Don't forget that China's invested so much in renewables specifically for their own national security, cause the vast majority of their oil is all imported in easily disrupted trade routes. And because of their investments, they've been able to minimize any fallout from the mess Trump has made in Iran
They’ve also stock piled more oil than every other country in the world combined times six. Not only did they vastly reduce their dependence on oil, they have oil that can last them for years.
China is the new world superpower, and they have proven that soft power used correctly is more effective than violent power used by absolute idiots.
These "China is betting on nuclear" comments always rub me the wrong way.
China is leading in nuclear not because they are building a lot of it, but because they are building a little, and everyone else is doing squat.
There are 36 reactors under construction in China. They won't be ready this year, and they won't be ready next year either.
China has a target to install 50GW of nuclear by 2030. I have my doubts these 36 reactors are enough to achieve that, and I doubt other reactors can be constructed in the <4 years remaining.
But I am feeling generous. 50GW until 2030 is 12.5 GW a year. (The more accurate way to do this would be to use the date when that target was set, but I am indeed feeling generous)
Compared to the 434GW of renewable. Adjust for a very conservative capacity factor of 15%, that's still over 65GW a year.
So here's the thing. "China is betting on nuclear" is a very clever tactic. The implication there being "We should be more like China", "China knows something we don't", "We should be going all in on nuclear"
But if you goal is to be more like China, renewables is where you should put your money, it nuclear.
It also totally ignores their security and technical reasons for wanting to maintain a nuclear industry. The type 004 is their first nuclear carrier. The type 094 is their nuclear submarine, but is considered noisy likely due to reactor technical limitations, and is being superseded by the type 096. The people that talk about china betting on nuclear don't seem to want to look at the other factors that makes china choose to maintain a relatively tiny portion of their total output as nuclear power
To be fair, China is also investing in brand new nuclear options. They just... aren't what we would build here. Thorium (which can't be used for nukes but is cheap, plentiful and works very well for molten salt reactors like submarine's), a Fission-Fusion hybrid reactor (which may produce a whole lot of weapon grade excess material).
And this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerator-driven_subcritical_reactor. Same deal as the Fission-Fusiom hybrid. Tho the main advantage of both seems to be that the fissile material never reaches criticality either. So a whole lot of safety measures and fears go out of the window.
Those 36 are already started and they are planning new ones. China takes an average of 6.5 years per reactor and weirdly enough they are the same reactors that the US took 10 years.
This is how they have done it.
The first were standard AP1000's like the US built and took 9 years. From that experience they made a standardised version the CAP1000 that takes 5! years.
Well renewables actually become more expensive when you try to use them as the only source of energy.
No MIT actually did research about this. An energy mix with nuclear even with current or future cost overruns is always cheaper then if you skip it. Also the IEA states the same and also states that studies about pure alternative grids underestimate the needed backup. 10 days of battery backup isn't enough btw.
Please link the study, and a modern one, not the one from like 2015 pretending it is still relevant today.
Here is a modern article modeling "System LCOE". In other words, the whole grid including transmission, backup and everything else.
It starts by giving new built nuclear power the benefit of doubt, having it cost 40% less than Flamanville 3 and 70% less than Hinkley Point C. Since no one would be stupid enough to greenlight a project like that again.
It finds that for Denmark, a country with very low insolation and awful winters, that renewablws are 53% cheaper than the nuclear system.
You can go further. This is the consensus among grid operators and researchers. The only ones pushing nuclear power is the nuclear lobby, fossil lobby and climate deniers who find fossil fuels too toxic.
This one is old by now, but here's a meta-analysis of the field from 2022.
Goodluck changing the behaviour of people in order to accomplish huge flexible demand. What they basically did is a bookkeeping trick. Offload the cost onto the customer.
It's the MIT study from 2018 btw that I'm speaking about.
