From the New York Times, October 22:
China is quickly becoming the global leader in nuclear power, with nearly as many reactors under construction as the rest of the world combined. While its dominance of solar panels and electric vehicles is well known, China is also building nuclear plants at an extraordinary pace. By 2030, China’s nuclear capacity is set to surpass that of the United States, the first country to split atoms to make electricity.
Many of China’s reactors are derived from American and French designs, yet China has overcome the construction delays and cost overruns that have bogged down Western efforts to expand nuclear power.
At the same time, China is pushing the envelope, making breakthroughs in next-generation nuclear technologies that have eluded the West. The country is also investing heavily in fusion, a potentially limitless source of clean power if anyone can figure out how to tame it.
Beijing’s ultimate objective is to become a supplier of nuclear power to the world, joining the rare few nations — including the United States, Russia, France and South Korea — that can design and export some of the most sophisticated machines ever invented.
“The Chinese are moving very, very fast,” said Mark Hibbs, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has written a book on China’s nuclear program. “They are very keen to show the world that their program is unstoppable.”
As the United States and China compete for global supremacy, energy has become a geopolitical battleground. The United States, particularly under President Trump, has positioned itself as the leading supplier of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal. China, by contrast, dominates the manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines and batteries, seeing renewable power as the multi-trillion-dollar market of the future.
Nuclear power is enjoying a resurgence of global interest, especially as concerns about climate change mount. That’s because nuclear reactors don’t spew planet-warming emissions, unlike coal and gas plants, and can produce electricity around the clock, unlike wind and solar power.
The Trump administration wants to quadruple U.S. nuclear power capacity by 2050, even as it ignores global warming, and it hopes to develop a new generation of reactor technology to power data centers at home and sell to energy-hungry countries overseas. Officials fear that if China dominates the nuclear export market, it could expand its global influence, since building nuclear plants abroad creates deep, decades-long relationships between countries.
Yet in the race for atomic energy, China has one clear advantage: It has figured out how to produce reactors relatively quickly and cheaply. The country now assembles reactors in just five to six years, twice as fast as Western nations.
While U.S. nuclear construction costs skyrocketed after the 1960s, they fell by half in China during the 2000s and have since stabilized, according to data published recently in Nature. (The only two U.S. reactors built this century, at the Vogtle nuclear plant in Waynesboro, Ga., took 11 years and cost $35 billion.)
“When we first got this data and saw that declining trend in China, it surprised me,” said Shangwei Liu, a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government who led the paper.
The big questions, Mr. Liu said, are how China got so good at nuclear power — and whether the United States can catch up.
How China mastered nuclear power
A modern nuclear power plant is one of the most complex construction projects on Earth.The reactor vessel, where atoms are split, is made of specialized steel up to 10 inches thick that must withstand bombardment by radiation for decades. That vessel, in turn, is housed in a massive containment dome, often three stories high and about as wide as the U.S. Capitol dome, made of steel-reinforced concrete to prevent dangerous leaks. Thousands of miles of piping and wiring must meet exacting safety standards.
Financing these multibillion-dollar projects is staggeringly difficult. Even minor problems, like needing regulator approval to modify a component midway through, can lead to long delays and can cause borrowing costs to skyrocket.
Over time, China has conquered this process.
It starts with heavy government support. Three state-owned nuclear developers receive cheap government-backed loans to build new reactors, which is valuable since financing can be one-third of costs. The Chinese government also requires electric grid operators to buy some of the power from nuclear plants at favorable rates.
Just as importantly, China’s nuclear companies build only a handful of reactor types and they do it over and over again.
That allows developers to perfect the construction process and is “essential for scaling efficiently,” said Joy Jiang, an energy innovation analyst at the Breakthrough Institute, a pro-nuclear research organization. “It means you can streamline licensing and simplify your supply chain.”
The fact that the Chinese government has a national mandate to expand nuclear power means that companies can confidently invest in domestic factories and a dedicated engineering work force. In a sprawling complex near Shanghai, giant reactor pressure vessels are being continuously forged, ready to be shipped to new projects without delay. Teams of specialized welders move seamlessly from one construction site to the next.
It’s been different in the West.
In the 1970s and 1980s, U.S. nuclear construction slowed to a trickle as interest rates rose and regulators frequently tightened safety rules, causing delays. Worries about the disposal of nuclear waste and fears after the 1979 partial meltdown of a reactor at Three Mile Island, in Pennsylvania, didn’t help. At the same time, private developers kept experimenting with new reactor designs that required different components and introduced fresh complications. U.S. nuclear power died from a lack of predictability....
....MUCH MORE
Possibly related at the Sierra Club and elsewhere:
The Sierra Club remains unequivocally opposed to nuclear energy....
From the Global Non-violent Action Database at Swarthmore College:
Anti-Nuclear Power Movement (1960s-1980s)
Residents protest, gain closure of Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, USA, 2005-2013
Clamshell Alliance campaigns against Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant, New Hampshire, 1976-1989
And at Environmental Progress:
Corporate & Energy Interest Funding for Anti-Nuclear Groups
Sierra Club :: Has taken $136 million from nat gas/ renewables interests that stand to profit from the closure of nuclear plants.
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) :: Has minimum of $70 million directly invested in oil and gas renewable energy interests that stand to profit from the closure of nuclear plants.
Environmental Defense Fund :: Has received minimum of $60 million from oil, gas, & renewables investors who would directly benefit from EDF's anti-nuclear advocacy.
WISE International :: Funded by renewable energy interests that stand to profit from the closure of nuclear plants.
Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC) Funded by natural gas and renewable energy interests that stand to profit from the closure of nuclear plants.
Greenpeace :: Works to kill nuclear power around the world and refuses to disclose its donors.
Friends of the Earth :: Works to kill nuclear power around the world and refuses to disclose its donors.
....MUCH MORE, including such tidbits as:
"Billionaire Energy Speculator Tom Steyer Bankrolls Arizona Initiative That Would Close America's Single Largest Source of Clean Energy," April 10, 2018. Steyer is paying for an Arizona ballot initiative that would prematurely close the state’s sole nuclear plant — which is also America’s largest single source of clean energy — and replace it with fossil fuels.
And somehow the New York Times missed all this.
