17 ms·
China is building nuclear reactors faster than any other country
- scotty79 3y agoChina even built a thorium molten salts reactor recently. If this pans out they'll leapfrog the usual nuclear.
- grooverider 3y agoI'm super stoked on this technology development.
- hunglee2 3y agohow can US slow down China's nuclear build out - what export controls could be applied? Also I believe that the Hualong One reactor design is based on Westinghouse IP, which might give legal / financial instrument to help fslow down China's rise
- cced 3y ago[flagged]
- nat0704 3y agoThe OP is being sarcastic. He's basically mocking the US Government's seemingly compulsive habit of trying to sanction China in any field it seems China might be dominating, pulling ahead, or able to dominate in the near or distant future.
- borissk 3y agoWould the world be a better place if the US Government lets China become the dominating world super-power?
- throwaway89416 3y ago[flagged]
- nobodyandproud 3y agoInstead of slowing down China, we should consider this a wake-up call. Instead of lazily pointing out that nuclear is “expensive”, have an honest conversation on the extraordinarily high hurdles we put in 50+ years ago. Right now even a good-faith conversation amongst experts across different industries seems impossible
- systemvoltage 3y agoIt’s schizophrenic to see that we are realizing the problem of huge amounts of regulations and unchecked bureaucracy, and then almost all solutions on HN, no matter the topic, screams “More regulations!”. Regulations is a huge topic with lots of nuances, effectiveness and various domains; but I just see every thread on HN constantly and incessantly drumming for more Gov intervention. Switch to another thread and first knee jerk reaction, often the top voted comment is about regulations. I’m not saying at all about getting rid of regulations. They are absolutely necessary but maybe we should be a little more careful about putting them in place?
- cft 3y agoIt may seem counterintuitive, but in 100 years, the West may economically choke under the burden of overregulation and central planning, while China, tired of the CCP, could become a free enterprise economy.
- vbezhenar 3y agoIt is easy to justify the need for regulation. It is very hard to justify the removal of regulation. Someone need to take a responsibility for that. And that's a hard sell.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 0xDEF 3y ago>Also I believe that the Hualong One reactor design is based on Westinghouse IP You make it sound like they stole it but they legally bought it and are building the new nuclear plants in collaboration with Westinghouse.
- lithos 3y agoThe counterpoint is that pointing out to boomers that Poland and China are multiple decades ahead of us in nuclear technology, tends to make them "hungry" to invest in the technology. (They live in a thoughtset that America Exceptionalism must be real)
- rozal 3y ago[dead]
- headsupernova 3y agoIncomprehensible to want to slow china on this front... climate collapse doesn't stop at country borders.
- foverzar 3y agoWhy would you do that? This is such a weirdly common attitude to US competitors in a western bubble, but I can't figure what motivates so many people to act like such sore losers. No wonder things like BRICS start popping out. People on the receiving end will justly recognize this attitude as evil.
- berserk1010 3y agoOP is a CCP sympathizer who is being sarcastic. OP should probably ask (but they won't), how can US slow down China's help to Russia's terrible war on Ukraine, or theft of valuable IP in the free world, or increased aggression against Taiwan and Philippines
- foverzar 3y ago> can US slow down China's help to Russia's terrible war on Ukraine If anyone actually wanted to do anything about this "terrible war", they wouldn't using peace agreements as a mean to prepare for war. If Ukraine and it's alies knowingly and willingly made a bet with peoples lives and then kept doubling down on "ceasefire is not an option" - it's only their fault for suffering the consequence and absolutely no one (including China) owes anyone any help in saving their face. Objective reality exists. No one is going to fall in line with US-centric fake moralizing, based to denying agency to everyone except guys under that flag we don't like.
- shortsunblack 3y agoNot op, but I'm anti-IP. I couldn't care less for IP "theft" (ridiculuos concept it being. if two people share each an idea, they both now have two ideas. no material property is being destroyed). And as for R&D output, China already outpaces U.S. in many key sectors. Take a look at Nature's top science cities list. #1 is Beijing. Perhaps U.S. should steal some ideas of the Chinese, such as effective central planning in transportation projects (high speed rail, metro lines), transmission lines (HVDC) or energy projects (nuclear).
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago> China is to phase out coal and become carbon neutral by 2060, it will need an energy source that can help it reliably meet baseload demand (the minimum level of power required to keep things running). Wind and solar are less suited to this, as they depend on the co-operation of nature. But nuclear fits the bill. In any scenario, renewables are going to do more of the heavy lifting in displacing coal in China. This framing seems designed to avoid this reality. > When it comes to energy generated, China’s nuclear stations outperform today’s installed solar capacity (though not wind). Again, I could argue about the framing here, but their underlying facts are suspect too. I wonder what their source is, as I believe both wind and solar are above nuclear production as of 2022 and growing at a faster rate. solar: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-share-energy?tab=chart&country=CHN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-share-energy?tab=ch... wind: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wind-share-energy?tab=chart&country=CHN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wind-share-energy?tab=cha... solar and wind: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-primary-energy-from-solar-and-wind?tab=chart&country=CHN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-primary-energy-f... nuclear: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-primary-energy?tab=chart&country=CHN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-primary-energy?ta... second source that agrees: https://ember-climate.org/countries-and-regions/countries/china/ https://ember-climate.org/countries-and-regions/countries/ch... Looking forward here's the IEA on the plan for Chinese carbon neutrality by 2060: > Renewables-based generation, mainly wind and solar PV, increases seven-fold between 2020 and 2060, accounting for almost 80% of generation by then. By contrast, the share of coal drops from over 60% to just 5%, and unabated coal-based generation stops in 2050. https://www.iea.org/reports/an-energy-sector-roadmap-to-carbon-neutrality-in-china/executive-summary https://www.iea.org/reports/an-energy-sector-roadmap-to-carb...
