2d ago

How China became the world’s new nuclear energy superstar

www.huffpost.com America Is About To Fall Behind China On 1 Of The Most Important Issues Of Our Time

China is on a clear course to become the world’s first “electrostate" — and is likely to eclipse the U.S. in atomic power in the next decade.

Summary

China is rapidly surpassing the U.S. in nuclear energy, building more reactors at a faster pace and developing advanced technologies like small modular reactors and high-temperature gas-cooled units.

The U.S. struggles with costly, delayed projects, while China benefits from state-backed financing and streamlined construction.

This shift could make China the leading nuclear power producer within a decade, impacting global energy and geopolitical influence.

Meanwhile, the U.S. seeks to revive its nuclear industry, but trade restrictions and outdated infrastructure hinder progress.

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41 comments

Nuclear energy has a long tail of recent and less recent horrors. These horrors affect the globe in their consequences and should give great pause, despite the passive meltdown aversion systems being implemented in modern reactors. Being slow to implement nuclear energy plants is a feature, not a bug.
An important aside, humans generally have a problem with funding regulatory structures involved in keeping the public safe, constant vigilance gets an ax when budgets are manic. I certainly do not trust the US government to maintain regulatory pressure on nuclear power to keep the public safe from grave harm. Until the manic bipolarity of the current political climate subsides, this will be the case at the very least.
FWIW, if it is not clear, I see absolutely no reason to trust China on nuclear energy regulation either.
- Including disasters like Chernobyl, nuclear energy causes several magnitudes less deaths than fossil fuels. It is utterly fucking insane for the concern to be “the horrors” of the three meltdowns you’re thinking of, of which the only one to kill or injure any civilians was Chernobyl. Fukushima did have some workers undergo significantly higher than usual radioactive doses - I invite you to contrast this with the mortality rate of, say, working on an oil rig.
  Fossil fuels are killing this planet before your very eyes. I am thrilled by the progress renewables are making, and small scale nuclear is quite likely the only new nuclear we would benefit from constructing these days. But we could have saved an ungodly amount of fossil fuels being burned and thus lives if it wasn’t for this argument.
  
  Fukushima did have some workers undergo significantly higher than usual radioactive doses - I invite you to contrast this with the mortality rate of, say, working on an oil rig.
  Not injecting my own opinion in this thread of conversation, but if you're expanding the scope to include oil rig worker adverse health effects, which introduces the fuel supply chain, then you need to also include the fuel supply chain health impacts and deaths with nuclear fuel extraction, such as the tens of thousands of uranium miners that have died digging out uranium.
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  I completely agree on all counts except nuclear energy has one critical problem that I’ve never been able to truly get past as much as I want to get past them: the stakes are simply higher. There is no coal plant incident even remotely theoretically possible that can render massive regions inhospitable for centuries. Chernobyl was this close to poisoning the main source of water for a massive portion of Eastern Europe and nearly caused a global catastrophe. This just doesn’t happen with any other energy source.
  All it takes is one key person not having their morning coffee or one unscrupulous politician loosening things a bit too much and suddenly you have a mass casualty event that lingers for God knows how long.
  Even as I say all this I actually support nuclear energy. But we can’t act like that threat doesn’t exist.
  
  Chernobyl killed around 4000 people locally and contributed to 16000 deaths on the continent. Normal coal operation has killed half a million people over the last 20 years.
  All I'm saying is that accidents are possible, sure, but the laxity of regulations regarding coal has killed way more people than that towards nuclear. And it's not about "one person not having their morning coffee", Chernobyl was dangerous by design, modern reactors simply can't fail that way.
  
  You’re missing the thrust of my comment. The potential damage of a nuclear reactor is orders of magnitude higher than the potential of a coal fire plant. You are strictly measuring deaths that have happened, which is a valid metric for a lot of the discussions and why I largely agree with building more nuclear reactors. In fact I fully agree with building them, to be clear, in case that wasn’t in my previous comment. But I am not talking about number of deaths per [energy] created or something. This is way bigger than that.
  You’re focusing on minutia when you need to be zooming out. True or false: a nuclear reactor failing, for any number of reasons, can do a lot more damage than a coal plant or any of the processes to gather coal can.
  The answer is unequivocally yes. I do not think that we should not build them as a result, but we have to engage this question or we are ignoring reality.
  
