Rob Starkey @ May 5, 2012 at 11:57 pm
You said:
the poorest countries have any plans for widespread electricity generation and distribution regardless of the source of the power generation.
I agree that the case as it stands now. But we can look at history to get an idea of what is going to happen over the coming half century or so.
The authoritative sources project that it is the developing countries that will produce most of the emissions over the decades ahead – especially the countries that are poorest now but will also go through the stages of development that the developed countries have already gone through. The poorest and the developing will progress through the stages of development just as UK and parts of Europe did centuries ago, then USA, then other countries we now called the developed countries (e.g. Germany and Japan after WW II), and more recently Korea after the Korean war, China and India and other Asian and South American nations over the past 50 years or so. There is still most of Africa and many other poor countries to go through this development. It is inevitable; it will happen.
I am not arguing that the poorest countries are where we necessarily need to place our primary focus on getting nuclear to be low cost. I am just saying that they are important in deciding out long term strategy.
What we do to remove the impediments to low cost nuclear in the developed countries will assist the whole world to cut CO2 emissions. Conversely, applying CO2 taxes and Cap and Trade schemes may make a difference to emissions in the developed countries but will have little impact on global emissions. The developing countries will not disadvantage themselves – and nor should they – so they will continue to build the least cost electricity generation available to them. Furthermore, the higher cost of electricity in the developed countries will be a factor contributing to moving industry from the developed countries to the developing countries. So much of the emissions avoided in the developed countries will be emitted in the developing countries instead.
In short, most of the emissions growth will come from the poor and developing countries over the decades ahead – UNLESS, they have an energy option that is cheaper than fossil fuels.