On top of all this, the new government announced ambitious plans on May 25th to build 40 new fast-breeder nuclear-power stations in Russia over the next 30 years.

ECONOMIST: Russia

In the 1970s and 1980s the federal government poured billions of dollars into the Synthetic Fuels Corporation to develop liquid and gas fuel from coal, and into the fast-breeder nuclear reactor.

ECONOMIST: How the government can help things along

And the fast-breeder type of nuclear reactor in which plutonium was used as fuel is no longer economic.

ECONOMIST: The nuclear industry