- Arnt 3y agohttps://nitter.net/CleanPowerDave/status/1729784959890506150#m https://nitter.net/CleanPowerDave/status/1729784959890506150... says China will likely install 240GW of solar this year, which is about 90% of what the entire world installed last year. I agree that the piece sounds as if it's trying not to mention renewables.
- 3y ago
- thelastgallon 3y agoNuclear, solar and wind are the cleanest and safest forms of energy. The metric to use is deaths/TWH: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
- Kon5ole 3y ago>Nuclear, solar and wind are the cleanest and safest forms of energy. The metric to use is deaths/TWH This common flawed claim ignores the metric "How much effort is required to keep the number of deaths low?" which is an essential part of it. Nuclear is not safe. It is just kept from harming us by a large crew of skilled people and billions of dollars' worth of safety measures. Solar and wind have no such requirements, so the comparison is a bit like saying that the safest tools are a brush, a broom and a gun.
- johnsmithson 3y agoI for one am worries by China's nuclear reactors, considering the competency crisis and China favouring speed over safety.
- thelastgallon 3y ago> billions of dollars' worth of safety measures. This is of the order of fractions of pennies when we compare to fossil fuel subsidies. Fossil fuels to the tune of $7 trillion/year[1] and cause 10 million deaths/year. Air Pollution Kills 10 Million People a Year. Why Do We Accept That as Normal? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/environment/air-pollution-deaths-climate-change.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/environment/air-p... > large crew of skilled people If we stop subsidizing fossil fuels, then the energy markets will be fair, nuclear will win (or at least a major play along with solar and wind) and there will be a ton of skilled workforce. We didn't have a skilled javascript workforce 2 decades ago, now we have millions. [1] https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuel-subsidies-2022 https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuel-subsidies-2022
- Kon5ole 3y ago
- christkv 3y agoChina is aggressively building more nuclear weapons and these breeder reactors will be key to produce the weapons material needed.
- bastawhiz 3y agoDo you have a source for this?
- Ycombigatorz 3y ago[dead]
- delecti 3y agoIt's recently been in the news that China is substantially increasing the size of their nuclear arsenal. I can't substantiate the GP's claim that the weapons and reactors are connected, but it's a reasonable prediction. https://www.npr.org/2023/10/19/1207156597/new-pentagon-report-claims-china-now-has-over-500-operational-nuclear-warheads https://www.npr.org/2023/10/19/1207156597/new-pentagon-repor...
- jandrewrogers 3y agoHere is a Reuters source. China has also been building delivery systems along with those warheads. https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-nuclear-arsenal-more-than-500-warheads-pentagon-report-2023-10-19/ https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-nuclear-arsenal-more-th...
- meroes 3y agoCareful last time I brought this up on HN I was downvoted. Watch Dark Circle HN’ers.
- berserk1010 3y agothere are less of those on HN these days, most of these opportunistic hacks finally realized that China is collapsing economically and abandoned ship
- 3y ago
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]
- nnurmanov 3y agoChina spans almost 5 timezones, they could create chain of solar panels and extend solar day by additional 5 hours
- magicpin 3y agoNot according to china.
- ben_w 3y agoThe country can span five time zones[0] geographically while still legally being only one. [0] I'd only count it as four; the difference is a fencepost error IMO.
- rpigab 3y agoNot accounting loss in transmission lines over long distances and cost of building even-higher voltage lines than those already used in the normal grid that's optimized to serve consumers closest to power stations, else Africa would be powering most of Europe.
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoChina already has country spanning HVDC and UHVDC to bring hydro and coal to the cities in other regions that need it.
- ianburrell 3y agoTransmission losses with HVDC lines are small, 3.5% per 1000km. China are experts in ultra-high-voltage transmission lines. And are building a ton of solar plants in the western deserts. There are proposals to install solar panels in North Africa and run HVDC lines to Europe. There was one recently about running a line all the way to Britain from Morocco.
- LargoLasskhyfv 3y agoI'd say they are expert buyers & users, because all you see are cars and logos of western companies like Siemens, ABB and so on, implementing them.
- Ycombigatorz 3y ago[dead]
- matthewfelgate 3y agoThe rest of the world should be building more nuclear plants.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoChina was planning on building 30 nuclear reactors a year. Instead they're building less than 3 a year.
- jillesvangurp 3y agoThose plans have been adapted to the new reality that their wind and solar industry is enormously successful and has grown much faster than anticipated even a few short years ago. And its a market they dominate. At this point there's no economical need to build a lot of more expensive nuclear plants. Another issue in China is that their economy is struggling a bit lately and that it issues with a lot of debt that is at risk of defaulting. Adding to that problem with a lot of economically challenged nuclear plants is not helpful so, they are putting on the brakes a little bit. Not all the way.
- r00fus 3y agoHow many does the US build a year? 3/year would be hailed as a massive success here - and it should be hailed likewise for China.
- Arubis 3y agoGood for them! We all share the same atmosphere.
- ortusdux 3y agoAgreed. I do think the Olympics should get some credit for China's focus on air quality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerns_and_controversies_at_the_2008_Summer_Olympics#Environmental_and_health_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerns_and_controversies_at_... https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/china-got-blue-skies-time-olympics-rcna15340 https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/china-got-blue-s...
- blackoil 3y agoChina has moved from 20% renewable + nuclear in 2008 to 33% in 2021.
- fcanesin 3y agoI believe it is also building dams, ports, bridges, tunnels, metro lines, high-speed trains and highways faster than any other country.
- JudasGoat 3y agohttps://archive.ph/urGB5 https://archive.ph/urGB5