China nuclear protests grow
Thursday, March 1, 2012 at 1:48PM 
FT story. Fukushima is the cause. People see smart countries like Germany and Japan basically ditching nuclear power and they’ve got to wonder about China building so many so fast. China has 15 running, 26 under construction, 51 in the planning stages and 120 proposed.
China is the biggest energy consumer in the world, and gets just 2% of its power from nukes – a tiny dent in its massive use of coal for electricity generation. Overall, on energy (electricity, transpo, etc.), it’s still 71% coal, 18% oil, and natural gas on 4%! The renewables/water/nukes are about 8%.
But here is where the fracking revolution can be huge, as Wikistrat just explored in its multi-week sim on the North American Energy Export boom (just finished report and taped brief on that). China has the biggest shale gas reserves in the world – something on the order of almost 20% of all known reserves and 50% more than #2 America.
As the shale revolution eventually takes off in China, it’ll be interesting to see what happens with China’s quiet ambition to take over the global nuclear supply industry from a fading Japan. Maybe attempting to be the biggest producer of shale gas will do the trick, but I’m better China tries to master both domains. It just needs that much more energy over time.
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Reader Comments (2)
China, two generations from now will be an astonishing Nation. As they provide the benefits / results of technology to their population, I suspect the Chinese people will embrace the modern world and flourish as a world power in much the same way America has in the previous century.
I think that as the people of China view them selves, and their rise to being a global power, thru the lens of the out side world The Mass new populous will view themselves even more so as "Chinese" and less as the tribal origins they came from. Also much like the assimilation that immigrants made to adjust to their new culture in America.
Yet, in China I see an even more efficient evolution and adaptation to this newly advanced world than what America has experience. In large part because the Chinese don't have a largely secular culture, as in the US. While the US will continue to struggle with the issues of race-ism and discrimination, China will largely,"I think" avoid this delay and encumbrance. Not to minimize the lessons of tolerance and respect achieved in the US.
I hope China will be as caring and as generous a world power as America has been.
Before one goes off and postulates that China is going to be successful in shale oil extraction, it’s a good idea to actually ask someone that has experience with the China Oil industry. I have such experience. In 1984-1986 I was based in Tanggu and worked with the CNOOC on seismic mapping of China's oil resources. What I saw was not confidence inspiring. What I have subsequently learned in my years in China, suggests that not much has changed. What I saw in China was absolutely horrible practices in the oil extraction area. An example is how the Chinese carried out the development of their oil field. In the west at that time, drilling decisions were primarily driven by a careful analysis using reservoir mapping. Geologists would sit down and use huge amounts of data and try to determine the best strategy to maximize long term resource viability. In China though, decisions were primarily politically motivated and the ultimate decision, almost childishly simple. Very often drilling decisions were not based on how to most effectively develop the resource but rather on how to avoid the embarrassment of dry holes. Chinese drilling decision were motivated around avoiding embarrassment for the top brass rather than to try to extend the resource. In my area of the oil industry similar logic applied.
For one to think that Chinese state-owned companies are going to do anything other than a terrible job in the tricky practice of extracting oil from shale is I think is quite a stretch. What you will more likely see is China limiting their interaction with foreigners that actually know what they are doing and mostly making a mess of things, although they may end up fabricating stories of "Chinese technology success" that they can sell to gullible non Chinese-speaking, non-expert Western journalists like James Fallows and others. Rather like the stories of miracle harvests during the Cultural Revolution and other dodgy economic statistics being manufactured up to the present day.