Without Affordable Clean Alternatives, South Africa Turns to Coal

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"Until clean and cheap energy sources are available for deployment on a massive scale, developing nations like South Africa will remain stuck in the Development Trap: forced to either sacrifice climate and ecological security in the name of development and poverty alleviation or to condemn countless millions of citizens to energy poverty in the name of climate protection. Breaking out of this untenable position is the urgent challenge of the century. It's time to make clean energy cheap.

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"Consider that not having access to affordable, modern energy sources, particularly electricity, means no access to potable, running water; it means having to burn dung and wood and other primitive biofuels to provide cooking and indoor heating; and it means sputtering kerosene lamps as the only source of light after the sun goes down."

(South African Finance Minister) Gordhan explains:

South Africa takes climate change and the need to reduce fossil fuel emissions extremely seriously. ... If there were any other way to meet our power needs as quickly or as affordably as our present circumstances demand, or on the required scale, we would obviously prefer technologies -- wind, solar, hydropower, nuclear -- that leave little or no carbon footprint. But we do not have that luxury if we are to meet our obligations both to our own people and to our broader region whose economic prospects are closely tied to our own. South Africa generates more than 60 percent of all electricity produced in sub-Saharan Africa. Tight supplies are not just a problem for us.

http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2010/03/without_affordable_clean_alter.shtml

Earlier post: Bill Gates-Toshiba talk nuclear power

But last November Gates visited the company's nuclear research facility in Yokohama on behalf of TerraPower. According to Japan's Nikkei newspaper, Gates could put tens of millions of dollars of his own money into a joint venture with Toshiba.

"There would be demand for this type of reactor in newly developing countries," Deutsche Securities analyst Takeo Miyamoto told the BBC.

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Resource-Wars/2010/03/24/Bill-Gates-Toshiba-talk-nuclear-power/UPI-23561269455687/