High oil prices are driving a worlwide nuclear energy renaissance, and according to 2point6billion, over a third of the new capacity over the next ten years will be built in Asia. Here’s their rundown of Asia’s nuclear energy landscape. Given the proliferation and environmental risks, I can’t help but wonder what the trend toward nuclear as an “alternate energy source” is going to look like twenty, or even fifty years from now. Also, I know that global warming is caused by carbon-based fuel emissions, but adding the kind of heat generated by that many nuclear reactors can’t help cool things down any.
Update: I have it on “deep background” from a “quasi-informed source” (and that’s a direct quote) that the heat from nuclear reactors does not contribute to the process of global warming, which has to do with the retention of heat from solar radiation by carbon-based fuel emissions, and not the production of heat by human-made sources. It still seems to me that if the heat isn’t escaping, it’s a good idea to not generate more of it, but apparently, coal-burning facilities generate a higher proportion of wasted heat than nuclear anyway. So I stand corrected.