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Comment by jdewerd | Hacker News Reader

When nuclear takes off in China but not the USA, we'll figure it out. But not until then.

Why hasn't nuclear taken off in China?

I keep hearing that it's not cost effective anymore, to slow etc. but if it's actually mostly regulation that's hindering the built out (regardless of the risks) shouldn't China with their impressive portfolio of warpspeed megaprojects have been an ideal example of scaling the next generation of this tech?

China is building nuclear reactors faster than any other country.

At the moment, they have 21 new reactors under construction.

Interesting. 21 doesn't seem like much compared to the 300+ there's been in US, 330 in China, 170 in EU etc, until you see theres zero retired units in china compared to large amounts in the rest of the world.

Still though. 21 seems to indicate they are actually betting on something else.

https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-nuclear-powe...

China is betting on all the things at once: they're the world leader in building out new solar, new wind, new nuclear and new coal power simultaneously.

They also say they are going to approve 6 to 8 more per year indefinitely.

21 reactors under construction even with a short build time of 7 years is just 3 finished per year, and with China having ~15x the population of Germany that would amount to 0,2 reactors finishing per year in Germany. Multiplied with 1,4 GW that would add ~0,3 GW capacity resulting in about 2,5 TWh additional electricity generated per year which is 0,5% of annual current german demand. Do that for 20 years and you'd be at 10% of current electricity demand or about 5-7% of the demand in 20 years from now - or in other words micro-optimisation.

> 21 reactors under construction even with a short build time of 7 years is just 3 finished per year

Only if you start building them and then stop. If you keep building them at that rate, after 7 years it becomes 21 coming on line every year, not 3.

While they are currently building 22, they have a further more than 70 planned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China

prc is hedging their bets by building some new reactors, but it's not competitive with pv and wind (which they are building far more of), even at the dismal capacity factors they've achieved so far for reasons I'm unclear on (possibly a shortage of hvdc transmission capacity)

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