Nuclear, New & Clear

The tall chimneys of Haiyang, a small coastal city in Shandong Province, are no longer billowing smoke this winter. The long lines of coal trucks that once jostled and beeped their way through the city’s streets are now just a memory as all of the city’s 12 boiler rooms, which had supplied its residents with heating for decades, have been laid idle.

With a population of around 200,000, the county-level city was unfamiliar to outsiders until its new heating method made it a national headline. This winter,