Alternative Energies
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Title: China’s wind farms can now produce more energy than all of America’s nuclear plants
Source:
Quartz
URL Source: http://qz.com/357332/chinas-wind-fa ... ll-of-americas-nuclear-plants/
Published: Mar 8, 2015
Author: Richard Macauley
Post Date: 2015-03-08 07:34:28 by Willie Green
Keywords: None
Views: 21487
Comments: 23
China is building more than a third of the world’s nuclear reactors currently under construction, and has plans to triple its nuclear power capacity by 2020. That has some observers worried about the country’s opaque and politicized nuclear safety regulations. But amid all the hype over nuclear power, China has been expanding its wind power capacity at an even faster clip. Last year, China’s wind farms reached a capacity of 115,000 megawatts, compared with just 20,000 megawatts from its nuclear sector. (To be sure, capacity is different than the actual amount of energy created.) Working at full pace, China’s wind farms could now produce more energy than all of the nuclear power plants in the US. Despite the government’s ambitious goals to keep developing its nuclear energy capacity, for the foreseeable future, nuclear is unlikely to match wind in China. After the 2011 disaster in Fukushima, Japan, the Chinese government put the brakes on building nuclear power stations in the west of the country, as this is an area prone to earthquakes. Meanwhile, the north of China famously struggles with a lack of water, something nuclear power stations require plenty of to keep reactors cool, and the east coast, where there is plenty of water, is home to China’s most developed cities, which are increasingly turning to NIMBY-ism. Beijing says it plans to increase China’s wind power capacity to 200,000 megawatts by 2020, but its own figures see nuclear rising to just 58,000 megawatts in the same time frame. It’s encouraging to think that wind power may be a leap-frog technology in China, skipping over the potentially messy and dangerous issues related to nuclear power. But wishing nuclear away could be unwise, and most of China’s massive—and growing—energy needs are still met by burning coal. If barriers to nuclear persist, the energy gap will likely be plugged by more fossil-fuel power plants, which would render the cleanliness of China’s wind farms academic.
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#6. To: Willie Green (#0)
I noticed this at Slashdot today:
Karachi is in Sindh (remember Napier's employment of Peccavi as a pun?), however the policy of the Holy Roman Empire known as Pakistan has turned Karachi into a city where the Sindhi people are a minority in their largest city. The Pashto people of the Taliban outnumber Sindhi people in Karachi. Were the Sindhi people to take their destiny into their own hands, as our own forefathers once did, they might be able to turn Karachi and the the Sindh into a viable proposition. It would take ethnic cleansing to drive the Pashto back to their own homelands, Karachi would end up being less diverse, and a lot less volatile.
The mountain regions of eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan (including Waziristan) are all Pashto areas. This is why I refer to our military operations there as being in Af-Pak. It isn't western Afghanistan that gives us (or the old Soviet occupation forces) any problems. Afghanistan is Pakistan's fallback area in the event of a land war and invasion by India. It's one reason why the Pakis keep Afghanistan so backward, mostly by Pakistan's ISI manipulating the Taliban and providing support. Of course, the poppy traffic is interwoven in this trans-border arrangement.
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Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestPakistan Builds Nuclear Reactors In Karachi, Sparking Fears of Disaster
World leaders have fretted for years that terrorists may try to steal one of Pakistan's nuclear bombs and detonate it in a foreign country. But some Karachi residents say the real nuclear nightmare is unfolding here in Pakistan's largest and most volatile city. Of all places to locate a nuclear reactor, they argue, who could possibly make a case for this one — on an earthquake-prone seafront vulnerable to tsunamis and not far from where al-Qaeda militants nearly hijacked a Pakistan navy vessel last fall.
#21. To: TooConservative (#6)
Pakistan's largest and most volatile city. Of all places to locate a nuclear reactor, they argue, who could possibly make a case for this one — on an earthquake-prone seafront vulnerable to tsunamis and not far from where al-Qaeda militants nearly hijacked a Pakistan navy vessel last fall.
#22. To: nativist nationalist (#21)
The Pashto people of the Taliban outnumber Sindhi people in Karachi.
Replies to Comment # 22.
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