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Meanwhile, the U.S. seeks to revive its nuclear industry, but trade restrictions and outdated infrastructure hinder progress.

You're viewing a single thread.

41 comments

actually the US is developing small sized power plants. You saw in Ukraine what can happen if you rely on large plants.
- None of the US based SMRs have been successful, even with hundreds of millions of funding and regulatory approval from the DOE.
  
  I said developing.
  
  There is nothing wrong with trying to make this work, but a more accurate statement is that the US has failed in its initial efforts to develop SMRs, and the outlook is grim.
  With the DOE being gutted and no current commercial path forward, this state is unlikely to change in the near term in the US.
  
  https://www.helionenergy.com/articles/helion-energy-breaks-ground-on-site-of-its-next-generation-fusion-facility-in-everett-washington/
  
  So that's a fusion reactor, not fission reactor like SMR. It's both way, way better and way further away than SMR.
  I applaud all of them making headway, but none of them are anywhere near as useful as actual solar and actual batteries that are being actually deployed in mass now.
  
  They are very sorry and will try to get there soon. Just gang in there please.
- What can happen? The plant is pretty much working and is the only reliable point of Ukrainian power generation since it can't be targeted. Also, when is the US going to get into a land war on its own soil, and how will smaller nuclear reactors help?
  
  The smaller reactors are fail safe so if they get blasted you'll end up with free aluminum parts on your backyard. And if you got one near every home that means you gotta spend a lot of firepower to get them all. And if they produced as much power as needed and are safe to repair and quick to build then good luck taking them all out. Right?
  
  Ohh, I get it. The thing with Ukrainian power generation being a military strategic thing though is not that homes can be kept warm - that is great - but that military production is powered. I don't think you can power a munitions factory from scores of smaller reactors, since that would need insane infrastructure that is just not there, and would still be an easy target.
  Also, in Ukraine, it would mean a legitimate military target in every backyard. The Russians would be back to carpet bombings already. I'm not saying it would not help, but I think it's a dubious advantage in wartime - which by the way, the US won't be - and even more problematic at peacetime as again, most consumption is industrial.
  The thing I don't see is how do you route power from Bob's small reactor to Bezos' AI farm so that Wall Street can keep pretending the American economy exists?
- You saw in Ukraine what can happen if you rely on large plants.
  So, I don't disagree that, especially for some environments, bombing resistance is a legit concern.
  However, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that if we find ourselves in a situation where China is bombing US power generation infrastructure, that probably means that World War III -- not some kind of limited-scale fight, but a real all-in conflict -- is on, and I think that the factors that determine what happens there probably aren't mostly going to be "who has more power plants".
  World War II was a multi-year affair, but a lot of that was constrained by distance and the ability to project power. From the US's standpoint, the Axis had extremely-limited ability to affect the US. The US started with a very small army and no weapons that could, in short order, reach across the world. That meant that, certainly from a US standpoint, there was not going to be a quick resolution one way or another. There, industrial capacity was really important.
  Today's environment is different.
  I've not read up on what material's out there, but I'd guess that in a World War III, one of two things probably happens:
  The war goes nuclear, in which case nuclear (weapons, not power generation) capabilities in large part determine the outcome.
  The war remains conventional. One or both sides have the ability to pretty rapidly destroy the other side's air and/or missile defenses and subsequently destroy critical infrastructure to the degree that the other side cannot sustain the fight. My bet is on the US being in a stronger position here, but regardless, I don't think that what happens is each side keeps churning out hardware for multiple years and slugging the other with that hardware, being able to make use of their power generation capacity. Electrical generation capacity is a particularly important part of that, sure, but it's not the whole enchilada. Water production and distribution, electrical distribution, bridges, industrial infrastructure.
  That doesn't mean that power generation capacity doesn't matter vis-a-vis military capacity. Like, let's say that China has a really great way to convert electrical generation capacity into military capacity, right? Like, they have some fully automated mega-factory that churns out long range AI-powered fighter jets, has all the raw resources they need, just keeps pouring electricity into it. And China decides -- in peacetime -- that it wants to build an enormous fighter jet force like that. Say, I don't know, a hundred thousand planes or something. Then the US, which in our hypothetical scenario doesn't have such a fully-automated-mega-factory, has a hard decision: either attack China or wait and find itself in a situation where China could defeat it in conventional terms. The ability to expand military capacity does matter.
  But at the point that bombing is happening and the ability of power generation to passively-resist that bombing is a factor, you're already in a war, and then I think that a whole host of other factors start to dramatically change the environment.
  
  OK agreed.

41 comments