Questions and Answers from this article: Do you think nuclear is the answer to Asia's energy dilemma? If you're serious about climate change, I think you've got to be serious about nuclear. The U.S. is going down an intermediate path, saying "We don't need nuclear, we'll just back out of coal and we'll use natural gas." That will defer the problem in the U.S. for a period of time. But gas is still pretty carbon intensive. Without nuclear it's hard to see how the world will continue to meet energy demand growth without catastrophic risk to the climate. Nuclear is the only technology that exists today that can provide base-load power at a reasonable cost - if you get the program right - with zero carbon emissions. China has by far the most aggressive nuclear build out underway in the world today, with 28 new plants planned or already under construction. Can we trust them to do this safely? They are very sensitive about the world's perception, and they want to make sure they are getting it right. Everything we've seen on the ground at the Daya Bay power plant suggests it's not just rhetoric. The safety record and the safety culture are extremely high. Did you see the headline in the South China Morning Post? Second explosion in one coal mine in four days. Twenty-nine people killed Friday and another seven people killed yesterday. How many people were directly killed by the meltdown at Fukushima? Zero. Well, the tsunami killed 30,000 people; the nuclear accident itself hasn't killed anybody. We have choices to make. None of them are easy.
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