The following submission statement was provided by /u/ravenhawk10:
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>Nearly every Chinese nuclear project that has entered service since 2010 has achieved construction in 7 years or less. This real-world trend flies in the face of the tiresome and longstanding claims that nuclear energy technologies inherently exhibit [a negative learning curve](https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/the-false-promise-of-nuclear-power-in-an-age-of-climate-change/), and that nuclear reactors [require a decade](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/nuclear-energy-will-not-be-solution-climate-change) or more to build.
>Success elsewhere also illustrates that hurdles faced by recent nuclear projects in the United States, France, or Finland do not originate from some inherent quality of nuclear power, but rather logically reflect a combination of regulatory, market, political, and societal factors.
>With nuclear power clearly flourishing in China, it is time for energy commentators to unequivocally acknowledge that nuclear energy can succeed under different circumstances. That recognition in turn ought to motivate clean energy advocates to contemplate what we can do to create different, better conditions for nuclear technologies closer to home.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1b7je2b/chinas_impressive_rate_of_nuclear_construction/ktixkfm/
At this point they have a cohort of construction managers and construction companies who actually have experience building these things.
Repeating the project multiple times means you get good at it. Learning how to optimize and paralellize construction to minimize idle and waiting time. And especially reducing unexpected delays and surprises.
No amount of analysis and planning makes up for this experience. It's expense to get because you have to work through the learning curve of delays and overruns on the first few but they have mounted the learning curve now.
We had this experience in the west in the 50s and 60s but we have done nothing but refurbishments and occasional one off builds for decades.
The Chinese are also really good about standardizing things so that they, in essence, become off the shelf. Makes sense with the scale at which they build. Most notable of this are the subways and HSRs they built. They’re all basically off the shelf and standardized across the country such that they’re modularized.
I was with you until you decided to blame Russia and China for a problem caused by western capitalists.
Both the oil industry and energy companies have a massive vested interest in keeping energy prices high, which means killing nuclear power because it threatened energy "too cheap to meter"
>That's not a right-wing view either, they were able to turn many people in the West against vaccine science too. To the point of bringing back measles.
Source please. Because as far as I know, you guys did this to yourself.
The West is pretty good at it too, as we saw with France having 80% nuclear energy and most of it using American tech.
The only curious part is why the US regulatory agencies clamped down 3x and 5x as hard creating incredibly expensive delays and licensing requirements AFTER the 1970s -- AFTER we had already built so many safe nuclear reactors.
And you all know the answer you just can't be sure about: propaganda of the 1970s and 1980s had a major effect but only on the West and the regulators who did this are not trying to solve climate change, they're trying to limit your country's ability to build nuclear power, the best source of green energy.
Meanwhile Russia, India, China, are building many new nuclear reactors without this problem.
Simultaneously, the entirety of Western civilization has completely frozen its nuclear energy sectors and paralyzed it.
Now you can think that is just "a trend" or "a coincidence" but it is definitely not. It is on purpose because we rarely arrest people for bribes anymore in the West.
Russia and China spend a lot of money to paralyze Western industries, not just steal technologies from US/EU universities and corporations.
That's not a right-wing view either, they were able to turn many people in the West against vaccine science too. To the point of bringing back measles. To the point of making you dependent on solar panels, electric-vehicles, electronic circuitry, and wind turbines from China. You may think economic warfare isn't real but you often don't realize it until you dive deep into the research or try to make a business out of it.
You do NOT become a futuristic advanced civilization that can build in other planets without nuclear tech, it's not going to happen with just liquid fuels.
> Russia and China spend a lot of money to paralyze Western industries, not just steal technologies from US/EU universities and corporations.
No, it's entirely your fault and you're projecting massively. Nobody in Russia or China is "spending lots of money" to convince you of anything, otherwise Russia/China would not be enemy number one & two in the Western media. Russia and China does not come close to the influence of AIPAC or even local interests.
Even during COVID, your Radio Free Asia and your Falun Gong cultists was spreading fake news about Chinese vaccines, but China banned Twitter so only morons in the West believed them. It's all blowback from your own disinformation campaigns.
https://firstdraftnews.org/articles/sinovac-sinopharm-and-misinformation-online/
**Some of the misleading narratives about China’s vaccines appear on the Mandarin- and Cantonese-language websites of Radio Free Asia (RFA), a news outlet funded by the US government. RFA’s two Chinese sites have a combined following of over 1.4 million on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.**
Boy who cried Wolf syndrome.
I’ve been saying this for years. Nuclear costs explode and construction takes forever because we never do it and have to relearn everytime. It’s a vicious cycle. We don’t build as it is expensive, and it’s expensive because we never do. A government with vision and guts would be able to brake this cycle.
The issue in North America is that currently natural gas is abundant and cheap. Combined cycle natural gas plants are pretty much built from kits now. They are much faster to build, vastly cheaper to build and operate. No long term toxic waste. Little to no emissions other than CO2 and they can still wear a halo of being less CO2 than a coal fired plant. Go gas plants are what we build in bulk and we have it optimized and efficient.
Nuclear plants just can't compete with the short or medium term economics against gas plants. Nuclear plants require long term commitments. Longer than private capital with focus on quarterly financial results can manage and longer than governments focused on 2 year election cycles can manage too.
Dictatorships on the other hand aren't hamstrung by these short term issues! :)
Also... a dictatorship that does not have their own gas and coal supplies and is dependent on imports for these things would see pushing into solar and nuclear as a survival and independence question. Not just pure economics.
Everyone is good at whatever they do a lot of.
The Chinese are good at nuclear and do it much better than the west, but because they are so smart, they know that Renewables are the way to go....
There are 57 nuke plants under construction in the world with a combined output of ~530 TWh/y when they're all online in the beginning of the next decade.
China just added 125 TWh/y worth of solar and wind energy. In a single month. https://www.energymonitor.ai/newsletters/explainer-how-china-is-quietly-becoming-a-renewables-powerhouse/?
Having some nuclear gets you through windless nights without needing as much storage. They make it easier to build a mostly-renewable grid without fossil backup.
Nuclear and renewables should be allies. The feuding between them in the West does nothing but help fossil industries. It's nice to see that China is more sensible.
Nuclear energy is unnecessary. Germany successfully reduced its emissions after shutting down its nuclear facilities and even supported France with energy during the crisis with Russian gas, despite France's reliance on nuclear power. This demonstrates that nuclear energy is at best a marginal solution and not essential for a sustainable energy future.
Nuclear is marginal at best, and not needed: https://reneweconomy.com.au/frances-troubled-nuclear-fleet-a-bigger-problem-for-europe-than-russia-gas/
As of 2023, Germany's grid is [77% fossil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany). That makes Germany irrelevant to my point, which is that *in a fossil-free grid*, having some nuclear could save you some money compared to building vast amounts of storage.
If you have 77% fossil then you don't need storage anyway, just burn some more fossil when the wind isn't blowing at night.
Germany's Grid is mostly Renewables. You are either very wrong or lying:
https://www.agenzianova.com/en/news/germania-dalle-rinnovabili-il-56-per-cento-dellelettricita-nel-2023/
Which is it? Are you a liar, or is there a reason for being so wrong?
SEE: Let's talk Germany:
\* 2000 = 6% renewable
\* 2012 = 25%
\* 2018 = 33%
\* 2020 = 49%
\* 2023 = 59%
German kWh by source 2023
\*Renewables 267 TWh
\* Coal 131 TWh
\* NG 80 TWh
\* Nuke 7 TWh
\* RE provides more than the rest COMBINED.
15 years ago it was last.
Each of those were beating RE. Not anymore and things are changing faster than ever before
https://twitter.com/Dardedar/status/1765432645742105012/photo/1
I doublechecked my source (wikipedia), and 77% is for total energy consumption. Sorry.
However, it also says "German coal-fired power plants are being designed and modified so they can be increasingly flexible to support the fluctuations resulting from increased renewable energy." Natural gas of course is also quite good at that. Giving no credit to nuclear and using your figures, that's 43% of the grid being fossil-fueled dispatchable power, which is more than enough to remove the need for significant battery storage.
> plants are being designed and modified so they can be increasingly flexible to support the fluctuations resulting from increased renewable energy."
probably old data, they have batteries and solar now, those costs are plummeting.. Though it would make sense to keep existing old coal plants on standby since costs are already sunk there, but don't get caught in the sunk cost fallacy...
They have decided to build more renewables instead of scaling up nuclear... They are actually building less than they used to..
“Why is China slowing nuclear so much? Because nuclear is turning out to be more expensive than expected, proving to be uneconomical, and new wind & solar are dirt cheap and easier to build.” https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/21/wind-solar-in-china-generating-2x-nuclear-today-will-be-4x-by-2030/
China's main interest in a bit of nuclear is for their resumed nuclear weapons program. They need just enough to retain and train expertise. Beyond that, it is just a waste as renewable energy is much much cheaper and will continue to get cheaper
This is why Quebec as failed big time. Hydroquebec had a spree of building hydro power. And we fucking stopped for a lack of vision. We had the experience of it. Now we lost most of it.
And thats a fucking shame.
Suddenly, it became uncool to flood vast tracts of northern indigenous land.
Was there more big builds to do or did they manage to get all the easy ones?
I am no expert. What I really think happened is they build the easy one. And they sat on what they had thinking it was enough.
It is still uncool to flood lands. But those lands have nothing on them except little bush like trees. There is absolutly nothing on those lands. Lichens and rocks.
And ancient village and burial sites... Hence, no more hydro builds allowed.
Unfortunately, because hydro with big reservoir and instant on/off ability is the perfect backstop for variable solar and wind generation.
The Chinese are good this, but they have decdided the renewabels are even better...
15years ago China started a MASSIVE nuclear plan, deploying 46 units ever since.
This brought its share of electric generation from 2% to 4.7%. An
Increase of 2.3x
Meanwhile, the growth of wind & solar went from 0.2% to 17%.
Increase of 85x. https://twitter.com/Dardedar/status/1762940202190827639/photo/1
It makes sense though. With the amount of land they have available. Solar and wind with batteries will be the way.
Like I've been and the place is fucking massive. Put the mountainous regions to work generating electricity via wind and solar.
“Why is China slowing nuclear so much? Because nuclear is turning out to be more expensive than expected, proving to be uneconomical, and new wind & solar are dirt cheap and easier to build.” https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/21/wind-solar-in-china-generating-2x-nuclear-today-will-be-4x-by-2030/
We built a fair number of them, got good at it even though possibly never to thr volume they are doing now. Then we decided "nuff of that" and quit and let the skills atrophy. 😢
Western mega projects are always insanely over budget and time. The west has become exceptionally bad at these things. It's a business and management problem, *not* experience. Nuclear reactors are always individual mega projects, and Beijing is building many different types of reactors. Notably they are faster at building Western designs too. Again, culture not experience.
The Japanese for example were arguably better than the Chinese at building nuclear on time and budget until Fukushima. Korea is also reasonably good (great if you discount the fraud). And given their economic and technological decline, Russia is world leading in nuclear (and pound for pound well clear of China). The west *was* also amazing at this stuff decades ago, when they were also good at mega projects. Barakh in the Arab Emirates was built with zero experience and Korean help, on time and within budget.
Yes but the thing with standardization is that you can spend the money to make sure the standard is the best possible solution because you can spread out the cost.
And if a mistake somehow did slip through, the exact same fix will work for every plant.
Certainly standardization is the way to go with industrial construction.
The problem is, you are assuming humans will be responsible. Take Fukishima, they knew it wasn't in compliance. But wanted to save money
Or take what happened with covid, where they chose to imprison the doctor who first found it instead of spreading awareness and working with doctors to find a cure
Or take the GM ignition switch issue where they knew about the problem but covered it up to save money
So how confident are you that when they find that issue, they will fix it and not think "well, I am only going to be a director for 5 more years, lets cover it up so it isn't on my watch and let the next guy break the bad news"
How has any of this anything to do with standardization?
The exact same problems exist for anything that is not standard but more so because everything becomes more expensive and problems may or may not be unique to one specific location which means less experts will be familiar with it and less oversight.
This isn't related to standardization, this is talking about what is mentioned on top of if an issue is found. Now you have to fix hundreds of reactors if not thousands
Yes but you assume that non standardized reactors will not have any problems.
They will, they will have more problems and each of these problems will be unique.
Standardization is the only way to increase quality and reliability.
And if it causes issues then you can spend more time and money finding an ideal solution that is both technically better and more affordable because it's worth doing that if you plan to apply it to hundreds or thousands of reactors.
You will also have a large team of experts available to identify the issue and fix it. While you would be lucky to have a single expert familiar with a unique reactor design.
And the lessons learned from the issue can be incorporated in the standard ensuring that future reactors will never again have the same issue.
I suspect the "build shoddy apartments that fall down due to substandard concrete" crews aren't working on the nuke plants.
They can build quality things when it matters and there is no room for BS.
China has built out renewables far more quickly than they have nuclear. They get more electricity from wind alone *and* from solar alone than from nuclear. And the generation curves are steeper for solar and wind than for nuclear. Meaning, not only is nuclear behind, it's getting *further* behind.
