Wired magazine has a truly amazing article on China’s big plans for big nuclear power. But the most amazing thing about the article is the nuclear technology itself, something called “pebble-bed” technology. Bottom line: it’s meltdown-proof, cheaper, smaller, and faster to set up than existing nuclear tech, which was designed for Navy submarines, not civilian power needs.

There’s also some discussion of Professor Lovelock again, the author of the “Gaia hypothesis” who has broken ranks with his fellow environmentalists to urge a rapid transition to this sort of nuclear power, which is about the only practical way to put an immediate stop to the burning of fossil fuels and hopefully stave off global warming.

Best of all, if the US transitioned to this new kind of power as rapidly as the Chinese, it could mean greatly reduced dependence on foreign oil. It almost seems too good to be true. The only reason why I find it so believable is that it’s actually an old technology that fell victim to path dependence (like electric cars, Betamax, and MacOS). In other words, a technological success that loses to something inferior which shows more short-term promise.

The Western world’s prejudice against nuclear power is so deep-seated that only a country like China, which behaves sometimes like its own planet, has the chance to be able to attempt and demonstrate something different like this. Now we in the West only need to pay attention, watch, and learn. And unlearn our prejudice against nuclear power.