This is an energy efficiency measure which might well cut pollution (a very good thing) while doing absolutely nothing, nada, zip for reducing CO2 emissions. Just as in the Indian government white paper, the PRC correctly and officially states CO2 has zero impact on climate.

And it’s still cooling too.

Reducing energy use per unit of economic growth means they want to follow countries like Australia and the USA in making their production of goods and services more efficient: it’s a productivity improvement.

Oh, and it’s internal. Nobody outside the PRC government is allowed to actually check their official figures. Which will be a state secret.

If you think this supports the total BS of the discredited AGW hypothesis, you still think the CRU has scientific credibility. The question is; just how gullible are you to swallow a line from beijing?

MarkL
Canberra

And before Bhopal, there were no major fatalities from that process either?

Which proves that the process is sound?

When you do you will find that morbidity from nuclear is a mere blip compared to the others.

Aren’t you comparing the plural with the singular? Hazards from many stations versus hazard from one? Check out how many nuke plants would be needed, and make a fairer comparison please.

And yes, I have driven past Leigh Creek, to get to the mound spring areas further north, I know about the destructiveness of coal mining, of mining in general. Yes.

BTW: I’ve also witnessed some incredibly successful post-mining landscape restoration, but the extent of the damage from mining and associated industries in northern South Australia is mind-blowing to me, and I’m sorry if it sounds parochial, but I can’t just simply turn off my feelings about it for a greater good, that [nuclear or not] looks likes falling quite a bit short of achieveing the kind of environmental outcomes that you use to justify the destruction in the first place. I’m not sure if I’m making much sense with this, but really what I see is a both coal stations and nuclear stations being built at a rate of knots, it’s not either/or, it’s BOTH. So to present it as an argument that uranium will be an environmental win for the Australian landscape just seems naive to me.

thorium

Note the cost of coal to health in the here and now …

I don’t recall you ever being anything less than enthusiastic to the point of zealotry about nuclear, regardless of whether the fuel source is uranium or thorium.

I prefer th-232 as a fuel for reasons I’ve outlined elsewhere, but even a fairly unremarkable 90′s Gen11 LWR is still preferable to the latest coal or gas plant, because, self-evidently, it pollutes less and what pollution it does produce is more easily managed. Of course, the longer term goal would be to establish IFRs which pollute least of all because they take existing hazmat and use that as their fuel. For those who oppose uranium mining, this ought to be an attractive option. Every KwH of power from an IFR reduces the volume of hazmat, and draws down the most weaponizable actinides.

As to whether th-232 has to be mined, you should know that its essentailly a non-merchantable waste product from zirconium and titanium recovery.

Here’s what the Australian government says:

The main source of thorium in Australia and worldwide is the mineral monazite which is a reddish-brown rare-earth phosphate mineral. [7] Monazite contains 8–10 per cent thorium. [8] Other minerals containing thorium include thorite (thorium silicate), a thorium–uranium mineral which is also an important ore of uranium and thorianite which contains around 70 per cent thorium dioxide. [9]

In Australia monazite is usually found as a component of heavy mineral sand deposits. Because there is no market for the mineral, monazite is not extracted during mining for heavy mineral sands but dispersed back through the original host material when a mining site is returned to its agreed post-mining land use. This dispersal of monazite is done to prevent concentrations of radioactivity in rehabilitated mine sites. However, in doing so, the thorium and rare earths present in the monazite are negated as a resource as it is unlikely to be economic to recover the dispersed monazite for its rare earth and thorium content.

Unlike Australia, China is building a massive amount of new electrical capacity right now, and will do so regardless of what efficiency measures are adopted.

Unlike Australia, China is building nuclear reactors right now.

Unlike Australia, pollution from coal-fired power stations is killing orders of magnitude more people than Chernobyl ever did or will.

Given all that, encouraging China to build more nuclear power stations and fewer coal-fired ones is a massive win for the global environment, the local environment in China, and the health of the Chinese people. Heck, it might also be a net win for the Australian environment – have you had a look at the environmental damage coal mining does?

“Australia has about 20% of the worlds Th-232 RARs.”

You don’t say? Will it need to be mined?