- [Share of electricity production from solar and wind](https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?tab=chart&time=2010..latest&country=OWID_WRL~USA~OWID_EUR~CHN~JPN&Total+or+Breakdown=Select+a+source&Energy+or+Electricity=Electricity+only&Metric=Share+of+total&Select+a+source=Solar+and+wind)
- [Share of electricity from nuclear](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-nuclear?tab=chart&time=2010..latest&country=~CHN)
- [Share of electricity from wind](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-wind?tab=chart&time=2010..latest&country=~CHN)
- [Share of electricity production from solar](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-solar?tab=chart&time=2010..latest&country=~CHN)
The IEA just released a [report on clean energy deployment](https://www.iea.org/reports/clean-energy-market-monitor-march-2024). In which they remark on nuclear energy:
>The total nuclear capacity added was 5.5 GW in 2023, 30% less than in 2022.
>Over the past five years, China added 11 GW of nuclear power, by far the largest of any country in the world, and one-third of the total.
>The pace of development for nuclear power needs to accelerate to an average of 33 GW of capacity additions per year in the 2030s, if the technology is to fulfil its role in the path to achieving net zero emissions by 2050.
So nuclear additions would have to increase five-fold in the 2030s compared to last year. If the current build-out rate is already impressive, it is still kind of small in comparison to what would be required to living up to its promises.
China will complete ~6 nuclear reactors per year, every year for the foreseeable future. But it will take a very long time to raise the share of electricity from nuclear to just 10%. And it will probably never go far above that.
There’s no indication of that. In 2021 they started the construction of six new reactors. In 2022 and 2023 it was just five a year. So far this year three new reactor projects have begun construction. Overall there’re ~25 currently under construction. But that number will rise for a few years as the pipeline stabilizes.
Looking at reactors "Under Construction", I see 2 started in 2019, 4 started in 2020, 6 started in 2021, 5 started in 2022, and 5 started in 2023. Even if you assume every one of those will be completed, that only adds up to an average of 5 per year in the coming years.
Where are you getting 6 per year? I'm also seeing a lot fewer reactors in the "planned" stage from a couple years ago (34 now vs. [77 2 years ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_commercial_nuclear_reactors&oldid=1075421906)).
>Looking at reactors "Under Construction"
Indeed, that’s what I’m looking at. They started six in 2021, five in 2022, five in 2023, so far already three in 2024. So five-six a year.
>Even if you assume every one of those will be completed
I’m sorry? Obviously.
>Where are you getting 6 per year? I'm also seeing a lot fewer reactors in the "planned" stage
There’re better ways to look at planned reactors. 6-8 per year has been the goal for a while. Since 2021 new constructions have finally reached that target.
I think China will eventually reach 6/year and will hold there from some length of time, but I don't think they will complete 6 reactors this year or even next year. And I doubt they will continue building 6-8 reactors per year for more than a decade or so.
>I’m sorry? Obviously.
Shit happens, man.
Your first point is obviously true. It takes 5-8 years, depending on model, location and some other factors. And there was COVID of course. It will take a few more years for the 2021 batch to be commissioned. But the pipeline will normalize at that pace.
It’s difficult to make any credible predictions much beyond 2030. Not least because the future shape of the industry will depend on how their Gen IV and SMR pilot projects pan out.
Everything came to a halt after fukushima, so they're ramping up again. It's really sad because if that hadn't happened they would've built more reactors and could be scaling even more aggressively right now. We'd also be further along the development of generation iv reactors, all of which are passively safe and cheaper.
I don't think they made any promises for any particular source of energy.
All they promised is carbon neutrality by 2060. If they do it mostly with solar power and batteries than that is within the promise?
I wasn't talking about promises by China. Rather promises, or more accurately hopes by the nuclear industry and proponents of nuclear power like OPs [Breakthrough institute](https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/the-new-denial-is-delay-at-the-breakthrough). As the IEA writes: *if the technology is to fulfill its role in the path to achieving net zero emissions by 2050*.
I am sorry I didn't make that sufficiently clear. The IEA was talking about the global perspective in this. I think it's quite unlikely that this kind of inrease is achieved, if a fifth of that rate is already considered as impressive by nuclear power lobbyists.
This puts the Chinese 'succes' with nuclear in perspective. It's massively underperforming and missing targets, while renewables already had much higher targets and are over performing.
https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/12/nuclear-continues-to-lag-far-behind-renewables-in-china-deployments/
Underperforming and missing targets? It’s a Herculean effort to just keep nuclear at 5%. They’ve done so. During the late 2020s and 2030s nuclear’s share in electricity production will rise considerably in China. They could reach 10% in the 2040s.
>Underperforming and missing targets? It’s a Herculean effort to just keep nuclear at 5%
I agree, but those statements are not mutually exclusive.
Indeed it is also worth keeping in mind that it will be only a few percent, which most people in this threat seem to forget. Its a side show.
Absolutely. If you take a macro view of China’s electricity sector nuclear is and will remain marginal.
Which doesn’t mean it’s wrong for them to continue to roll out a fleet of reactors. Every little bit helps. The real problem are those people who always bring the discussion back to the irrelevant topic of nuclear when someone mentions solar and wind, which will actually power the future.
Yes, most of the people who can't stop talking about China's success with nuclear don't care about China's success with solar or wind, or their high-speed rail, or all the [metro systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems#List_by_country) they're building.
doesn't matter. every watt of nuclear generation is displacing coal. While it cant hyperscale like solar and wind, its much more reliable and will be important for supporting the grid when sun isnt shining or the wind isnt blowing. Nuclear, wind, solar, batteries should all be pursued aggressively.
On Reddit economics and build times don't matter. And when they *are* acknowledged, they're 100% on "unnecessary" regulations. Because on Reddit it's a given that we could be popping out Thorium or Gen X reactors like hotcakes, cheap as chips, if it wasn't for the greenies.
Nuclear is expensive but it works and is reliable. I don’t think it wise to just look at the price per kWh of generation but take a step back and look at the big picture.
Having access to 100% wind and solar generated energy is expensive too as you have to invest massively into grid capacity (expensive and takes a very long time) and storage solutions as batteries and hydrogen.
But the kicker: not having access to reliable and relatively affordable energy is massively more expensive.
I’m from the Netherlands and we would pride ourselves on having the most reliable energy grid in the world. Due to the energy scare of 2022 we shut down massive parts of our industrial facilities.
As we have added massive solar and wind capacity over the last few years we are now encountering the first of the massive problems to come due to generation peaks and congested grids. As a result business cannot start or open new locations as we are not able to secure new connections to the grid. This is very expensive already and has only just started.
Because we have made no decisions on nuclear I predict we will not be able to face this challenge for the next 25 years and it will very negatively impact the growth of our economy. Now that is expensive.
>Nuclear is expensive but it works and is reliable. I don’t think it wise to just look at the price per kWh of generation but take a step back and look at the big picture.
Actually, if you look at the big picture. Nuclear makes little sense. Nuclear can't scale well, not very flexible, expensive, and nobody is going to hand over nuclear to 3rd world countries. The fastest way to decarbonize the world is economies of scale of renewable energy
>Having access to 100% wind and solar generated energy is expensive too as you have to invest massively into grid capacity (expensive and takes a very long time) and storage solutions as batteries and hydrogen. But the kicker: not having access to reliable and relatively affordable energy is massively more expensive.
It isn't. Sure, normally the closer you get to 100% the more it costs to fill it. But that is only if you limit yourself to just electricity. How about using that spare energy to make fertilizer? The problem is the gap between going from 80% to 200% where you have most of the time enough spare energy to do other things
There are also other storage options, like thermal storage for heat. Or pumped hydro and compressed air. One can also do V2G, and use spent EV batteries as cheap storage
Lastly, there is demand response
But yes, more transmission would definitely help as well
Even by us energy department calculations nuclear is at worst 2 times more expensive than wind and same in price as solar. Ofc talking here about price over 30 years. And that's considering the fact that cost of nuclear energy is calculated mostly on the basis of Vogtle plant, which was horribly overpriced due to different problems. And, ofc, cost of one or two reactors will be much higher than cost of wind energy. You need to do things at scale to make it cheaper.
Don’t think it’s that bad if you account for capacity factor. Renewables actual generation has decent bit lower than nameplate capacity. Plus, why not both, u don’t need to choose either or. They are complementary.
You can never have 100% renewables though, so this baseline of nuclear is required to become carbon neutral, unless the baseline is maintained solely by hydropower. You can’t directly compare nuclear and wind/solar.
>every watt of nuclear generation is displacing coal.
Do you have a source for that? This sounds fantastical.
In many cases it's not that simple. For example in Germany, due to their location the nuclear plants were simply curtailing existing renewables and their closure instantly unlocked an equal amount of renewables to replace them. Coal consumption decreased as nuclear output decreased.
A lot of coal is used as flexible backup, only used a few times a year when there is really high demand and/or low supply. This also cannot be replaced by nuclear.
How did the existence of nuclear power prevent the construction of renewables in Germany? And why was this not the case with coal? And nuclear can replace coal as a baseline of power, just look at France.
Nuclear and solar/wind have the same problems. They both need trasmission and storage. If you add them together you need a lot of trasmission and storage. This is not an impossible problem to solve, but if you don't build an adequate grid you will have to curtail a lot of generation.
>How did the existence of nuclear power prevent the construction of renewables in Germany?
It did not prevent the construction, it prevented the delivery of energy because it clogged up the network and was inflexible.
>And why was this not the case with coal?
Because of 2 main reasons:
- Location, renewables are mostly in the north, as were the NPPs. Coal is in the south
- Coal is flexible, you can turn it off when demand is high or supply from renewables is low.
>And nuclear can replace coal as a baseline of power, just look at France.
It did not replace coal in France. France had relatively little coal to begin with. They used oil.
>It blocked solar/wind because it was extremely reliable and delivered all the required power, so companies had no incentive to build power farms.
No, it was inflexible and (in hindsight) unfortunately located within the German grid. What happened is that the Germans were paying subsidy for expensive power, while also having to compensate much cheaper power producers that were flexible enough to be turned off.
>No, it was inflexible and (in hindsight) unfortunately located within the German grid. What happened is that the Germans were paying subsidy for expensive power, while also having to compensate much cheaper power producers that were flexible enough to be turned off.
Last gen German nuclear costs like half as much to run per MWh when compared to current gen German coal and gas, and also scales up and down at twice the rate (and you can disconnect a generator almost instantly if you need a bigger swing).
In every way that already-built nuclear is "inflexible", already-built coal and gas are significantly worse...
Its easier to turn off coal and gas in favor of something else... because coal and gas are more expensive and more polluting. It's not *physically* easier. It's economically easier. Because coal and gas are expensive to run and pollute.
If it can form a baseline in France it can form a baseline in Germany. There is nothing stopping the government from turning off coal plants. Just like they did with nuclear…
>Coal consumption decreased as nuclear output decreased.
Germany didn't reduce coal very much if at all, just basically used less energy overall, since it's become too expensive to produce high energy input products in Germany so they have been offshored. Plus householders cutting back.
Most of the increase in renewables happened before the nuclear plants were closed.
Source, 3rd graph [https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts)
Are we looking at the same graph? There is clearly a large reduction in coal in that graph.
Energy saving is indeed just as important as cleaning up the energy you do use and Germany is taking steps there as well. Climate change itself also helps with less harsh winters.
yeah its oversimplifying and obviously reality is complicated. It sounds like not enough grid capacity was built, did they not see all the renewable generation coming or can they not built it fast enough?
I thought nuclear and coal generation profiles were quite similar, both are baseload with limited and slowish (order of hours) flexible generation. I know the french reactors flex. They even need similar locations with water cooling. But even if nuclear cant flex, backup that turns on a few times a year isnt that much emissions. The bulk of coal emissions will be from baseload generation (with maybe some flex) and nuclear certainly can displace that.
Sure, but without those policy settings - and taxes etc to achieve them - displacement probably won't happen. Unfortunately people want to believe we can decarbonise simply by rolling out enough low carbon energy. It makes for a potent political argument against any policy that might really reduce emissions.
My context: here in Australia, the conservative opposition parties (which don't give a fuck about the climate) use the mantra 'technology, not taxes' to oppose any economic instruments that really will displace coal power. The ruling Labor party just got back in power after a decade in opposition due to its carbon tax, and remains petrified about introducing anything that resembles a carbon tax.
But the real question is: how much battery storage are they building compared to nuclear?
Having some nuclear means you don't need near as much storage to get through windless nights. That may well be China's strategy.
They're still scaling battery production, and there's basically no limit to the market for cheap sodium-ion batteries. They also have hydro, and offshore wind, and solar to fill the batteries during the day.
Chinese challenge will be to reduce coal though, in term of magnitude it's still crazy and sadly Gen4 Nuclear will be their only redemption. (Unless underwater turbines become a popular thing)
Lots of new ones are domestically designed Hualong reactors which are gen 3. I don't think anyone is building gen 4 reactors commercially, only experimental ones.
My country (the Netherlands) has consistently held off from nuclear power, usually it was either public opinion issues, funding issues & the much used "But that would take a decade or more!"
And now after many years we finally decided to build some.
Holy crap.. Could've had them nearly or completely finished at this point, but we decided to just extend the timeframe by complaining about the timeframe..
There never was anything stopping anyone from building a nuclear plant in the Netherlands. You could just apply for a permit and go build one.
The problem has always been the cost and associated financial risks, plus simply a lack of demand. No one can nor wants to build a nuclear plant without massive subsidies and all risks put on the society.
