Atomic Insights

Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer

Is Atomic Insights Being Blocked in China?

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Every once in a while, I like to share this global view of the visitors to Atomic Insights. It is rewarding to know that the discussions we host end up reaching so many corners of the world.

It is no surprise that we do not have any regular readers in Greenland or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but it is a bit surprising to see that China is a huge white spot. That color indicates that not a single visitor came from a country with a population of about 1.4 billion people and a larger population of internet users than the total population of most other countries. Are there any Chinese readers? Can they even gain access to this site? Please speak up if you have any answers to these questions.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. It seems that your blog gets about 15 times as many hits as mine for a given period.
    Not that I mind. Atomic Insights is a vastly more worthy effort than my sporadic postings will ever be. In fact, Atomic Insights deserves far more attention than it already receives.
    I don’t know what’s happening with China. I get occasional hits from that polity. Might just be a temporary statistical fluctuation, although it does seem curious.

  2. Great to see Canada is #2 of all the countries viewing Atomic Insights, in spite of our much smaller population. Maybe we can expect to see more articles related to Canadian Nuclear issues.

  3. You have at least one Mainland China based reader. However, your site can only be accessed by VPN; so my IP address is located in the UK or US. Hong Kong can likely access this site though.

      • That would be my guess too – I don’t think, probably, the Chinese govt particularly targeted Atomic Insights. It seems more likely to me that they just did a block of all IPs or domains hosted by blogspot.com.

  4. It would be an odd thing if Atomic Insights (or any other western pro-nuclear blog for that matter) is blocked in the People’s Republic, considering that just about the only context in which China is mentioned on them is to heap praise on the pro-nuclear wisdom of their engineer-dominated decision making class.

  5. It could be possible the whole blogger system is banned in China. It would be interesting to know if they whitelist sites or blacklist sites as their strategy for controlling the flow of information.

  7. I know that when Whitney was in China; the local university students were blocked from sites like facebook, skype, etc. She had to use the GT VPN to share with us real time.

  9. One additional small piece of data – The Energy from Thorium Blog Site
    http://energyfromthorium.com/
    is reachable from China (Singapore) and passes the nice China accessibility test
    http://www.websitepulse.com/help/testtools.china-test.html
    while the Atomic Insights Blog does not.
    I suspect that it would probably not be wise to read too much into this “fact”.
    China dominates the world in rare earths mining and refining. Worldwide experience is that where you find rare earths you also generally find Thorium, but I am unaware of reliable estimates for China’s holdings of Thorium fuel.
    Would the Chinese engineer energy managers allow selective access for Chinese students to Thorium Blogs and Forums while blocking US mainstream nuclear power Blogs?
    We have recently had postings on the Energy From Thorium Forum from members of the Chinese Thorium Molten Salt Reactor effort.
    Thorium may still be having problems getting a hearing before Dr. Chu and decision makers in the current US administration but the Chinese appear to be listening (and organizing a well funded and well led campaign to build molten salt Thorium reactors on a rapid development schedule).
    (American thorium advocates wish the gifted Chinese team well but aspire to build LFTR first in the USA).

    • Robert, as I suspected before, the whole Blogger (or blogspot.com domain) system is completely blocked by China except in certain locations like Hong Kong. Too bad so many Chinese don’t know what they’re missing.

  10. My blog has just recorded a visit from China in the stats. Maybe they’ve stopped blocking blogger.