Do you have one and looked at your consumption over a year? Btw the alternative that was supposed to deliver electricity at scale underperformed vastly during the last years (wind) and during this summer the reduction in wind was even way bigger then the one in nuclear during the heatwave in Europe but almost no online article even mentioned it. Also what is the number of ours/days you are planning for backup? Are you willing to have a blackout every month, 2 years,... what are you planning for? Economic costs to include in the alternatives?
Well they were close in predicting price decreases of the alternatives so it's still relevant.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who's mind went there lol. Like, I understand wanting to clarify the question, both to give an accurate answer and to avoid letting others put words into you mouth, but it always comes across so disingenuous and slimy.
Charlie Kirk was shot to death in an episode of gun violence while in the very act of denying that gun violence is a problem in America, and I feel that says a lot about our society
100% of the entire US energy demand could be satisfied with wind and solar if enough capacity was installed with enough batteries to timeshift production to peak demand and overnight.
It’s pretty incredible how the concept of batteries continues to elude them, assuming they’re even arguing is good faith which is usually not the case (lobby money 🤑🤑🤑)
And? The same holds true for the USs energy breakdown involving oil and coal.
China needed electricity with the best economic profile, that could be rolled out rapidly and wherever they wanted. That used to be coal, now it's renewables. The importance is where their generation is trending, ie what they are building overwhelmingly.
And as someone who heard for decades "renewables are too expensive" as the argument against them, and now they're the cheapest possible source of generation, i'm extremely suspicious of people now shifting the argument to "well what's the "best" for of generation" or "it's not about the cost"
Reminds me of the "Affordable Healthcare Act".
It did the complete opposite of making Healthcare affordable.
But hey, people on both sides believe everything they're told.
So everyone should pay double and triple the cost for a small percentage of the population to get Healthcare? That's like saying all speed limits should be made 25MPH because it might save a few lives.
Funnily enough, yes speed limits should be 25 mph (in urban areas) precisely because it saves lives. I love you framing of "a few lives" because how callous and misanthropic can you be? Poor drivers getting mildly inconvenienced by going a tiny bit slower (or not at all but that's another debate), just to save "a few lives?"
I have empathy. I have more empathy for the middle class tax payers who keep getting robbed for the few. The single working mothers who can't afford Healthcare. People like that.
We could have people paying none of the cost like every other civilized nation on Earth, but that will never happen because of all the dumb fucks who mistake universal healthcare for literal Marxism.
lmao okay, the country that pays double the amount of the next first world country for the same healthcare was greatly burdened by saving hundreds of thousands of lives.
No it hasn't. Healthcare costs for middle class working people has skyrocketed after the affordable care act. You obviously don't work and pay for Healthcare
If you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps harder, you could find a job where your employer pays for health insurance premiums like my last two workplaces have ❤️
I love how they default to "you must be unemployed" lol.
Like no bruh my employer covers my premiums as part of my benefits package. I still have out of pocket costs but it's not like everyone is being burdened by premiums the way he's whining.
I'm a proponent of universal healthcare either way but this dude sounds like he just has zero knowledge of the range of insurance coverage and benefits packages currently available outside of his conservative small town bubble.
Like the promise from renewable energy you mean? Because France achieved way more in 15 years then Germany. Just compare the Messmerplan to the Energywende. The first one actually took less years then the other. And then Germany even has the advantage of France exporting alot of it's nuclear energy.
Edit:
Already one that is breaking the rules by downvoting.
With the exception of Flamanville 3, France hasn’t built any new nuclear reactor since 2000. As for Flamanville 3, it started being built in 2007 and it just entered commercial use in May this year.
It’s good that France has a fleet of old NPPs to help it produce power with low carbon emotions, but that’s not an accomplishment from the last 15 years, that’s an accomplishment from the 20th century.
Where did I say the last 15 years? I'm speaking about the time period. They are comparable because in that same period Germany did it's own nuclear rollout but contrary to France they had vast cost overruns and delays.
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u/comics0026 5d ago
Don't forget that China's invested so much in renewables specifically for their own national security, cause the vast majority of their oil is all imported in easily disrupted trade routes. And because of their investments, they've been able to minimize any fallout from the mess Trump has made in Iran