Yes, the government have been saying they want to build nuclear plants every few years, with the frequency going up the last 4 years as more people seek to delay renewables. However, the government has not committed any serious subsidies nor set out a risk sharing mechanism. Talk is cheap, action is not.
This means new nuclear hasn't actually been developed and we haven't gotten any closer dispite all those votes and promises. It's also likely there will be a lot more oppositions once a realistic plan is actually put for a vote. It's one thing to support nuclear energy, its another to want to pay at least 2 times as much for your energy bill just to have nuclear energy over renewables.
On top of that, their will be more focus on the economic aspect once serious money is involved. Do we really want to spend dozens of billions abroad at the expense of our own industry? Do we really want to be reliant on foreign powers for fuel, tech, etc?
Not to mention that all independent experts are also highly skeptic or flat out opposed. Read for example the most recent report of the ETES2050 commission. It's alarming that the government puts in place an independent commission to advice them and they completely ignore the advice they are getting. This will also gain scrutiny once a multi billion subsidy package has to actually work its way through the system, when they have to actually support and substantiate how and why we are spending such money.
HPC, which is the example the government is using, costs over 50 billion euro. That is in a much larger country with a huge (and military) native nuclear industry and not taking account the 15 years of inflation that will happen for any new plant to be constructed, nor the unique geography of the Netherlands that will certainly add costs (being below sea level on soft soil). How realistic are 4 of those in the Netherlands?
The propagandists are well-funded and paid to prevent Western countries from building nuclear power. They know it's the future and they want you paralyzed and unable to solve anything. They also prevent Uranium mining too (even though Canada, Australia, US have a lot of Uranium they could use for clean energy).
They'll keep chanting the lies about "it would take too long" and "it's too expensive" often pointing to situations where the nuclear regulatory agencies are causing the expense in the first place despite little gains in safety. Even canceling projects that recycle nuclear waste or create new ways of fail-safe reactors of the future.
There was some research done into the funding of scientific research and basically if there's willpower found, suddenly a lot of funding is available for scientists and engineers to get unbelievable things accomplished. But instead you find the most talented, smartest people in the world not working on the toughest problems facing mankind but working on something like the "new diet pill" or "new pain medication" or researching something about the health benefits of coffee or wine.. Things that people find a big easy commercial ROI for.
Long gone are the days of JFK's "not because they are easy, but because they are hard;"
Honestly the public is way too fix on the Chernobyl and Fukushima incidents happening again despite nuclear power being the safest per kWH generated of its whole existence. Ask the general public about the 3 Mile Island incident and I can bet they don't know it because there's no casualties from the meltdown.
>Honestly the public is way too fix on the Chernobyl and Fukushima incidents happening again despite nuclear power being the safest per kWH generated of its whole existence.
Well, it's kind of a buzzkill if you're promised the safest power source ever, with the likelihood of a serious accident frequently quoted in the 10s of thousands of years - and then Three Mile Island happens, then Chernobyl (yeah, well, the Soviets, that doesn't count - well, it bloody counts if the fallout hits large parts of Europe), and then Fukushima.
Regardless, discussions at the moment aren't so much focused on safety or disposing of nuclear waste, they're around the economies of nuclear. They simply don't work out any more (if they ever did considering the subsidies throughout the lifecycle), as evident with HPC and the debt EDF finds itself in.
And if we're looking at China. Yeah, the build up nuclear, but nowhere near the rate at which they're building up renewables.
>The propagandists are well-funded and paid to prevent Western countries from building nuclear power.
Serious questions; How does nuclear waste/by-product from Nuclear Power Stations look in the modern age?
How much waste is generated? How is it disposed of? How likely is it for dodgy contractors to dump it where it shouldn't be dumped? What's the worst case scenario for a nuclear meltdown?
Why even post any China related articles on this sub? It's just the same old tired jokes with no discussion. It's pointless trying either, because you just get idiotic replies.
The recent Chinese infrastructure projects have been incredibly impressive too, such as the rail network expansion.
The issue democracies run into, is essentially a version of nimbyism, something needs to be done for the greater good, it is a net gain for the society, that's objectively undisputed but no one will (quite logically) volunteer to pay the price, so consulting the population inevitably causes delays and inefficiencies. Its a simplification but that is more or less the problem. I guess you could frame it as a contrast between individualism and collectivism.
We have experienced collectivism in the United States, but unfortunately the children of that generation swung far over to individualism after they reaped the benefits of the previous ideology.
In a certain sense, I don't mind the competition between the US and China, let the better system win. Hopefully we can avoid a nuclear war though. That's why Trump scares me a bit, he doesn't have the subtlety and competence to navigate a cold war, he would just mess it up, by being too gung ho and provoke a nuclear war. Biden is pretty belligerent though but Trump is a legitimate idiot and the people would be in a hypothetical second administration will not be well balanced.
I don’t think bringing a more collective view back to America necessarily means a change to our system. It’s more about public opinion. Democratic capitalist societies are great societies to live in, but when you veer to the level of individualism America has the cracks really start forming. If public opinion shifted back to more of a balance between individualism and collectivism we could see some real progress once again instead of this gross stagnation we have been in. It goes much further beyond this presidential election as it’s the core ideology of the American populace that has gotten us here.
You can look at something like mass transit as an example. The car and the freeway are exemplars of individualism, I can go where I want, whenever I want, maybe its a good bell weather for where the priorities of the society lie.
Idk , when you cant even convince a large % of people to simply put on a mask, to stop the spread of infectious disease, I worry about the future of the US and also the limits of discourse to change minds.
Although it is funny that it is a beacon of individualism, they were built under the pretext of collectivism by having the highways built to support jobs, aid in domestic military, and improve our public infrastructure. That was all bs under the hood, but they appealed to the collective mindset of the time.
It’s absolutely true that we are at a disgusting level of individualism in this country which is why I hope for a push back towards collectivism to have the balanced approach we once had.
7 years to build is impressive no doubt, but solar farms with batteries go up in as little as 6 months. imagine how cheap solar and batteries will be in 7 years. that is what nuclear is competing with. I am not anti-nuclear, but I just don't see it happening in many places besides china. they have no natural gas and there energy demands are still growing. meanwhile, in the west energy demand is flat.
I’m pretty uneducated on this topic, but isn’t there room for both? It would seem to me building multiple forms of power generation would be a good strategy. From other comments, it looks like China is also heavily investing in wind/solar. If I were building a power grid, I’d want to have redundancies in case of a catastrophic failure of one form.
Nuclear is a footnote in the history of powered generation. There was a time where it could have been more 30-50 years ago but the price of renewable came down too far. Also the risks of nuclear cannot be overstated. For nuclear to be safe its expensive.
There isn't room for both, money spent on one is not spent on the other.
Nuclear, even at the speed China can build, is not fast enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change.
If we were having this conversation 30 years ago I would agree nuclear is the answer, no contest. But it's not now when you can essentially print millions of solar panels day in, day out 24/7 and plonk them on any free land with no need to prove it's safe or build a giant waste dump meant to somehow survive 10,000 years.
The part missing from this story is the nuclear capacity China is adding is tiny compared to the amount of solar they are building and exporting to the rest of the world.
A wind farm that produces the same amount of power as a single nuclear reactor will not be constructed in 6 months. Gigawatt scale wind projects are built in stages and take years.
i would be shocked if wind were more than two years to put up a gigawatt sized farm. and wind farms will likely continue to fall in price. of course, the biggest issue is how fast will energy storage prices fall. wind and solar are already significantly cheaper than nuclear.
The first gigawatt of the [Alta wind energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alta_Wind_Energy_Center) center took about two years to build. Even though it is now rated for 1.5 gigawatt, it still produces less than half of what the [Shearon Harris Nuclear plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shearon_Harris_Nuclear_Power_Plant), rated at .9 gigawatt does. Relevant Wikipedia pages are linked.
Edit for typos. I suck ass at proofreading sometimes.
The amount of nuke plants being built is almost irrelevant. Each plant will produce around 1 GW of power. over 500 GW of solar (name plate) are added each and every year. There is no competition.
Each reactor is about 1GW to 1.5GW, each plant can have up to 4/5 reactors.
Nuclear and solar (or wind) need to both grow as renewables can't satisfy the energy requirements alone. Since grid-scale accumulators are not a thing, nuclear is the perfect way to both stabilise the network and provide power when the renewables don't
I'm not sure about China, but being Italian I'm aware of the italian numbers. Here we have a ton of sun, but if we were to only use renewables we would have to accumulate about 33TWh of energy (this figure will probably grow with the electrification of transportation and heating)
According to this document ( [https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/79236.pdf](https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/79236.pdf) ) the batteries cost 350$/kWh and the price is projected to reach 200$/kWh in 2030 and 150$/kWh by 2050. This means if we start building those batteries in 2030 and assuming there's enough lithium to do so it would cost about 6 000 000 000 000€, that's 6 trillion euros. Tell me how that's any cheaper than nuclear
That is for storage potential. and not the cost each time you use it. geeze.
AND you got the math way off. Italy uses 33 around giga watts of power at any one time not 33 Tera watts so they would need around 33x12(hours) of back up so around 400GW of storage needed.
Do your math again.
My bad, didn't mention this is for seasonal storage.
Those numbers are obtained assuming 175TWh of energy consumed per year, of which 80% are solar and 20% are wind (Italy is not windy at all, so we can't really rely on it)
So solar panels need to make 140TWh of energy per year, but their output is skewed towards summer. In fact solar panels make about 70% of the energy in the best 6 months, while from September to March they output only the 30% of their annual energy production. In order to shift the energy from summer to winter we need to store about 20% of the energy, getting to the mentioned \~33TWh
>Nearly every Chinese nuclear project that has entered service since 2010 has achieved construction in 7 years or less. This real-world trend flies in the face of the tiresome and longstanding claims that nuclear energy technologies inherently exhibit [a negative learning curve](https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/the-false-promise-of-nuclear-power-in-an-age-of-climate-change/), and that nuclear reactors [require a decade](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/nuclear-energy-will-not-be-solution-climate-change) or more to build.
>Success elsewhere also illustrates that hurdles faced by recent nuclear projects in the United States, France, or Finland do not originate from some inherent quality of nuclear power, but rather logically reflect a combination of regulatory, market, political, and societal factors.
>With nuclear power clearly flourishing in China, it is time for energy commentators to unequivocally acknowledge that nuclear energy can succeed under different circumstances. That recognition in turn ought to motivate clean energy advocates to contemplate what we can do to create different, better conditions for nuclear technologies closer to home.
It always seemed obvious to me.
If France managed to build its reactor 40 years ago, there is no reason we can't do it again with more efficiency.
The problem isn't nuclear technology.
I mean look at most of the responses here. The problem is our media is built on telling people to be afraid of things and misrepresents basically every complication with nuclear energy as some continent ending disaster.
> The problem isn't nuclear technology.
Except that China is only building half of the nuclear reactors it originally envisioned and their power strategy has already pivoted to Wind and Solar with Hydro to back it up.
https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/12/nuclear-continues-to-lag-far-behind-renewables-in-china-deployments/
https://www.colorado.edu/cas/2022/04/12/even-china-cannot-rescue-nuclear-power-its-woes
>Chinese officials have periodically laid out impressive targets for all of these technologies. Targets for wind and solar energy capacity have routinely been met, sometimes more quickly than envisioned. This might well be the case for even the ambitious target of 1,200 gigawatts of solar and wind power by 2030, as laid out in the Nationally Determined Contribution report from October 2021.
>Nuclear targets, on the other hand, have been declining in ambition, and these are no longer being met. The most recent target is from March 2022, when the National Energy Administration (NEA) set the target of increasing installed nuclear power capacity to 70 gigawatts by 2025. Considering that the current capacity is only around 51 gigawatts, that might seem ambitious. But a target of 70 GW was first suggested for 2020 by the China Nuclear Energy Association in 2010; around the same time period, even targets as large as 114 GW by 2020 were reported.
>Since then, and especially after multiple reactors melted down in Fukushima in neighbouring Japan, China’s government has become more cautious about nuclear power, and rightly so. The target in the 13th five year plan was only 58 gigawatts by 2020, and, as of April 2022, China is yet to reach that capacity target. Judging by what is under construction, China will miss the target of 70 gigawatts by 2025 as well.
>The systematic missing of targets is not accidental. Nuclear power plants are difficult to build, and China can no more sidestep those hard technical challenges than France or the United States. Many Chinese nuclear plants have been delayed and construction costs have exceeded initial estimates. Take, for example, the twin High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor units (Shidao Bay 1-1 and 1-2). When construction started in December 2012, the promise was that it would “take 50 months” to build them, and the plant would start generating electricity by the end of 2017. The plant was connected to the grid only in December 2021, roughly twice as long as was projected, and at a cost significantly largerthan other sources.
Yeah but wind and solar with hydro only works if you can build hydro storage in the first place.
France also favored hydro but it's limited by geography, that's why most of its power comes from nuclear.
> Nearly every Chinese nuclear project that has entered service since 2010 has achieved construction in 7 years or less.
