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China installs about as much new solar capacity each year as the rest of the world combined. They manufacture the most PVs and have access to the cheapest PVs f

China installs about as much new solar capacity each year as the rest of the world combined. They manufacture the most PVs and have access to the cheapest PVs for that reason. Yet, they also have installed more new nuclear capacity (by far) than the rest of the world combined. Not only they do that, but they also have more nuclear plant being built right now, and more being already approved. Nuclear power is expensive because of the initial construction cost, and that is expensive because we forgot how to build. China didn't.

matthewdgreen 1y ago
China is building more nuclear power than the rest of the world, but it's not even remotely keeping up with their renewable buildouts [1]. Mostly this is because renewables like PV modules are built in a factory using standardized mass-production techniques, and nuclear plants (currently) are not. [1] https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/12/nuclear-continues-to-lag-far-behind-renewables-in-china-deployments/ https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/12/nuclear-continues-to-la...
- ethbr1 1y ago
  In terms of scaling PV, there's some lag time before grid-scale issues appear (due to percentage of total) and battery / nuclear et al. are need to solve them. China is coming from a huge (and still growing) base load of coal. Still 60%+ of electricity mix. [0] So even with PV's growth, it's not a systemically problematic component. Compare that to Germany's mix [1], and you realize that China is aiming their reactor building at a problem they'll have in 10 years. (Depending on how aggressively the rest of the world makes China and India stop burning coal...) [0] https://www.iea.org/countries/china/electricity https://www.iea.org/countries/china/electricity [1] https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/electricity https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/electricity
  - matthewdgreen 1y ago
    I don’t think the percentage of nuclear was ever planned to be high enough to serve as a replacement for storage, and China is badly behind those plans.
    - ethbr1 1y ago
      Nuclear isn't storage: nuclear is base generation and frequency intertia. I.e. the thing that makes the grid as a whole reliable even with fluctuating renewables For that, only a fraction of the total is needed.
      - matthewdgreen 1y ago
        I mean, unless we're turning electricity into Uranium, nuclear obviously isn't storage. But when it comes to reliability, storage absolutely is the alternative to generation like nuclear. China already has 57GW of pumped hydro storage (about equal to their whole nuclear fleet), and they added 42GW of new 2.5hr battery storage just in 2024 alone. Given the declining price of both types of storage, it's likely that these will dominate nuclear when it comes to short- and medium-term grid reliability.
- credit_guy 1y ago
  What you are saying is correct, but you are not contradicting me. If nuclear was economically completely uncompetitive, China would build zero, or near zero. Yet China has 31 GWe under construction right now. Yes, it's much less than the new solar capacity for a single year, but it's a number that is not zero, and it is also going up rather than down. So China thinks that going forward nuclear is a good investment, most likely because they are climbing the nuclear construction learning curve, and are able to build nuclear for cheaper and cheaper. Just like PVs were 100 times more expensive 30 years ago, there is a possibility that nuclear could be many times cheaper in the future. There is no law of nature that prevents that.
  - matthewdgreen 1y ago
    China's nuclear plans are based on targets set by the government: they are not necessarily economically competitive. They initially planned to have 18% of their electricity generation produced by nuclear in 2060, which they estimate as 400GW. Those (percentage) targets don't seem realistic anymore given how relatively quickly their renewable deployments are moving. But even if we just consider the 400GW target, they'll need to speed up nuclear construction by an order of magnitude: for the past five years, nuclear additions have been averaging between 1.2-2.3GW per year for the (down from higher numbers before), which is really not enough to meet those targets. As for the construction learning curve: the main element that made PV inexpensive was the ability to build it in factories at scale. For nuclear the equivalent is SMRs. China is building experimental versions of those too! To the extent that China perfects SMRs and brings the costs way down, they could definitely put nuclear back on track. In a world where cheap SMRs may be a few years away, I question whether building additional AP1000/EPRs is a cost-effective move (even ignoring the possibility of dirt-cheap storage.) China's relatively slow construction rate also makes me wonder if they've come to the same conclusion.

matthewdgreen 1y ago

China is building more nuclear power than the rest of the world, but it's not even remotely keeping up with their renewable buildouts [1]. Mostly this is because renewables like PV modules are built in a factory using standardized mass-production techniques, and nuclear plants (currently) are not. [1] https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/12/nuclear-continues-to-lag-far-behind-renewables-in-china-deployments/ https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/12/nuclear-continues-to-la...

ethbr1 1y ago
In terms of scaling PV, there's some lag time before grid-scale issues appear (due to percentage of total) and battery / nuclear et al. are need to solve them. China is coming from a huge (and still growing) base load of coal. Still 60%+ of electricity mix. [0] So even with PV's growth, it's not a systemically problematic component. Compare that to Germany's mix [1], and you realize that China is aiming their reactor building at a problem they'll have in 10 years. (Depending on how aggressively the rest of the world makes China and India stop burning coal...) [0] https://www.iea.org/countries/china/electricity https://www.iea.org/countries/china/electricity [1] https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/electricity https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/electricity
- matthewdgreen 1y ago
  I don’t think the percentage of nuclear was ever planned to be high enough to serve as a replacement for storage, and China is badly behind those plans.
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    Nuclear isn't storage: nuclear is base generation and frequency intertia. I.e. the thing that makes the grid as a whole reliable even with fluctuating renewables For that, only a fraction of the total is needed.
    - matthewdgreen 1y ago
      I mean, unless we're turning electricity into Uranium, nuclear obviously isn't storage. But when it comes to reliability, storage absolutely is the alternative to generation like nuclear. China already has 57GW of pumped hydro storage (about equal to their whole nuclear fleet), and they added 42GW of new 2.5hr battery storage just in 2024 alone. Given the declining price of both types of storage, it's likely that these will dominate nuclear when it comes to short- and medium-term grid reliability.
credit_guy 1y ago
What you are saying is correct, but you are not contradicting me. If nuclear was economically completely uncompetitive, China would build zero, or near zero. Yet China has 31 GWe under construction right now. Yes, it's much less than the new solar capacity for a single year, but it's a number that is not zero, and it is also going up rather than down. So China thinks that going forward nuclear is a good investment, most likely because they are climbing the nuclear construction learning curve, and are able to build nuclear for cheaper and cheaper. Just like PVs were 100 times more expensive 30 years ago, there is a possibility that nuclear could be many times cheaper in the future. There is no law of nature that prevents that.
- matthewdgreen 1y ago
  China's nuclear plans are based on targets set by the government: they are not necessarily economically competitive. They initially planned to have 18% of their electricity generation produced by nuclear in 2060, which they estimate as 400GW. Those (percentage) targets don't seem realistic anymore given how relatively quickly their renewable deployments are moving. But even if we just consider the 400GW target, they'll need to speed up nuclear construction by an order of magnitude: for the past five years, nuclear additions have been averaging between 1.2-2.3GW per year for the (down from higher numbers before), which is really not enough to meet those targets. As for the construction learning curve: the main element that made PV inexpensive was the ability to build it in factories at scale. For nuclear the equivalent is SMRs. China is building experimental versions of those too! To the extent that China perfects SMRs and brings the costs way down, they could definitely put nuclear back on track. In a world where cheap SMRs may be a few years away, I question whether building additional AP1000/EPRs is a cost-effective move (even ignoring the possibility of dirt-cheap storage.) China's relatively slow construction rate also makes me wonder if they've come to the same conclusion.