China's Infrastructure

[Peacedog]

I think it would be better put that a lot of nuclear research is going on in China, because you can't do it in a Western country. And that is a whole other issue. The main people involved in the research are Westinghouse, etc. And I agree that fusion is getting a lot closer, and while it would definitely change coal and natural gas usage, it wouldn't do much to petroleum.

As for oil, it is important to keep in mind that it is mainly used for transportation and that no real alternative for this exists.

Battery powered anything for transportation on a mass scale would require mining on a level that the same people who put nuclear largely off limits in the West would also oppose. The reality is that electric cars are a canard used to punish the oil and gas industries as the electric car simply isn't feasible either economically or environmentally. We just don't have enough of the base materials to make sufficient batteries given current technology to replace the internal combustion engine to any meaningful degree. And even if you did manage to make enough car sized batteries to impact petroleum use, the environmental damage from having to manage the disposal of millions of batteries that size per year would be disastrous.

Now you could replace diesel powered engines on railways, aircraft and seaborne with nuclear power. And this would make a significant difference in worldwide oil usage. The US Air Force burns almost 3% of all petroleum products used in the United States by itself year to year. But again the political opposition to this is significant.