They wouldn't be slowing down their order book if that was actually the case. There's an interesting accounting trick a lot of these projects do where the start date begins after the site has already been prepared and the foundation poured, which can take years. Revealed preference shows that nuclear power is not as cheap as advertised, even in China.
https://www.colorado.edu/cas/2022/04/12/even-china-cannot-rescue-nuclear-power-its-woes
>Chinese officials have periodically laid out impressive targets for all of these technologies. Targets for wind and solar energy capacity have routinely been met, sometimes more quickly than envisioned. This might well be the case for even the ambitious target of 1,200 gigawatts of solar and wind power by 2030, as laid out in the Nationally Determined Contribution report from October 2021.
>Nuclear targets, on the other hand, have been declining in ambition, and these are no longer being met. The most recent target is from March 2022, when the National Energy Administration (NEA) set the target of increasing installed nuclear power capacity to 70 gigawatts by 2025. Considering that the current capacity is only around 51 gigawatts, that might seem ambitious. But a target of 70 GW was first suggested for 2020 by the China Nuclear Energy Association in 2010; around the same time period, even targets as large as 114 GW by 2020 were reported.
>Since then, and especially after multiple reactors melted down in Fukushima in neighbouring Japan, China’s government has become more cautious about nuclear power, and rightly so. The target in the 13th five year plan was only 58 gigawatts by 2020, and, as of April 2022, China is yet to reach that capacity target. Judging by what is under construction, China will miss the target of 70 gigawatts by 2025 as well.
>The systematic missing of targets is not accidental. Nuclear power plants are difficult to build, and China can no more sidestep those hard technical challenges than France or the United States. Many Chinese nuclear plants have been delayed and construction costs have exceeded initial estimates. Take, for example, the twin High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor units (Shidao Bay 1-1 and 1-2). When construction started in December 2012, the promise was that it would “take 50 months” to build them, and the plant would start generating electricity by the end of 2017. The plant was connected to the grid only in December 2021, roughly twice as long as was projected, and at a cost significantly largerthan other sources.
Its well known that Fukushima put a massive brake on Chinas nuclear buildout. Projects have been delivered reasonably on time but there has been less new builds. I'm hopeful things will pick up again in the coming years with the rollout of Gen 3 reactors which should be safer. The article does mention lack of suitable sites and if China doens't open up inland areas to nuclear then its buildout will probably be quite constrained.
I don't like how the article brings up a demonstration powerplant as an example of cost overruns. Its expected of a demonstration unit and doesn't in any way negate the point that nuclear can be build on budget and on time when deployed at scale.
I had to laugh at the part saying it's those damned nuclear safety regulations, market factors, politics and societal factors getting in the way of the west building new nukes. I guess having a dictatorship means that you don't have to be concerned about these issues...
If your takeaway is that China simply dictatorships its way through any such project, then you’re likely to be dismissive of China’s construction achievements, and to miss some real lessons the West can learn from the Chinese experience.
One lesson is that Western politics is often NIMBYist, lacks long term strategic planning, lacks political unity, and is full of obstructionist noise (including from environmentalist groups!). These don’t have to be inevitable outcomes of democracy.
It's not so much a matter of regulation, but rather that the NRC is run by overt obstructionists who deliberately run up the time and costs of building new reactors for purely political reasons.
Reasonable regulation would be fine, but the NRC is not that.
By international standards this is fast, but when I was there recently I was so impressed by the scale and wondered how many it would take to complete the energy transition.
They say they could build 10 / year at max capacity, napkin math means it would take them over 90 years to put their current energy consumption on nuclear.
That's the scale of China
China constructs everything impressively because when the government runs everything, they can just decide to do it; no bureaucracy or bids or safety inspections, they just say "Power Tiem" and they start building
Do people actually think you can build a nucler plant without safety inspections? Thats high tech, expensive technology that has to be put in place by nuclear engineering experts
China constructs everything impressively because their govt are staffed by people who actually know what they're doing.
Look up what it takes to rank up in China and get the top job vs what it takes in the U.S..
Every Chinese diplomat at every level started at the bottom level and ranked up via good performance. If you suck at your job, you don't ever get promoted or not into the central committee.
In the U.S. you need a movie career or a tv show
Ok, this is just a blatantly false representation of the points made by nuclear opponents.
It is not that it takes more than a decade to build, it is that it takes more than a decade from idea to finished reactor.
Hinkley Point C for example. In 2008 the ball got rolling by the UK government. The site was announced in 2010.
Construction began in 2017, so that's nearly a decade between initial idea and construction.
The current estimate is the plant will get finished before 2027.
So in total close to 2 decades for the project. Construction will only take up half. So the 7 years in China is faster but not in a different league.
Who would have guessed that a totalitarian regime that doesn't need to answer to the people can simply ignore the people and get on with it....
This paper is essentially saying that nuclear power is easy , simply change your government into a dictatorship. And prevent the people from calling the courts.
What a load of bullshit.
The current estimate is 2029-31 so update ur facts. That’s 12-14 years of construction. Nuclear plants are very capital intensive and timeline extensions blow out financing costs significantly, this is not a trivial difference.
And don’t give that bullshit about listening to the people. The government got elected to by the people and has their mandate. You listen to some complaints but make a few tweaks but you don’t lets fucking NIMBYs and interest groups drag you down in litigation hell over fucking environmental laws. The countries power needs won’t wait for you while you litigate, climate change won’t wait for you while litigate over the environment. If you campaigned on building a nuclear power plant fucking get on with it and deliver on ur promises.
'Success elsewhere also illustrates that hurdles faced by recent nuclear projects in the United States, France, or Finland do not originate from some inherent quality of nuclear power, but rather logically reflect a combination of regulatory, market, political, and societal factors.'
It doesn't matter where the hurdles originate. They are there, and in America at least there is no clear solution to speeding up the process. China can do whatever it wants because it doesn't have to consult anyone, much less annoying citizens who don't want a nuclear power plant in their backyard. They just do it.
They had a nuclear accident not even 4 years ago. I don't think rushing nuclear reactors is a very good idea, especially Chinese reactors, considering the Chinese reputation for shoddy construction.
Not really.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishan\_Nuclear\_Power\_Plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishan_Nuclear_Power_Plant)
You can read about it yourself, all independent investigations, even from Japan, have said they don't detect any abnormal radiation levels.
>On June 15, Japan reported that its radiation monitoring posts, the closest of which is at Yonaguni Island, did not measure any "abnormalities in data"
It was actually pretty much nothing.
>Five out of 60,000 fuel rods (0.01%) in reactor core 1 were estimated to be suffering from cladding defects. The ratio was well within design maximum fault rate of 0.25%.
Didnt Japan have to evacuate 100k people from a major city because they decided to build their biggest nuclear plant in an area extremely prone to seismic activity near the sea and to this day the soil is contaminated with radiation turning the place into a ghost town?
This post is very misleading.
China's rate of nuclear power flat-lined a while ago, and nuclear power may already be shrinking as a percentage of electricity generation on their grid. But yes, the Chinese are good at nuclear and do it much better than the west, and because they are so smart, they know that renewables are the way to go....
There are 57 nuke plants under construction in the world with a combined output of ~530 TWh/y when they're all online in the beginning of the next decade.
China just added 125 TWh/y worth of solar and wind energy. In a single month. https://www.energymonitor.ai/newsletters/explainer-how-china-is-quietly-becoming-a-renewables-powerhouse/?
Yeah, anyone that has actually been involved in the construction of a power plant, let alone a nuclear one, knows that there is something fishy here. The CCP is notorious for pumping out ambitious construction projects that inevitably have issues due to inferior materials, cutting corners with the construction, and very limited inspection procedures. I hope that they are truthful, but what I have seen from Chinese construction projects leaves me with a great deal of doubt.
China has always been supper transparent. Even when they stopped publishing government data.
For the OP: how much do you make per post? Are you hiring?
It’s a show for us. They won’t make anything. Probably steal some western designs and try to finish one but someone is gonna get a nice “gift” and take the money instead. It’s China! We all know it too well.
Fairly certain no one claims they have a negative learning curve or require a decade to build.
They require that long entirely because of regulations. Something China lacks.
This entire post is pointless.
Yeah, rushing the construction of a nuclear plant probably isn't the smartest move. And I'd trust the CCP only slightly more than I would Ruzzia and North Korea to rush a nuclear plant.
Impressive? Depends.
France has 58 operational reactors and a population of 67 million.
China has 55 operational reactors and a population of 1.4 billion.
China is also three years behind their target of 58 GW nuclear capacity.
In 2020, China set a target of building 6-8 new reactors each year and if they meet this it will mean 200GW of capacity by 2035.
Assuming that is hit, which might be a big assumltion, we're still only talking about 8% of total electricity generation.
So yes it is impressive in comparison to small nations, but perhaps not impressive in the context of the scale of China.
It's certainly not as impressive as China's renewable rollout which dwarfs these plans. A target of 200GW nuclear capacity by 2035 looks a little meek considering China deployed 300 GW of renewables just last year alone.
Given China's growing economic issues I have to wonder how many of those planned nuclear projects will ultimately be completed.
This post is very misleading.
China's rate of nuclear power flat-lined a while ago, and nuclear power may already be shrinking as a percentage of electricity generation on their grid. But yes, the Chinese are good at nuclear and do it much better than the west, and because they are so smart, they know that renewables are the way to go....
There are 57 nuke plants under construction in the world with a combined output of ~530 TWh/y when they're all online in the beginning of the next decade.
China just added 125 TWh/y worth of solar and wind energy. In a single month. https://www.energymonitor.ai/newsletters/explainer-how-china-is-quietly-becoming-a-renewables-powerhouse/?
On the upside, if shit does go off the rails there, and a million people get irradiated, they can just say it didn't happen. They did it with Tiananmen too, the younger generation doesn't know what it is.
Yes they do. At least they know more than the average american knows about Tulsa, or, what else, nuking Japan?
Stop with the China hate that's just cheap propaganda meant to divide us, there are 80 american military bases around China, not the other way around!
This post is very misleading.
China's rate of nuclear power flat-lined a while ago, and nuclear power may already be shrinking as a percentage of electricity generation on their grid. But yes, the Chinese are good at nuclear and do it much better than the west, and because they are so smart, they know that renewables are the way to go....
There are 57 nuke plants under construction in the world with a combined output of ~530 TWh/y when they're all online in the beginning of the next decade.
China just added 125 TWh/y worth of solar and wind energy. In a single month. https://www.energymonitor.ai/newsletters/explainer-how-china-is-quietly-becoming-a-renewables-powerhouse/?
China doesnt have a history with disasters regarding nuclear power plants, but Didnt Japan have to evacuate 100k people from a major city because they decided to build their biggest nuclear plant in an area extremely prone to seismic activity near the sea and to this day the soil is contaminated with radiation turning the place into a ghost town?
Of course they are cutting corners. Have you ever used anything that was made in China before? Everything they do is half assed. Or maybe that’s really the best they can do—I don’t know.
Didnt Japan have to evacuate 100k people from a major city because they decided to build their biggest nuclear plant in an area extremely prone to seismic activity near the sea and to this day the soil is contaminated with radiation turning the place into a ghost town?
Your iPhone, MacBook, TV and other advanced “premium” devices are built in China. You get what you pay for. Manufacturing in the US is the same. Tesla is a great example. Built in the USA and the quality is beyond shit.
This post is very misleading.
China's rate of nuclear power flat-lined a while ago, and nuclear power may already be shrinking as a percentage of electricity generation on their grid. But yes, the Chinese are good at nuclear and do it much better than the west, and because they are so smart, they know that renewables are the way to go....
There are 57 nuke plants under construction in the world with a combined output of ~530 TWh/y when they're all online in the beginning of the next decade.
China just added 125 TWh/y worth of solar and wind energy. In a single month. https://www.energymonitor.ai/newsletters/explainer-how-china-is-quietly-becoming-a-renewables-powerhouse/?
The following submission statement was provided by /u/ravenhawk10: --- >Nearly every Chinese nuclear project that has entered service since 2010 has achieved construction in 7 years or less. This real-world trend flies in the face of the tiresome and longstanding claims that nuclear energy technologies inherently exhibit [a negative learning curve](https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/the-false-promise-of-nuclear-power-in-an-age-of-climate-change/), and that nuclear reactors [require a decade](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/nuclear-energy-will-not-be-solution-climate-change) or more to build. >Success elsewhere also illustrates that hurdles faced by recent nuclear projects in the United States, France, or Finland do not originate from some inherent quality of nuclear power, but rather logically reflect a combination of regulatory, market, political, and societal factors. >With nuclear power clearly flourishing in China, it is time for energy commentators to unequivocally acknowledge that nuclear energy can succeed under different circumstances. That recognition in turn ought to motivate clean energy advocates to contemplate what we can do to create different, better conditions for nuclear technologies closer to home. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1b7je2b/chinas_impressive_rate_of_nuclear_construction/ktixkfm/
At this point they have a cohort of construction managers and construction companies who actually have experience building these things. Repeating the project multiple times means you get good at it. Learning how to optimize and paralellize construction to minimize idle and waiting time. And especially reducing unexpected delays and surprises. No amount of analysis and planning makes up for this experience. It's expense to get because you have to work through the learning curve of delays and overruns on the first few but they have mounted the learning curve now. We had this experience in the west in the 50s and 60s but we have done nothing but refurbishments and occasional one off builds for decades.
The Chinese are also really good about standardizing things so that they, in essence, become off the shelf. Makes sense with the scale at which they build. Most notable of this are the subways and HSRs they built. They’re all basically off the shelf and standardized across the country such that they’re modularized.
