Thursday, June 9, 2011

Did Steven Chu "See" the Japanese Nuclear Disaster Coming?

I buried this at the bottom of an earlier commentary, but I want greater exposure of this, so here it is again as a stand-alone post:
It now makes sense to me why a nuclear physicist would say his worse nightmare is coal. Like many brilliant men, he thinks of derivatives or "unintended consequences." As a nuclear physicist Chu realized that a nuclear meltdown was inevitable (earthquakes, human error, poor designs, terrorists, anarchy). If the world reacted to a nuclear meltdown as Germany has, Chu understood that the only fuel that could make up the difference was coal. In 2010, coal saw the greatest increase in consumption since 2003 and that was before the nuclear disaster in Japan. I now get it. Steven Chu was absolutely correct. His greatest nightmare is "coal."

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