Yes, China has 40 GWe of nuclear power coming on-line in the next 5 years. The United States currently has 97 GWe of nuclear capacity, and China currently has 13 GWe.
But China is also building 40 GWe of coal plants each year.
This is what happens when you take 500 million peasants and turn them into urban factory workers within a period of 30 years. Demand grows so quickly that even the world's largest nuclear plant construction program will only account for a fraction of demand growth.
So, not that that matters for the absolute pollution, but if that >50% is correct, their mix will improve.
Also, they try to build those plants far away from cities. That, hopefully, will spread pollution.
That PDF also states that those plans may not be implemented, as a) coal companies lose money in China because the government fixed electricity prices and b) the public doesn't want their pollution.
On the negative side, their absolute pollution will likely go up, and the gap with the western world will go up even more (elsewhere, new coal plants will often replace older, more polluting ones)
Mind explaining what those are?
http://inhabitat.com/chinese-government-bans-outdoor-bbqs-in...
My impression here in Beijing is that people are highly dissatisfied with the pollution situation. They don't want lung cancer and they don't want their kids breathing this crap.
That being said, the government is taking steps to address the issue. Specifically, due to an outcry on Weibo last year about having to get PM2.5 numbers from the US embassy's twitter feed and iPhone app (twitter is blocked, but screenshots of the iPhone app were pasted on weibo), the government here has started reporting pollution numbers in major cities around the country. So there's reporting now.
Second, they've forced the state-owned oil companies to retool to start outputting cleaner gasoline, moved big polluting industry out of the cities (steel plants, etc.), closed down barbecue pits, ended the sale of some of the more polluting coal briquettes that used to be common, and are trying to get construction sites to keep the dust down.
All of those steps are helping, but not reversing the trend (so far as I can tell or have heard). There is a push to move from coal-burning power plants to gas-powered power plants, but they need to find the gas (via fracking or other means).
Is there an outcry? There are certainly people posting about the pollution on Weibo, which is China's twitter. There are also plenty of people emigrating to the US, if they can afford it (voting with their feet, even if they can't vote here). But I think for people to do more than that, they'd need to see the government just not giving a damn. So perhaps the attitude is 'wait and see'?
Hope this helps.
By the way, one of my Beijing buddies said of the Shanghai smog: "In Beijing, we call this Tuesday."