, Mitsubishi, and Westinghouse, which supplied key technology for China's nine existing atomic power facilities. But they're also pursuing a second, more audacious course. Physicists and engineers at Beijing's Tsinghua University have made the first great leap forward in a quarter century, building a new nuclear power facility that promises to be a better way to harness the atom: a pebble-bed reactor. A reactor small enough to be assembled from mass-produced parts and cheap enough for customers without billion-dollar bank accounts. A reactor whose safety is a matter of physics, not operator skill or reinforced concrete. And, for a bona fide fairy-tale ending, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is labeled hydrogen.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/china.html

 

[Zeteg]

That's the most biased article I've ever seen in my life. Those idiots can't even relate a point where it needs relating. Sushi did NOT come from China. It came from Japan. That point they made was completely invalid.

China has the right to develop its nuclear industry, in comparison to other countries. China doesn't start wars, and barely ever even participates in them. There's no need to critisize the government.

... That just made me mad >=(

 

[Colby]

That is exactly what I feel. China should have the right. Are they honestly ever going to start a war? I doubt it, everything they make basically goes to the U.S. If they attacked us, their economy would crumble with a quick embargo. They know better then to go to war with anyone else either, because we Americans always get involved.

 

[Zeteg]

It kind of makes me think of the board game, Civilization.

Often, when there's so much trading between two countries, you just can't afford to attack. When you do attack, you give up tons of income, lots of resources, and well... often you sour relations with their allies.

It's not the easiest thing in the world to go to war, really. In fact, I remember still trading with someone I attacked in that game, 'cause it hurt his economy more, not to trade in the war. :) Just thought I'd point that out. China wouldn't be the only one suffering, US would too, quite a bit.

 

[Aquamarine]

I agree. China has the next best thing after democracy, a purely rational, egoistic dictatorship. They will never start a nuclear war.

The dangerous people are the idealists. Like the fundamentalists in Iran, the communists in Russia or the nazis in Germany. People who may be willing sacrifice themselves and their country to a nuclear war for their ideas.