If the gas industry stops (greatly minimizes) its leaks.

But rather than looking for new places to use gas we should be looking for places we can go from petroleum to renewable electricity. Many of our trains already run on electricity, we generate that electricity on board with diesel generators. We could, as well, pull the electricity from overhead wires as much of the rest of the world does.

Then, when we look at replacing a coal plant, first calculate how much of the capacity can be replaced with renewables. Add the wind, solar and geothermal that makes sense and then fill in with NG.

This isn’t unabashed good news for everyone of course, and Bloomberg NEF my be a case of someone more worried about their business model disappearing than CO2 reducing. Removing China’s1 billion tonnes, which isn’t too far off the entire coal capacity of most of the EU, highlights how inconsequential European efforts are. EU targets of 80% decarb, which were unlikely to be ever achieved by 2050, can now be replaced with more realistic targets of 50% by 2030. Let’s remember that 1 trillion tons of carbon is the maximum burn by 2040 according to the IPCC. Let’s use as little carbon as possible, as soon as possible. The logical choice is to pragmatically use gas instead of coal, instead of spinning coal out in the hope something else will come along that’s perfect, but currently unachievable economically, politically or physically. That describes the current state of play of nuclear, renewables, energy storage and CCS.
What would appear to be achievable by 2040 are even more savings from substituting not only gas for coal, but gas for oil in marine, trucking railroad and mining internal combustion.

“The Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research(IGCAR) is responsible for the design of this reactor. As of 2007 the
reactor was expected to begin functioning in 2010.[2]As of April 2011, it was expected to be commissioned in 2012. [3]As of July 2012, it was expected to begin operations in 2013.As of February 2013, it was expected to begin operations in September 2014.[4]Total costs, originally estimated at 3500 crore (35 billion) Rupees are now estimated at 5,677 crore (56 billion) Rs.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_Fast_Breeder_Reactor

And while looking I ran across this bit that was news to me…

“Some news agencies stated that in 2012, the Department of Atomic Energy for the first time admitted that the deaths of some employees and their dependents at the Kalpakkam nuclear site were caused by multiple myeloma, a rare form of bone marrow cancer linked to nuclear radiation.
The DAE acknowledged that nine people, including three employees working at the Madras Atomic Power Station at Kalpakkam died of multiple myeloma and bone cancer between 1995 and 2011. This information came to light in response to a Right to Information (RTI) inquiry from October 2011. The DAE had previously stonewalled all previous requests for information.[5]BARC director R K Sinha dismissed press reports regarding cancer deaths around the Kalpakkam atomic power plant near Chennai caused by radiation as baseless.[6] ”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madras_Atomic_Power_Station

It will be interesting to see how India decides to spend its money going forward.

Since China put together its earlier nuclear plans the price of wind and solar generation has greatly fallen. It’s a brand new economic environment in which nuclear is getting shoved aside.

The leaders of China do numbers very well. They know how to calculate both the cost per kWh and the amount of time needed to bring new generation on line.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generation/Plans-For-New-Reactors-Worldwide/

Though you, dear Joshua, may belief yourself to be a competent writer in your mother tongue, more gentle mockery may lay ahead for you, as a subsequence of, let’s say, the limited editing applied to articles published in CleanTechnica.

Nuclear is irrelevant to the dilemma, simply because the plants take too long to build. There is no such thing as a nuclear crash programme.