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Notes -
I have no reason to doubt this, but it does seem odd to me to suggest that the lack of a green lobby means a country will default to pragmatism when it comes to energy. Do China and India not have their own set of political challenges (say a fossil fuel lobby) when it comes to nuclear or is really as straightforward as nuclear failing on one or all of cost/skill/payoff?
Of course someone who knows these countries can tell me I'm wrong and I'll accept that, but I worry that the reasoning is along the lines of 'because they don't have the same problems as the West, they don't have a problem', where the 'problems of the West' are the only things we would think to look for.
Not sure about energy policy in those countries in general, but I would be shocked if they had fossil fuel lobbies.
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China at least already seems to use more nuclear than us, so my read is that they are already defaulting to pragmatism. Less sure about India I guess. My read in general is that somewhat poorer countries have less qualms with this sort of thing but I could be wrong.
To be clear I was saying less "If we had fewer qualms they would have fewer qualms" and more "they seem to already have few enough qualms that the cost/skill/payoff trade is all that matters"
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