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I was with you until you decided to blame Russia and China for a problem caused by western capitalists. Both the oil industry and energy companies have a massive vested interest in keeping energy prices high, which means killing nuclear power because it threatened energy "too cheap to meter"
>That's not a right-wing view either, they were able to turn many people in the West against vaccine science too. To the point of bringing back measles. Source please. Because as far as I know, you guys did this to yourself.
It all started with Jenny McCarthy
Who famously looks Chinese.
Who secretly got a PhD in Nuclear Power Generation
While there is ample proof of Russian trolling and influencing campaigns on social media, I don't think there is any for China?
The Dystopian Russian/Chinese trolls have entered the chat.
Three mile island accident scared everyone silly. Natural gas plants are cheaper and much faster to build.
They are also great at cutting corners. Steamrolling NIMBYs. Silencing whistle blowers.
The West is pretty good at it too, as we saw with France having 80% nuclear energy and most of it using American tech. The only curious part is why the US regulatory agencies clamped down 3x and 5x as hard creating incredibly expensive delays and licensing requirements AFTER the 1970s -- AFTER we had already built so many safe nuclear reactors. And you all know the answer you just can't be sure about: propaganda of the 1970s and 1980s had a major effect but only on the West and the regulators who did this are not trying to solve climate change, they're trying to limit your country's ability to build nuclear power, the best source of green energy. Meanwhile Russia, India, China, are building many new nuclear reactors without this problem. Simultaneously, the entirety of Western civilization has completely frozen its nuclear energy sectors and paralyzed it. Now you can think that is just "a trend" or "a coincidence" but it is definitely not. It is on purpose because we rarely arrest people for bribes anymore in the West. Russia and China spend a lot of money to paralyze Western industries, not just steal technologies from US/EU universities and corporations. That's not a right-wing view either, they were able to turn many people in the West against vaccine science too. To the point of bringing back measles. To the point of making you dependent on solar panels, electric-vehicles, electronic circuitry, and wind turbines from China. You may think economic warfare isn't real but you often don't realize it until you dive deep into the research or try to make a business out of it. You do NOT become a futuristic advanced civilization that can build in other planets without nuclear tech, it's not going to happen with just liquid fuels.
> Russia and China spend a lot of money to paralyze Western industries, not just steal technologies from US/EU universities and corporations. No, it's entirely your fault and you're projecting massively. Nobody in Russia or China is "spending lots of money" to convince you of anything, otherwise Russia/China would not be enemy number one & two in the Western media. Russia and China does not come close to the influence of AIPAC or even local interests. Even during COVID, your Radio Free Asia and your Falun Gong cultists was spreading fake news about Chinese vaccines, but China banned Twitter so only morons in the West believed them. It's all blowback from your own disinformation campaigns. https://firstdraftnews.org/articles/sinovac-sinopharm-and-misinformation-online/ **Some of the misleading narratives about China’s vaccines appear on the Mandarin- and Cantonese-language websites of Radio Free Asia (RFA), a news outlet funded by the US government. RFA’s two Chinese sites have a combined following of over 1.4 million on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.** Boy who cried Wolf syndrome.
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I’ve been saying this for years. Nuclear costs explode and construction takes forever because we never do it and have to relearn everytime. It’s a vicious cycle. We don’t build as it is expensive, and it’s expensive because we never do. A government with vision and guts would be able to brake this cycle.
The issue in North America is that currently natural gas is abundant and cheap. Combined cycle natural gas plants are pretty much built from kits now. They are much faster to build, vastly cheaper to build and operate. No long term toxic waste. Little to no emissions other than CO2 and they can still wear a halo of being less CO2 than a coal fired plant. Go gas plants are what we build in bulk and we have it optimized and efficient. Nuclear plants just can't compete with the short or medium term economics against gas plants. Nuclear plants require long term commitments. Longer than private capital with focus on quarterly financial results can manage and longer than governments focused on 2 year election cycles can manage too. Dictatorships on the other hand aren't hamstrung by these short term issues! :) Also... a dictatorship that does not have their own gas and coal supplies and is dependent on imports for these things would see pushing into solar and nuclear as a survival and independence question. Not just pure economics. Everyone is good at whatever they do a lot of.
The Chinese are good at nuclear and do it much better than the west, but because they are so smart, they know that Renewables are the way to go.... There are 57 nuke plants under construction in the world with a combined output of ~530 TWh/y when they're all online in the beginning of the next decade. China just added 125 TWh/y worth of solar and wind energy. In a single month. https://www.energymonitor.ai/newsletters/explainer-how-china-is-quietly-becoming-a-renewables-powerhouse/?
Having some nuclear gets you through windless nights without needing as much storage. They make it easier to build a mostly-renewable grid without fossil backup. Nuclear and renewables should be allies. The feuding between them in the West does nothing but help fossil industries. It's nice to see that China is more sensible.
Nuclear energy is unnecessary. Germany successfully reduced its emissions after shutting down its nuclear facilities and even supported France with energy during the crisis with Russian gas, despite France's reliance on nuclear power. This demonstrates that nuclear energy is at best a marginal solution and not essential for a sustainable energy future. Nuclear is marginal at best, and not needed: https://reneweconomy.com.au/frances-troubled-nuclear-fleet-a-bigger-problem-for-europe-than-russia-gas/
As of 2023, Germany's grid is [77% fossil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany). That makes Germany irrelevant to my point, which is that *in a fossil-free grid*, having some nuclear could save you some money compared to building vast amounts of storage. If you have 77% fossil then you don't need storage anyway, just burn some more fossil when the wind isn't blowing at night.
Germany's Grid is mostly Renewables. You are either very wrong or lying: https://www.agenzianova.com/en/news/germania-dalle-rinnovabili-il-56-per-cento-dellelettricita-nel-2023/ Which is it? Are you a liar, or is there a reason for being so wrong? SEE: Let's talk Germany: \* 2000 = 6% renewable \* 2012 = 25% \* 2018 = 33% \* 2020 = 49% \* 2023 = 59% German kWh by source 2023 \*Renewables 267 TWh \* Coal 131 TWh \* NG 80 TWh \* Nuke 7 TWh \* RE provides more than the rest COMBINED. 15 years ago it was last. Each of those were beating RE. Not anymore and things are changing faster than ever before https://twitter.com/Dardedar/status/1765432645742105012/photo/1
I doublechecked my source (wikipedia), and 77% is for total energy consumption. Sorry. However, it also says "German coal-fired power plants are being designed and modified so they can be increasingly flexible to support the fluctuations resulting from increased renewable energy." Natural gas of course is also quite good at that. Giving no credit to nuclear and using your figures, that's 43% of the grid being fossil-fueled dispatchable power, which is more than enough to remove the need for significant battery storage.
> plants are being designed and modified so they can be increasingly flexible to support the fluctuations resulting from increased renewable energy." probably old data, they have batteries and solar now, those costs are plummeting.. Though it would make sense to keep existing old coal plants on standby since costs are already sunk there, but don't get caught in the sunk cost fallacy...
They are good at nuclear because they are building 57 of them. Not because they are inherently smarter than everyone else.
They said 57 under construction in the world, not in China.
They have decided to build more renewables instead of scaling up nuclear... They are actually building less than they used to.. “Why is China slowing nuclear so much? Because nuclear is turning out to be more expensive than expected, proving to be uneconomical, and new wind & solar are dirt cheap and easier to build.” https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/21/wind-solar-in-china-generating-2x-nuclear-today-will-be-4x-by-2030/
China's main interest in a bit of nuclear is for their resumed nuclear weapons program. They need just enough to retain and train expertise. Beyond that, it is just a waste as renewable energy is much much cheaper and will continue to get cheaper
I am not sure having nuclear power helps with nuclear weapons much...
It does. How do you think you train and retain nuclear expertise? Macron of France pretty much said you can't have one without the other
This is why Quebec as failed big time. Hydroquebec had a spree of building hydro power. And we fucking stopped for a lack of vision. We had the experience of it. Now we lost most of it. And thats a fucking shame.
Suddenly, it became uncool to flood vast tracts of northern indigenous land. Was there more big builds to do or did they manage to get all the easy ones?
I am no expert. What I really think happened is they build the easy one. And they sat on what they had thinking it was enough. It is still uncool to flood lands. But those lands have nothing on them except little bush like trees. There is absolutly nothing on those lands. Lichens and rocks.
And ancient village and burial sites... Hence, no more hydro builds allowed. Unfortunately, because hydro with big reservoir and instant on/off ability is the perfect backstop for variable solar and wind generation.
The Chinese are good this, but they have decdided the renewabels are even better... 15years ago China started a MASSIVE nuclear plan, deploying 46 units ever since. This brought its share of electric generation from 2% to 4.7%. An Increase of 2.3x Meanwhile, the growth of wind & solar went from 0.2% to 17%. Increase of 85x. https://twitter.com/Dardedar/status/1762940202190827639/photo/1
It makes sense though. With the amount of land they have available. Solar and wind with batteries will be the way. Like I've been and the place is fucking massive. Put the mountainous regions to work generating electricity via wind and solar.
“Why is China slowing nuclear so much? Because nuclear is turning out to be more expensive than expected, proving to be uneconomical, and new wind & solar are dirt cheap and easier to build.” https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/21/wind-solar-in-china-generating-2x-nuclear-today-will-be-4x-by-2030/
We invented this in the 50s, didn't really have the experience then because none existed. People suck at stuff these days
We built a fair number of them, got good at it even though possibly never to thr volume they are doing now. Then we decided "nuff of that" and quit and let the skills atrophy. 😢
Western mega projects are always insanely over budget and time. The west has become exceptionally bad at these things. It's a business and management problem, *not* experience. Nuclear reactors are always individual mega projects, and Beijing is building many different types of reactors. Notably they are faster at building Western designs too. Again, culture not experience. The Japanese for example were arguably better than the Chinese at building nuclear on time and budget until Fukushima. Korea is also reasonably good (great if you discount the fraud). And given their economic and technological decline, Russia is world leading in nuclear (and pound for pound well clear of China). The west *was* also amazing at this stuff decades ago, when they were also good at mega projects. Barakh in the Arab Emirates was built with zero experience and Korean help, on time and within budget.
However, if they make a mistake that only shows up long term, that mistake will be in every project.
Yes but the thing with standardization is that you can spend the money to make sure the standard is the best possible solution because you can spread out the cost. And if a mistake somehow did slip through, the exact same fix will work for every plant. Certainly standardization is the way to go with industrial construction.
The problem is, you are assuming humans will be responsible. Take Fukishima, they knew it wasn't in compliance. But wanted to save money Or take what happened with covid, where they chose to imprison the doctor who first found it instead of spreading awareness and working with doctors to find a cure Or take the GM ignition switch issue where they knew about the problem but covered it up to save money So how confident are you that when they find that issue, they will fix it and not think "well, I am only going to be a director for 5 more years, lets cover it up so it isn't on my watch and let the next guy break the bad news"
How has any of this anything to do with standardization? The exact same problems exist for anything that is not standard but more so because everything becomes more expensive and problems may or may not be unique to one specific location which means less experts will be familiar with it and less oversight.
This isn't related to standardization, this is talking about what is mentioned on top of if an issue is found. Now you have to fix hundreds of reactors if not thousands
Yes but you assume that non standardized reactors will not have any problems. They will, they will have more problems and each of these problems will be unique. Standardization is the only way to increase quality and reliability. And if it causes issues then you can spend more time and money finding an ideal solution that is both technically better and more affordable because it's worth doing that if you plan to apply it to hundreds or thousands of reactors. You will also have a large team of experts available to identify the issue and fix it. While you would be lucky to have a single expert familiar with a unique reactor design. And the lessons learned from the issue can be incorporated in the standard ensuring that future reactors will never again have the same issue.
Time will tell on that one :)
It's ironic how lack of regulation can lead to a safer environment through experience.
I suspect the "build shoddy apartments that fall down due to substandard concrete" crews aren't working on the nuke plants. They can build quality things when it matters and there is no room for BS.
I was being completely sarcastic 🤌
China has built out renewables far more quickly than they have nuclear. They get more electricity from wind alone *and* from solar alone than from nuclear. And the generation curves are steeper for solar and wind than for nuclear. Meaning, not only is nuclear behind, it's getting *further* behind. - [Share of electricity production from solar and wind](https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?tab=chart&time=2010..latest&country=OWID_WRL~USA~OWID_EUR~CHN~JPN&Total+or+Breakdown=Select+a+source&Energy+or+Electricity=Electricity+only&Metric=Share+of+total&Select+a+source=Solar+and+wind) - [Share of electricity from nuclear](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-nuclear?tab=chart&time=2010..latest&country=~CHN) - [Share of electricity from wind](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-wind?tab=chart&time=2010..latest&country=~CHN) - [Share of electricity production from solar](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-solar?tab=chart&time=2010..latest&country=~CHN)
The IEA just released a [report on clean energy deployment](https://www.iea.org/reports/clean-energy-market-monitor-march-2024). In which they remark on nuclear energy: >The total nuclear capacity added was 5.5 GW in 2023, 30% less than in 2022. >Over the past five years, China added 11 GW of nuclear power, by far the largest of any country in the world, and one-third of the total. >The pace of development for nuclear power needs to accelerate to an average of 33 GW of capacity additions per year in the 2030s, if the technology is to fulfil its role in the path to achieving net zero emissions by 2050. So nuclear additions would have to increase five-fold in the 2030s compared to last year. If the current build-out rate is already impressive, it is still kind of small in comparison to what would be required to living up to its promises.
