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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. Ye

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'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.