  True or false: a nuclear reactor failing, for any number of reasons, can do a lot more damage than a coal plant or any of the processes to gather coal can.
  By that same logic, we should dismantle all our cities, since a natural catastrophe can wipe out so much more people if they are clustered up. Or drive instead of flying, because one airplane crashing is worse than one car crashing.
  Nuclear reactors failing make for better headlines. You would literally have to build a reactor design that was not safe even back then - they built it to prioritize weapons grade material refinement - and would have to mismanage it systematically for decades in order to get at 5-10% of the death toll coal generation will do 100% in that timeframe.
  The big picture is, if every reactor was Chernobyl, was built like Chernobyl, was operated like Chernobyl and would fail like Chernobyl, that would still cause less deaths than the equivalent coal generation. That's the big picture. Fixating on one accident that can provably never happen again is the minutia.
  
  It’s clear you’re not willing to engage this in good faith. You’re just going to take the least charitable interpretation of my ideas and twist them into things I am not saying or implying. The simple fact of the matter is a coal plant (which I am against and want all 100% gone) is not going to render hundreds if not thousands of miles inhospitable to human life under any conditions. Nuclear can do that. We have to consider those possibilities because they are very real, as Chernobyl showed us. We were on the brink and narrowly avoided a global catastrophe.
  Have a good one dude. I’m done.
  
  Brother, after reading this thread, you're the one that's intentionally missing the point and failing to engage in good faith.
  
  Your opinion is noted? What do you want here?
  
  there is no coal plant incident even remotely theoretically possible that can render massive regions inhospitable for centuries
  If you ignore the incident we’ve all been watching slowly unfold for centuries with our thumbs up our asses, and oil spills to a lesser extent, sure
  
  I never said anything about fossil fuels, and do not wish them continued use either.
  
  Fossil fuels are killing this planet before your very eyes.
  And the only way to save it is nuclear power? Every thread about this topic makes it look this way.
  Thing is: Fossil fuels are killing our planet NOW. Spending 10+ years to build a new state-of-the-art nuclear power plant is simply too slow. Just take the money and dump it into technology that's already available at short notice: Solar, wind, geothermal and tons and tons of battery storage. I'm not sure about the situation in other countries, but here in Germany there isn't even a permanent storage site for the nuclear waste we ALREADY produced let alone one for which we'd produce in the future.
  Additional factor for not going nuclear in Europe: Do you know which country exports the most fissile material around us? It starts with an R and ends with ussia.
  
  And the only way to save it is nuclear power?
  Not sure where you got this from what's written there
  
  Not sure, maybe from the posts where everybody argues that Nuclear is so much better than coal but totally missing the point that yes, it's better than coal, but so much worse than renewables.
  Huge upfront costs
  Long build time (We need to get CO2 down now!)
  Waste disposal time measured in aeons.
  Risk of contamination (again for aeons)
  Yes, coal kills more people, but
  Scale our usage of nuclear power by 100 and watch the casualties scale as well.
  That's not the frigging point. We want to get rid of coal ANYWAY. The question is which one is better: Fossil nuclear or renewables.
  
  The question is which one is better: Fossil nuclear or renewables.
  Both, whatever we can build faster, whatever makes it easier to reduce coal and oil. It shouldn't be an either-or decision. Also, nuclear is not a fossil fuel, you can debate if it is renewable or not, but nuclear fuel is not made from compressed organic matter.
  
  Both, whatever we can build faster, whatever makes it easier to reduce coal and oil. It shouldn't be an either-or decision.
  You are kind of contradicting yourself. Because in both aspects nuclear energy looses to renewables: They are faster and less complex to build. Easier to maintain and dispose of if necessary.
  Also, nuclear is not a fossil fuel, you can debate if it is renewable or not, but nuclear fuel is not made from compressed organic matter.
  Ok, if you want to split hairs, yes nuclear energy is not fossil but also then there are also no renewables because the energy in the universe is for all we know finite.
- It does have some attraction over certain death of fossil fuels.
- Nuclear apologists love defending this expensive, hazardous industry. In Texas, mining the uranium for these plants is ruining the water table just like fracking does.
  Meanwhile solar, wind, and geothermal are cheaper and cleaner.
  https://www.wired.com/story/a-uranium-mining-boom-is-sweeping-through-texas-nuclear-energy/
  
  In St. Louis, nuclear waste in a landfill has caused cancer in north county black and brown neighborhoods for decades.
  It is generally those who have not witnessed the ramifications of nuclear waste and/or disaster that are its proponents. Something that takes tens of thousands of years to decay, considering climate change, climate change catastrophe, movements in human population, and geologic change, we are full of hubris to consider it a green power option. But all the rose-tinted know-it-all tech bro will vote me down. Idgaf.

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