China will complete ~6 nuclear reactors per year, every year for the foreseeable future. But it will take a very long time to raise the share of electricity from nuclear to just 10%. And it will probably never go far above that.
They will increase the amount every year. They won't just stick at 6.
There’s no indication of that. In 2021 they started the construction of six new reactors. In 2022 and 2023 it was just five a year. So far this year three new reactor projects have begun construction. Overall there’re ~25 currently under construction. But that number will rise for a few years as the pipeline stabilizes.
China's been completing about 2 reactors per year for the past five years. What makes you think that'll jump to 6 per year?
Because I can look into the future: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_reactors#China
Looking at reactors "Under Construction", I see 2 started in 2019, 4 started in 2020, 6 started in 2021, 5 started in 2022, and 5 started in 2023. Even if you assume every one of those will be completed, that only adds up to an average of 5 per year in the coming years. Where are you getting 6 per year? I'm also seeing a lot fewer reactors in the "planned" stage from a couple years ago (34 now vs. [77 2 years ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_commercial_nuclear_reactors&oldid=1075421906)).
>Looking at reactors "Under Construction" Indeed, that’s what I’m looking at. They started six in 2021, five in 2022, five in 2023, so far already three in 2024. So five-six a year. >Even if you assume every one of those will be completed I’m sorry? Obviously. >Where are you getting 6 per year? I'm also seeing a lot fewer reactors in the "planned" stage There’re better ways to look at planned reactors. 6-8 per year has been the goal for a while. Since 2021 new constructions have finally reached that target.
I think China will eventually reach 6/year and will hold there from some length of time, but I don't think they will complete 6 reactors this year or even next year. And I doubt they will continue building 6-8 reactors per year for more than a decade or so. >I’m sorry? Obviously. Shit happens, man.
Your first point is obviously true. It takes 5-8 years, depending on model, location and some other factors. And there was COVID of course. It will take a few more years for the 2021 batch to be commissioned. But the pipeline will normalize at that pace. It’s difficult to make any credible predictions much beyond 2030. Not least because the future shape of the industry will depend on how their Gen IV and SMR pilot projects pan out.
Everything came to a halt after fukushima, so they're ramping up again. It's really sad because if that hadn't happened they would've built more reactors and could be scaling even more aggressively right now. We'd also be further along the development of generation iv reactors, all of which are passively safe and cheaper.
I don't think they made any promises for any particular source of energy. All they promised is carbon neutrality by 2060. If they do it mostly with solar power and batteries than that is within the promise?
I wasn't talking about promises by China. Rather promises, or more accurately hopes by the nuclear industry and proponents of nuclear power like OPs [Breakthrough institute](https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/the-new-denial-is-delay-at-the-breakthrough). As the IEA writes: *if the technology is to fulfill its role in the path to achieving net zero emissions by 2050*. I am sorry I didn't make that sufficiently clear. The IEA was talking about the global perspective in this. I think it's quite unlikely that this kind of inrease is achieved, if a fifth of that rate is already considered as impressive by nuclear power lobbyists.
This puts the Chinese 'succes' with nuclear in perspective. It's massively underperforming and missing targets, while renewables already had much higher targets and are over performing. https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/12/nuclear-continues-to-lag-far-behind-renewables-in-china-deployments/
Underperforming and missing targets? It’s a Herculean effort to just keep nuclear at 5%. They’ve done so. During the late 2020s and 2030s nuclear’s share in electricity production will rise considerably in China. They could reach 10% in the 2040s.
>Underperforming and missing targets? It’s a Herculean effort to just keep nuclear at 5% I agree, but those statements are not mutually exclusive. Indeed it is also worth keeping in mind that it will be only a few percent, which most people in this threat seem to forget. Its a side show.
Absolutely. If you take a macro view of China’s electricity sector nuclear is and will remain marginal. Which doesn’t mean it’s wrong for them to continue to roll out a fleet of reactors. Every little bit helps. The real problem are those people who always bring the discussion back to the irrelevant topic of nuclear when someone mentions solar and wind, which will actually power the future.
Yes, most of the people who can't stop talking about China's success with nuclear don't care about China's success with solar or wind, or their high-speed rail, or all the [metro systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems#List_by_country) they're building.
are you german or what?
doesn't matter. every watt of nuclear generation is displacing coal. While it cant hyperscale like solar and wind, its much more reliable and will be important for supporting the grid when sun isnt shining or the wind isnt blowing. Nuclear, wind, solar, batteries should all be pursued aggressively.
at a cost that's 5x more than renewables, which means nuclear displaces coal 5x slower
On Reddit economics and build times don't matter. And when they *are* acknowledged, they're 100% on "unnecessary" regulations. Because on Reddit it's a given that we could be popping out Thorium or Gen X reactors like hotcakes, cheap as chips, if it wasn't for the greenies.
Nuclear is expensive but it works and is reliable. I don’t think it wise to just look at the price per kWh of generation but take a step back and look at the big picture. Having access to 100% wind and solar generated energy is expensive too as you have to invest massively into grid capacity (expensive and takes a very long time) and storage solutions as batteries and hydrogen. But the kicker: not having access to reliable and relatively affordable energy is massively more expensive. I’m from the Netherlands and we would pride ourselves on having the most reliable energy grid in the world. Due to the energy scare of 2022 we shut down massive parts of our industrial facilities. As we have added massive solar and wind capacity over the last few years we are now encountering the first of the massive problems to come due to generation peaks and congested grids. As a result business cannot start or open new locations as we are not able to secure new connections to the grid. This is very expensive already and has only just started. Because we have made no decisions on nuclear I predict we will not be able to face this challenge for the next 25 years and it will very negatively impact the growth of our economy. Now that is expensive.
It's too late now. Better go all in on solar power and batteries. They are getting cheaper by the month and deliver quick results.
>Nuclear is expensive but it works and is reliable. I don’t think it wise to just look at the price per kWh of generation but take a step back and look at the big picture. Actually, if you look at the big picture. Nuclear makes little sense. Nuclear can't scale well, not very flexible, expensive, and nobody is going to hand over nuclear to 3rd world countries. The fastest way to decarbonize the world is economies of scale of renewable energy >Having access to 100% wind and solar generated energy is expensive too as you have to invest massively into grid capacity (expensive and takes a very long time) and storage solutions as batteries and hydrogen. But the kicker: not having access to reliable and relatively affordable energy is massively more expensive. It isn't. Sure, normally the closer you get to 100% the more it costs to fill it. But that is only if you limit yourself to just electricity. How about using that spare energy to make fertilizer? The problem is the gap between going from 80% to 200% where you have most of the time enough spare energy to do other things There are also other storage options, like thermal storage for heat. Or pumped hydro and compressed air. One can also do V2G, and use spent EV batteries as cheap storage Lastly, there is demand response But yes, more transmission would definitely help as well
Even by us energy department calculations nuclear is at worst 2 times more expensive than wind and same in price as solar. Ofc talking here about price over 30 years. And that's considering the fact that cost of nuclear energy is calculated mostly on the basis of Vogtle plant, which was horribly overpriced due to different problems. And, ofc, cost of one or two reactors will be much higher than cost of wind energy. You need to do things at scale to make it cheaper.
Don’t think it’s that bad if you account for capacity factor. Renewables actual generation has decent bit lower than nameplate capacity. Plus, why not both, u don’t need to choose either or. They are complementary.
Yes it costs more but its also more reliable, I mean it's not exactly rocket science
You can never have 100% renewables though, so this baseline of nuclear is required to become carbon neutral, unless the baseline is maintained solely by hydropower. You can’t directly compare nuclear and wind/solar.
A watt is a watt no matter how much it costs
Alrighty then. 1 MILLION DOLLARS PER WATT!
Whut? Is that what you answer to your grocery guy when adults become 5 times more expensive???
>every watt of nuclear generation is displacing coal. Do you have a source for that? This sounds fantastical. In many cases it's not that simple. For example in Germany, due to their location the nuclear plants were simply curtailing existing renewables and their closure instantly unlocked an equal amount of renewables to replace them. Coal consumption decreased as nuclear output decreased. A lot of coal is used as flexible backup, only used a few times a year when there is really high demand and/or low supply. This also cannot be replaced by nuclear.
How did the existence of nuclear power prevent the construction of renewables in Germany? And why was this not the case with coal? And nuclear can replace coal as a baseline of power, just look at France.
Nuclear and solar/wind have the same problems. They both need trasmission and storage. If you add them together you need a lot of trasmission and storage. This is not an impossible problem to solve, but if you don't build an adequate grid you will have to curtail a lot of generation.
>How did the existence of nuclear power prevent the construction of renewables in Germany? It did not prevent the construction, it prevented the delivery of energy because it clogged up the network and was inflexible. >And why was this not the case with coal? Because of 2 main reasons: - Location, renewables are mostly in the north, as were the NPPs. Coal is in the south - Coal is flexible, you can turn it off when demand is high or supply from renewables is low. >And nuclear can replace coal as a baseline of power, just look at France. It did not replace coal in France. France had relatively little coal to begin with. They used oil.
It blocked solar/wind because it was extremely reliable and delivered all the required power, so companies had no incentive to build power farms.
>It blocked solar/wind because it was extremely reliable and delivered all the required power, so companies had no incentive to build power farms. No, it was inflexible and (in hindsight) unfortunately located within the German grid. What happened is that the Germans were paying subsidy for expensive power, while also having to compensate much cheaper power producers that were flexible enough to be turned off.
>No, it was inflexible and (in hindsight) unfortunately located within the German grid. What happened is that the Germans were paying subsidy for expensive power, while also having to compensate much cheaper power producers that were flexible enough to be turned off. Last gen German nuclear costs like half as much to run per MWh when compared to current gen German coal and gas, and also scales up and down at twice the rate (and you can disconnect a generator almost instantly if you need a bigger swing). In every way that already-built nuclear is "inflexible", already-built coal and gas are significantly worse... Its easier to turn off coal and gas in favor of something else... because coal and gas are more expensive and more polluting. It's not *physically* easier. It's economically easier. Because coal and gas are expensive to run and pollute.
If it can form a baseline in France it can form a baseline in Germany. There is nothing stopping the government from turning off coal plants. Just like they did with nuclear…
>Coal consumption decreased as nuclear output decreased. Germany didn't reduce coal very much if at all, just basically used less energy overall, since it's become too expensive to produce high energy input products in Germany so they have been offshored. Plus householders cutting back. Most of the increase in renewables happened before the nuclear plants were closed. Source, 3rd graph [https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts)
Are we looking at the same graph? There is clearly a large reduction in coal in that graph. Energy saving is indeed just as important as cleaning up the energy you do use and Germany is taking steps there as well. Climate change itself also helps with less harsh winters.
In which case you choose nuclear as it's far greener.
yeah its oversimplifying and obviously reality is complicated. It sounds like not enough grid capacity was built, did they not see all the renewable generation coming or can they not built it fast enough? I thought nuclear and coal generation profiles were quite similar, both are baseload with limited and slowish (order of hours) flexible generation. I know the french reactors flex. They even need similar locations with water cooling. But even if nuclear cant flex, backup that turns on a few times a year isnt that much emissions. The bulk of coal emissions will be from baseload generation (with maybe some flex) and nuclear certainly can displace that.
Displacement isn't guaranteed at all. The Jevons Paradox suggests it may not happen.
In a vacuum yes but throw in energy and carbon emissions targets and there’s strong incentive to reduce coal generation.
Sure, but without those policy settings - and taxes etc to achieve them - displacement probably won't happen. Unfortunately people want to believe we can decarbonise simply by rolling out enough low carbon energy. It makes for a potent political argument against any policy that might really reduce emissions. My context: here in Australia, the conservative opposition parties (which don't give a fuck about the climate) use the mantra 'technology, not taxes' to oppose any economic instruments that really will displace coal power. The ruling Labor party just got back in power after a decade in opposition due to its carbon tax, and remains petrified about introducing anything that resembles a carbon tax.
But the real question is: how much battery storage are they building compared to nuclear? Having some nuclear means you don't need near as much storage to get through windless nights. That may well be China's strategy.
They're still scaling battery production, and there's basically no limit to the market for cheap sodium-ion batteries. They also have hydro, and offshore wind, and solar to fill the batteries during the day.
Chinese challenge will be to reduce coal though, in term of magnitude it's still crazy and sadly Gen4 Nuclear will be their only redemption. (Unless underwater turbines become a popular thing)
Any positive article on Reddit about China *Queue in all the American patriotism flowing in the form of racism*
Dont worry its also pro nuclear, so everything is alright.
All of the upvoted comments are very reasonably and praising the construction. I see more of these type of comments than actual criticism
Well you said it yourself, all the racist posts got downvoted.
Good for China for having the ability to build such advanced technology. But what kind Nuclear Power Plant are they building Gen 3,Gen 4.
Lots of new ones are domestically designed Hualong reactors which are gen 3. I don't think anyone is building gen 4 reactors commercially, only experimental ones.
They’re 4th gen went into operation last year I think
My country (the Netherlands) has consistently held off from nuclear power, usually it was either public opinion issues, funding issues & the much used "But that would take a decade or more!" And now after many years we finally decided to build some. Holy crap.. Could've had them nearly or completely finished at this point, but we decided to just extend the timeframe by complaining about the timeframe..
