China is doing for coal what it once did for oil: pushing prices to new highs, adding more pressure to the creaking global economy.
China has long been a huge supplier of coal to itself and the rest of the world. But in the first half of last year, it imported more than it exported for the first time, setting off a near-doubling of most coal prices around the world.
This news leads to the question: How will we generate electricity in the future? Here's how we do it now.
With oil and coal prices shooting up, will consumers be willing to pay more for electricity or will they finally get fed up with the endless opposition to nuclear power and demand that some plants get built? Financial pressure has a way of changing the minds of the public and the politicians. I suspect that Yucca Mountain's nuclear waste disposal site will be operational within a decade.
Even some of the radical environmentalists are rethinking their opposition to nuclear power.
ReplyDeleteEven in my younger days as a wannabe hippie I never understood environmentalists opposition to nuclear power considering how clean it is. Plus the use of nuclear fuel and the reusing of what was once waste has increased in efficiency.
The Wall Street Journal is one of the best newspaper and you'd add each article about it, specially their economy section and many Wall Street Journal news stories are available through free online newspapers that subscribe to the Dow Jones syndicate.
ReplyDelete23jj
We already saw the power of nuclear energy in chernobyl and japan, we can tell that humans just don't learn from mistakes, but also i think, if nuclear energy shuts down around the world, a lot of people will not have power for many things, is easier to think about another procedures to make energy but they are expensive and will not be enough for to many people.
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