Nuclear Power: yes! And… go China!

BBC radio (world.business@bbc.co.uk) this morning was seeking comment on Nuclear Energy, asking "do we want to have a nuclear power station for every village in England?"  And I don't think they were being sarcastic...

My comment (which the Beebs read out next day...):

Yes, yes! Bring on clean, reliable, safe nuclear energy!  For too long this has been off the agenda by misguided or wilfully ignorant Greens.
 One old greenie who gets it right is Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog of 1968.  He says we should:

1. Urbanise   [less Co2 per capita consumed in dense cities]
2. Expand Nuclear Power
3. Grow Genetically engineered plants
4. Start Geo-engineering to keep us cool...
   

Please also start a debate about the last: geo-engineering.  BBC had a program a few weeks ago, but the main guest were firmly anti, and it needed someone sane and sensible on the support side: who better than Stewart Brand?

Link here  to see his video at a recent TED Conference. Well worth the 18 minutes!

Yours, etc,

China Postscript: when we were recently in far north China, on the way to Yabuli ski slopes of Heilongjiang, we drove there and back several hours each way from the capital Harbin and noticed that all the houses in all the villages had chimneys but no smoke from any of them.  

When I was there 30 years ago (yes, 30...) they had all been spewing thick and very dirty coal smoke clogging the valleys in dense smog.  The reason for the change?  A huge nuclear power station we passed by, emitting pure water vapour from its stacks.  I certainly know about the potential dangers of nuclear power.  But they are way overrated, especially when compared to the actual, right-here-right-now dangers of coal power, from the thousands of miners killed every year, to the noxious fumes they emit.  It's a choice of risks, not no-risk vs all-risk.  And the balance is clear: Nuclear risk is less and it's cleaner to boot.

Good on China!