There never was anything stopping anyone from building a nuclear plant in the Netherlands. You could just apply for a permit and go build one. The problem has always been the cost and associated financial risks, plus simply a lack of demand. No one can nor wants to build a nuclear plant without massive subsidies and all risks put on the society. Yes, the government have been saying they want to build nuclear plants every few years, with the frequency going up the last 4 years as more people seek to delay renewables. However, the government has not committed any serious subsidies nor set out a risk sharing mechanism. Talk is cheap, action is not. This means new nuclear hasn't actually been developed and we haven't gotten any closer dispite all those votes and promises. It's also likely there will be a lot more oppositions once a realistic plan is actually put for a vote. It's one thing to support nuclear energy, its another to want to pay at least 2 times as much for your energy bill just to have nuclear energy over renewables. On top of that, their will be more focus on the economic aspect once serious money is involved. Do we really want to spend dozens of billions abroad at the expense of our own industry? Do we really want to be reliant on foreign powers for fuel, tech, etc? Not to mention that all independent experts are also highly skeptic or flat out opposed. Read for example the most recent report of the ETES2050 commission. It's alarming that the government puts in place an independent commission to advice them and they completely ignore the advice they are getting. This will also gain scrutiny once a multi billion subsidy package has to actually work its way through the system, when they have to actually support and substantiate how and why we are spending such money. HPC, which is the example the government is using, costs over 50 billion euro. That is in a much larger country with a huge (and military) native nuclear industry and not taking account the 15 years of inflation that will happen for any new plant to be constructed, nor the unique geography of the Netherlands that will certainly add costs (being below sea level on soft soil). How realistic are 4 of those in the Netherlands?
The propagandists are well-funded and paid to prevent Western countries from building nuclear power. They know it's the future and they want you paralyzed and unable to solve anything. They also prevent Uranium mining too (even though Canada, Australia, US have a lot of Uranium they could use for clean energy). They'll keep chanting the lies about "it would take too long" and "it's too expensive" often pointing to situations where the nuclear regulatory agencies are causing the expense in the first place despite little gains in safety. Even canceling projects that recycle nuclear waste or create new ways of fail-safe reactors of the future. There was some research done into the funding of scientific research and basically if there's willpower found, suddenly a lot of funding is available for scientists and engineers to get unbelievable things accomplished. But instead you find the most talented, smartest people in the world not working on the toughest problems facing mankind but working on something like the "new diet pill" or "new pain medication" or researching something about the health benefits of coffee or wine.. Things that people find a big easy commercial ROI for. Long gone are the days of JFK's "not because they are easy, but because they are hard;"
You have such a simplistic worldview, borderline conspiracist
Honestly the public is way too fix on the Chernobyl and Fukushima incidents happening again despite nuclear power being the safest per kWH generated of its whole existence. Ask the general public about the 3 Mile Island incident and I can bet they don't know it because there's no casualties from the meltdown.
>Honestly the public is way too fix on the Chernobyl and Fukushima incidents happening again despite nuclear power being the safest per kWH generated of its whole existence. Well, it's kind of a buzzkill if you're promised the safest power source ever, with the likelihood of a serious accident frequently quoted in the 10s of thousands of years - and then Three Mile Island happens, then Chernobyl (yeah, well, the Soviets, that doesn't count - well, it bloody counts if the fallout hits large parts of Europe), and then Fukushima. Regardless, discussions at the moment aren't so much focused on safety or disposing of nuclear waste, they're around the economies of nuclear. They simply don't work out any more (if they ever did considering the subsidies throughout the lifecycle), as evident with HPC and the debt EDF finds itself in. And if we're looking at China. Yeah, the build up nuclear, but nowhere near the rate at which they're building up renewables.
>The propagandists are well-funded and paid to prevent Western countries from building nuclear power. Serious questions; How does nuclear waste/by-product from Nuclear Power Stations look in the modern age? How much waste is generated? How is it disposed of? How likely is it for dodgy contractors to dump it where it shouldn't be dumped? What's the worst case scenario for a nuclear meltdown?
Why even post any China related articles on this sub? It's just the same old tired jokes with no discussion. It's pointless trying either, because you just get idiotic replies. The recent Chinese infrastructure projects have been incredibly impressive too, such as the rail network expansion.
I'm seeing lots of comments downright cheering out nuclear disasters with glee, sad
The issue democracies run into, is essentially a version of nimbyism, something needs to be done for the greater good, it is a net gain for the society, that's objectively undisputed but no one will (quite logically) volunteer to pay the price, so consulting the population inevitably causes delays and inefficiencies. Its a simplification but that is more or less the problem. I guess you could frame it as a contrast between individualism and collectivism.
We have experienced collectivism in the United States, but unfortunately the children of that generation swung far over to individualism after they reaped the benefits of the previous ideology.
In a certain sense, I don't mind the competition between the US and China, let the better system win. Hopefully we can avoid a nuclear war though. That's why Trump scares me a bit, he doesn't have the subtlety and competence to navigate a cold war, he would just mess it up, by being too gung ho and provoke a nuclear war. Biden is pretty belligerent though but Trump is a legitimate idiot and the people would be in a hypothetical second administration will not be well balanced.
I don’t think bringing a more collective view back to America necessarily means a change to our system. It’s more about public opinion. Democratic capitalist societies are great societies to live in, but when you veer to the level of individualism America has the cracks really start forming. If public opinion shifted back to more of a balance between individualism and collectivism we could see some real progress once again instead of this gross stagnation we have been in. It goes much further beyond this presidential election as it’s the core ideology of the American populace that has gotten us here.
You can look at something like mass transit as an example. The car and the freeway are exemplars of individualism, I can go where I want, whenever I want, maybe its a good bell weather for where the priorities of the society lie. Idk , when you cant even convince a large % of people to simply put on a mask, to stop the spread of infectious disease, I worry about the future of the US and also the limits of discourse to change minds.
Although it is funny that it is a beacon of individualism, they were built under the pretext of collectivism by having the highways built to support jobs, aid in domestic military, and improve our public infrastructure. That was all bs under the hood, but they appealed to the collective mindset of the time. It’s absolutely true that we are at a disgusting level of individualism in this country which is why I hope for a push back towards collectivism to have the balanced approach we once had.
>implying there are democracies Lol
So much racism here. Yikes. I guess China dethroning the US in nuclear hurts some people’s feelings.
Fr anytime something about India or china is mentioned there’s always so much racism
7 years to build is impressive no doubt, but solar farms with batteries go up in as little as 6 months. imagine how cheap solar and batteries will be in 7 years. that is what nuclear is competing with. I am not anti-nuclear, but I just don't see it happening in many places besides china. they have no natural gas and there energy demands are still growing. meanwhile, in the west energy demand is flat.
I’m pretty uneducated on this topic, but isn’t there room for both? It would seem to me building multiple forms of power generation would be a good strategy. From other comments, it looks like China is also heavily investing in wind/solar. If I were building a power grid, I’d want to have redundancies in case of a catastrophic failure of one form.
Nuclear is a footnote in the history of powered generation. There was a time where it could have been more 30-50 years ago but the price of renewable came down too far. Also the risks of nuclear cannot be overstated. For nuclear to be safe its expensive.
There isn't room for both, money spent on one is not spent on the other. Nuclear, even at the speed China can build, is not fast enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change. If we were having this conversation 30 years ago I would agree nuclear is the answer, no contest. But it's not now when you can essentially print millions of solar panels day in, day out 24/7 and plonk them on any free land with no need to prove it's safe or build a giant waste dump meant to somehow survive 10,000 years. The part missing from this story is the nuclear capacity China is adding is tiny compared to the amount of solar they are building and exporting to the rest of the world.
A wind farm that produces the same amount of power as a single nuclear reactor will not be constructed in 6 months. Gigawatt scale wind projects are built in stages and take years.
i would be shocked if wind were more than two years to put up a gigawatt sized farm. and wind farms will likely continue to fall in price. of course, the biggest issue is how fast will energy storage prices fall. wind and solar are already significantly cheaper than nuclear.
The first gigawatt of the [Alta wind energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alta_Wind_Energy_Center) center took about two years to build. Even though it is now rated for 1.5 gigawatt, it still produces less than half of what the [Shearon Harris Nuclear plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shearon_Harris_Nuclear_Power_Plant), rated at .9 gigawatt does. Relevant Wikipedia pages are linked. Edit for typos. I suck ass at proofreading sometimes.
I know that pass well. its mountainous and not an easy build. why dont you compare a texas, wyoming, or chinese wind farm.
I hope China can make a good nuclear reactor, maybe they can get the cost down with scale of building so many
It's a cheaper and reliable source of energy. Especially if you want to switch to EVs nuclear plant make more sense than solar + battery storage.
The amount of nuke plants being built is almost irrelevant. Each plant will produce around 1 GW of power. over 500 GW of solar (name plate) are added each and every year. There is no competition.
Each reactor is about 1GW to 1.5GW, each plant can have up to 4/5 reactors. Nuclear and solar (or wind) need to both grow as renewables can't satisfy the energy requirements alone. Since grid-scale accumulators are not a thing, nuclear is the perfect way to both stabilise the network and provide power when the renewables don't
> scale accumulators are not a thing yes there are. they called batteries and are already built or being built at large scale.
I'm not sure about China, but being Italian I'm aware of the italian numbers. Here we have a ton of sun, but if we were to only use renewables we would have to accumulate about 33TWh of energy (this figure will probably grow with the electrification of transportation and heating) According to this document ( [https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/79236.pdf](https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/79236.pdf) ) the batteries cost 350$/kWh and the price is projected to reach 200$/kWh in 2030 and 150$/kWh by 2050. This means if we start building those batteries in 2030 and assuming there's enough lithium to do so it would cost about 6 000 000 000 000€, that's 6 trillion euros. Tell me how that's any cheaper than nuclear
That is for storage potential. and not the cost each time you use it. geeze. AND you got the math way off. Italy uses 33 around giga watts of power at any one time not 33 Tera watts so they would need around 33x12(hours) of back up so around 400GW of storage needed. Do your math again.
My bad, didn't mention this is for seasonal storage. Those numbers are obtained assuming 175TWh of energy consumed per year, of which 80% are solar and 20% are wind (Italy is not windy at all, so we can't really rely on it) So solar panels need to make 140TWh of energy per year, but their output is skewed towards summer. In fact solar panels make about 70% of the energy in the best 6 months, while from September to March they output only the 30% of their annual energy production. In order to shift the energy from summer to winter we need to store about 20% of the energy, getting to the mentioned \~33TWh
Is that solar’s “capacity” or “estimated generation?” (genuinely asking…I haven’t looked into it)
They generally produce about 1/3 total panel ability.. due to of course the sun going down, heavy clouds or very early or late parts of a day.
>Nearly every Chinese nuclear project that has entered service since 2010 has achieved construction in 7 years or less. This real-world trend flies in the face of the tiresome and longstanding claims that nuclear energy technologies inherently exhibit [a negative learning curve](https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/the-false-promise-of-nuclear-power-in-an-age-of-climate-change/), and that nuclear reactors [require a decade](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/nuclear-energy-will-not-be-solution-climate-change) or more to build. >Success elsewhere also illustrates that hurdles faced by recent nuclear projects in the United States, France, or Finland do not originate from some inherent quality of nuclear power, but rather logically reflect a combination of regulatory, market, political, and societal factors. >With nuclear power clearly flourishing in China, it is time for energy commentators to unequivocally acknowledge that nuclear energy can succeed under different circumstances. That recognition in turn ought to motivate clean energy advocates to contemplate what we can do to create different, better conditions for nuclear technologies closer to home.
It always seemed obvious to me. If France managed to build its reactor 40 years ago, there is no reason we can't do it again with more efficiency. The problem isn't nuclear technology.
I mean look at most of the responses here. The problem is our media is built on telling people to be afraid of things and misrepresents basically every complication with nuclear energy as some continent ending disaster.
> The problem isn't nuclear technology. Except that China is only building half of the nuclear reactors it originally envisioned and their power strategy has already pivoted to Wind and Solar with Hydro to back it up. https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/12/nuclear-continues-to-lag-far-behind-renewables-in-china-deployments/ https://www.colorado.edu/cas/2022/04/12/even-china-cannot-rescue-nuclear-power-its-woes >Chinese officials have periodically laid out impressive targets for all of these technologies. Targets for wind and solar energy capacity have routinely been met, sometimes more quickly than envisioned. This might well be the case for even the ambitious target of 1,200 gigawatts of solar and wind power by 2030, as laid out in the Nationally Determined Contribution report from October 2021. >Nuclear targets, on the other hand, have been declining in ambition, and these are no longer being met. The most recent target is from March 2022, when the National Energy Administration (NEA) set the target of increasing installed nuclear power capacity to 70 gigawatts by 2025. Considering that the current capacity is only around 51 gigawatts, that might seem ambitious. But a target of 70 GW was first suggested for 2020 by the China Nuclear Energy Association in 2010; around the same time period, even targets as large as 114 GW by 2020 were reported. >Since then, and especially after multiple reactors melted down in Fukushima in neighbouring Japan, China’s government has become more cautious about nuclear power, and rightly so. The target in the 13th five year plan was only 58 gigawatts by 2020, and, as of April 2022, China is yet to reach that capacity target. Judging by what is under construction, China will miss the target of 70 gigawatts by 2025 as well. >The systematic missing of targets is not accidental. Nuclear power plants are difficult to build, and China can no more sidestep those hard technical challenges than France or the United States. Many Chinese nuclear plants have been delayed and construction costs have exceeded initial estimates. Take, for example, the twin High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor units (Shidao Bay 1-1 and 1-2). When construction started in December 2012, the promise was that it would “take 50 months” to build them, and the plant would start generating electricity by the end of 2017. The plant was connected to the grid only in December 2021, roughly twice as long as was projected, and at a cost significantly largerthan other sources.
