India heads into energy future with nuclear and renewables

Any sensible energy strategy for any nation for the next decades is a combination of several. Not including nuclear severely limits choices and options. India isn't going to do that; the Prime Minister went on the record to say that nuclear is part of the plan.

"One thing which is quite clear is that if India is to meet its emission targets, then nuclear energy along with renewable sources of energy is a combination which we need,'' Singh said at a news conference Tuesday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel during her visit to India.

His comments come a day after Germany announced it would close all of its 17 nuclear power plants over the next 11 years. Germany obtains nearly one-quarter of its electricity from nuclear power.

BUT UNFORTUNATELY:

"We will make every effort to ensure that safety norms in generation and utilization of nuclear power are world class but we must have the option to make use of nuclear energy, together with the heavy reliance on coal which is inevitable for quite some time, to come in our country,'' he added.

Oh well. They plan to quadruple their nuclear output from 5K MW to 20K MW.

India does all this with small plants, according to the article. That could be a model for our future, too.

India stands firm on nuclear power