{"id":40,"date":"2006-04-18T10:32:39","date_gmt":"2006-04-18T14:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=40"},"modified":"2006-04-18T10:32:39","modified_gmt":"2006-04-18T14:32:39","slug":"a-note-on-nuclear-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=40","title":{"rendered":"a note on nuclear power"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/letters\/story\/0,,1755555,00.html\">aerated letter<\/a> <del>in the <em>Independent<\/em> today<\/del> from a Lib Dem spokesman in the <em>Guardian<\/em> complaining that the Finnish government is buying French nuclear reactors. This only makes sense, the writer says, because of huge state subsidies on both sides. But isn&#8217;t this one of the things that states are supposed to do? The argument in favour of nuclear power is that the foreseeable alternatives are worse. A world with too much nuclear waste is better than one where electricity is in short supply. Now, we won&#8217;t <em>know<\/em> whether these really are our choices for another 25 years or so. But it is hardly inconceivable that oil &#8212; and energy generally &#8212; will be come very much more expensive and that in 25 years time nuclear power will be clearly the least worst option. But of course, the power stations take a long time to build, and to integrate. So there is a kind of market failure here. Keeping your nuclear industry going with subsidies until it is profitable seems to me a perfectly reasonable thing for a government to do; if it does become profitable, it will be very profitable indeed. And wouldn&#8217;t you rather buy French engineering than American?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is an aerated letter in the Independent today from a Lib Dem spokesman in the Guardian complaining that the Finnish government is buying French nuclear reactors. This only makes sense, the writer says, because of huge state subsidies on &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=40\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=40\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}