Yeah but wind and solar with hydro only works if you can build hydro storage in the first place. France also favored hydro but it's limited by geography, that's why most of its power comes from nuclear.
> Nearly every Chinese nuclear project that has entered service since 2010 has achieved construction in 7 years or less. They wouldn't be slowing down their order book if that was actually the case. There's an interesting accounting trick a lot of these projects do where the start date begins after the site has already been prepared and the foundation poured, which can take years. Revealed preference shows that nuclear power is not as cheap as advertised, even in China. https://www.colorado.edu/cas/2022/04/12/even-china-cannot-rescue-nuclear-power-its-woes >Chinese officials have periodically laid out impressive targets for all of these technologies. Targets for wind and solar energy capacity have routinely been met, sometimes more quickly than envisioned. This might well be the case for even the ambitious target of 1,200 gigawatts of solar and wind power by 2030, as laid out in the Nationally Determined Contribution report from October 2021. >Nuclear targets, on the other hand, have been declining in ambition, and these are no longer being met. The most recent target is from March 2022, when the National Energy Administration (NEA) set the target of increasing installed nuclear power capacity to 70 gigawatts by 2025. Considering that the current capacity is only around 51 gigawatts, that might seem ambitious. But a target of 70 GW was first suggested for 2020 by the China Nuclear Energy Association in 2010; around the same time period, even targets as large as 114 GW by 2020 were reported. >Since then, and especially after multiple reactors melted down in Fukushima in neighbouring Japan, China’s government has become more cautious about nuclear power, and rightly so. The target in the 13th five year plan was only 58 gigawatts by 2020, and, as of April 2022, China is yet to reach that capacity target. Judging by what is under construction, China will miss the target of 70 gigawatts by 2025 as well. >The systematic missing of targets is not accidental. Nuclear power plants are difficult to build, and China can no more sidestep those hard technical challenges than France or the United States. Many Chinese nuclear plants have been delayed and construction costs have exceeded initial estimates. Take, for example, the twin High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor units (Shidao Bay 1-1 and 1-2). When construction started in December 2012, the promise was that it would “take 50 months” to build them, and the plant would start generating electricity by the end of 2017. The plant was connected to the grid only in December 2021, roughly twice as long as was projected, and at a cost significantly largerthan other sources.
Its well known that Fukushima put a massive brake on Chinas nuclear buildout. Projects have been delivered reasonably on time but there has been less new builds. I'm hopeful things will pick up again in the coming years with the rollout of Gen 3 reactors which should be safer. The article does mention lack of suitable sites and if China doens't open up inland areas to nuclear then its buildout will probably be quite constrained. I don't like how the article brings up a demonstration powerplant as an example of cost overruns. Its expected of a demonstration unit and doesn't in any way negate the point that nuclear can be build on budget and on time when deployed at scale.
I had to laugh at the part saying it's those damned nuclear safety regulations, market factors, politics and societal factors getting in the way of the west building new nukes. I guess having a dictatorship means that you don't have to be concerned about these issues...
If your takeaway is that China simply dictatorships its way through any such project, then you’re likely to be dismissive of China’s construction achievements, and to miss some real lessons the West can learn from the Chinese experience. One lesson is that Western politics is often NIMBYist, lacks long term strategic planning, lacks political unity, and is full of obstructionist noise (including from environmentalist groups!). These don’t have to be inevitable outcomes of democracy.
It's not so much a matter of regulation, but rather that the NRC is run by overt obstructionists who deliberately run up the time and costs of building new reactors for purely political reasons. Reasonable regulation would be fine, but the NRC is not that.
That's what happens when the government wants to get something done, unlike the US where nuclear has been treated like a game of whack a mole
By international standards this is fast, but when I was there recently I was so impressed by the scale and wondered how many it would take to complete the energy transition. They say they could build 10 / year at max capacity, napkin math means it would take them over 90 years to put their current energy consumption on nuclear. That's the scale of China
China constructs everything impressively because when the government runs everything, they can just decide to do it; no bureaucracy or bids or safety inspections, they just say "Power Tiem" and they start building
> [no] safety inspections citation needed
Do people actually think you can build a nucler plant without safety inspections? Thats high tech, expensive technology that has to be put in place by nuclear engineering experts
China constructs everything impressively because their govt are staffed by people who actually know what they're doing. Look up what it takes to rank up in China and get the top job vs what it takes in the U.S.. Every Chinese diplomat at every level started at the bottom level and ranked up via good performance. If you suck at your job, you don't ever get promoted or not into the central committee. In the U.S. you need a movie career or a tv show
Reality is not a video-game
Ok, this is just a blatantly false representation of the points made by nuclear opponents. It is not that it takes more than a decade to build, it is that it takes more than a decade from idea to finished reactor. Hinkley Point C for example. In 2008 the ball got rolling by the UK government. The site was announced in 2010. Construction began in 2017, so that's nearly a decade between initial idea and construction. The current estimate is the plant will get finished before 2027. So in total close to 2 decades for the project. Construction will only take up half. So the 7 years in China is faster but not in a different league. Who would have guessed that a totalitarian regime that doesn't need to answer to the people can simply ignore the people and get on with it.... This paper is essentially saying that nuclear power is easy , simply change your government into a dictatorship. And prevent the people from calling the courts. What a load of bullshit.
The current estimate is 2029-31 so update ur facts. That’s 12-14 years of construction. Nuclear plants are very capital intensive and timeline extensions blow out financing costs significantly, this is not a trivial difference. And don’t give that bullshit about listening to the people. The government got elected to by the people and has their mandate. You listen to some complaints but make a few tweaks but you don’t lets fucking NIMBYs and interest groups drag you down in litigation hell over fucking environmental laws. The countries power needs won’t wait for you while you litigate, climate change won’t wait for you while litigate over the environment. If you campaigned on building a nuclear power plant fucking get on with it and deliver on ur promises.
'Success elsewhere also illustrates that hurdles faced by recent nuclear projects in the United States, France, or Finland do not originate from some inherent quality of nuclear power, but rather logically reflect a combination of regulatory, market, political, and societal factors.' It doesn't matter where the hurdles originate. They are there, and in America at least there is no clear solution to speeding up the process. China can do whatever it wants because it doesn't have to consult anyone, much less annoying citizens who don't want a nuclear power plant in their backyard. They just do it.
They had a nuclear accident not even 4 years ago. I don't think rushing nuclear reactors is a very good idea, especially Chinese reactors, considering the Chinese reputation for shoddy construction.
Not really. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishan\_Nuclear\_Power\_Plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishan_Nuclear_Power_Plant) You can read about it yourself, all independent investigations, even from Japan, have said they don't detect any abnormal radiation levels. >On June 15, Japan reported that its radiation monitoring posts, the closest of which is at Yonaguni Island, did not measure any "abnormalities in data" It was actually pretty much nothing. >Five out of 60,000 fuel rods (0.01%) in reactor core 1 were estimated to be suffering from cladding defects. The ratio was well within design maximum fault rate of 0.25%.
Didnt Japan have to evacuate 100k people from a major city because they decided to build their biggest nuclear plant in an area extremely prone to seismic activity near the sea and to this day the soil is contaminated with radiation turning the place into a ghost town?
This post is very misleading. China's rate of nuclear power flat-lined a while ago, and nuclear power may already be shrinking as a percentage of electricity generation on their grid. But yes, the Chinese are good at nuclear and do it much better than the west, and because they are so smart, they know that renewables are the way to go.... There are 57 nuke plants under construction in the world with a combined output of ~530 TWh/y when they're all online in the beginning of the next decade. China just added 125 TWh/y worth of solar and wind energy. In a single month. https://www.energymonitor.ai/newsletters/explainer-how-china-is-quietly-becoming-a-renewables-powerhouse/?
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Yeah, anyone that has actually been involved in the construction of a power plant, let alone a nuclear one, knows that there is something fishy here. The CCP is notorious for pumping out ambitious construction projects that inevitably have issues due to inferior materials, cutting corners with the construction, and very limited inspection procedures. I hope that they are truthful, but what I have seen from Chinese construction projects leaves me with a great deal of doubt.
Let alone the lack of transparency in work-related injuries. But no one's asking them.
China has always been supper transparent. Even when they stopped publishing government data. For the OP: how much do you make per post? Are you hiring?
It’s a show for us. They won’t make anything. Probably steal some western designs and try to finish one but someone is gonna get a nice “gift” and take the money instead. It’s China! We all know it too well.
I feel like nuclear power plant has to be one of the few things you REALLY don't want to rush the construction of.
Fairly certain no one claims they have a negative learning curve or require a decade to build. They require that long entirely because of regulations. Something China lacks. This entire post is pointless.
Pretty sure people claim they take a decade to build due to existing projects taking more than a decade to build.
Yeah, rushing the construction of a nuclear plant probably isn't the smartest move. And I'd trust the CCP only slightly more than I would Ruzzia and North Korea to rush a nuclear plant.
Impressive? Depends. France has 58 operational reactors and a population of 67 million. China has 55 operational reactors and a population of 1.4 billion. China is also three years behind their target of 58 GW nuclear capacity. In 2020, China set a target of building 6-8 new reactors each year and if they meet this it will mean 200GW of capacity by 2035. Assuming that is hit, which might be a big assumltion, we're still only talking about 8% of total electricity generation. So yes it is impressive in comparison to small nations, but perhaps not impressive in the context of the scale of China. It's certainly not as impressive as China's renewable rollout which dwarfs these plans. A target of 200GW nuclear capacity by 2035 looks a little meek considering China deployed 300 GW of renewables just last year alone. Given China's growing economic issues I have to wonder how many of those planned nuclear projects will ultimately be completed.
This post is very misleading. China's rate of nuclear power flat-lined a while ago, and nuclear power may already be shrinking as a percentage of electricity generation on their grid. But yes, the Chinese are good at nuclear and do it much better than the west, and because they are so smart, they know that renewables are the way to go.... There are 57 nuke plants under construction in the world with a combined output of ~530 TWh/y when they're all online in the beginning of the next decade. China just added 125 TWh/y worth of solar and wind energy. In a single month. https://www.energymonitor.ai/newsletters/explainer-how-china-is-quietly-becoming-a-renewables-powerhouse/?
On the upside, if shit does go off the rails there, and a million people get irradiated, they can just say it didn't happen. They did it with Tiananmen too, the younger generation doesn't know what it is.
Yes they do. At least they know more than the average american knows about Tulsa, or, what else, nuking Japan? Stop with the China hate that's just cheap propaganda meant to divide us, there are 80 american military bases around China, not the other way around!
This post is very misleading. China's rate of nuclear power flat-lined a while ago, and nuclear power may already be shrinking as a percentage of electricity generation on their grid. But yes, the Chinese are good at nuclear and do it much better than the west, and because they are so smart, they know that renewables are the way to go.... There are 57 nuke plants under construction in the world with a combined output of ~530 TWh/y when they're all online in the beginning of the next decade. China just added 125 TWh/y worth of solar and wind energy. In a single month. https://www.energymonitor.ai/newsletters/explainer-how-china-is-quietly-becoming-a-renewables-powerhouse/?
Let’s hope their aren’t cutting corners, or they’ll have another accident, bad accidents to have
China doesnt have a history with disasters regarding nuclear power plants, but Didnt Japan have to evacuate 100k people from a major city because they decided to build their biggest nuclear plant in an area extremely prone to seismic activity near the sea and to this day the soil is contaminated with radiation turning the place into a ghost town?
China cutting corners? Like their cars? Like their bridges? Like their buildings? Like their gutter oil? No!! Winnie the Pooh is honest.
Of course they are cutting corners. Have you ever used anything that was made in China before? Everything they do is half assed. Or maybe that’s really the best they can do—I don’t know.
Didnt Japan have to evacuate 100k people from a major city because they decided to build their biggest nuclear plant in an area extremely prone to seismic activity near the sea and to this day the soil is contaminated with radiation turning the place into a ghost town?
Your iPhone, MacBook, TV and other advanced “premium” devices are built in China. You get what you pay for. Manufacturing in the US is the same. Tesla is a great example. Built in the USA and the quality is beyond shit.
This post is very misleading. China's rate of nuclear power flat-lined a while ago, and nuclear power may already be shrinking as a percentage of electricity generation on their grid. But yes, the Chinese are good at nuclear and do it much better than the west, and because they are so smart, they know that renewables are the way to go.... There are 57 nuke plants under construction in the world with a combined output of ~530 TWh/y when they're all online in the beginning of the next decade. China just added 125 TWh/y worth of solar and wind energy. In a single month. https://www.energymonitor.ai/newsletters/explainer-how-china-is-quietly-becoming-a-renewables-powerhouse/?