Climate Change and Renewable Energy News and Discussion

One thing that I have just realized is that for both wind and solar, the best sites have likely already be taken years ago, be it for ease of transport, solar/wind availability or other factors. Make sense right, the industry is new and just starting out, so make sense to grab the best sites that you can for your first couple of projects. Especially for wind, since wind speeds and availability can vary so much from location to location. So that means that a lot of the best spots for wind and solar are currently being used by older technology from 5-10 years ago.

That means that there's gonna be a big boost in generation even from currently used sites with no additional land use once those old sites are eventually retired and replaced with modern technology over the next decade. That's not that big a deal for solar since even the best solar cells only offer small improvements in efficiency compared to even 10 years ago, but for wind?

You could go from an old onshore wind farm that has access to some of the fastest and most consistent wind in China that is comprised of 1-3 MW turbines, suddenly being upgraded to modern turbine that could be anywhere from 5-12 MW. That's a big jump in power, again with no additional land being used, just a old wind farm being replaced with the latest turbines. We will probably see this trend massively drive up onshore wind power capacity in China over the next decade as some of the oldest wind farms age out.

A look at one of China's desert renewables hub

For this year’s winter, Sinopec reports that geothermal heating service covers 95 million square meters, representing a 15% year-on-year increase. Sinopec has steadily grown their geothermal heating capacity from a coverage of 50 million square meters in 2019 and nearly 85 million square meters in 2022. At the current capacity, the use of geothermal for heating saves on CO2 emission by approximately 4.7 million tons annually.

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Geothermal energy isn't talked about nearly as much as the other renewable energy source in China mainly I think it's because China mainly uses it for heating and not for direct electrical generation but it's still growing quite fast. And heating systems use up a lot of energy so this is still an important sector to keep an eye on.

Landmark deal here from Goldwind exporting 500k ton/year of methanol to Maersk for transportation.

eMethanol to be produced by Goldwind's 2GW wind farm in Northeast

I figure there will be plenty of more opportunities like this


Another large 5.3B RMB 500 MW offshore wind farm is under construction now south of Guangdong. This will be using mostly 16MW turbine from Mingyang. The thing is there are so much potential for wind in this area


Another 480k ton/year green ammonia project under way now CEEC for 26.6B RMB in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia. To be complete by end of 2028

tacoburger said:

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Geothermal energy isn't talked about nearly as much as the other renewable energy source in China mainly I think it's because China mainly uses it for heating and not for direct electrical generation but it's still growing quite fast. And heating systems use up a lot of energy so this is still an important sector to keep an eye on.

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good point there. Actually another one that's quite interesting is heating using steam from nuclear power plant

Fast

First pumped hydro storage in Xinjiang.

Among some of the unique materials on China’s list is gold. Although gold is used on a smaller scale in technology, China has sought gold for economic and geopolitical factors, mainly to its foreign exchange reserves, which rely heavily on the U.S. dollar.

Analysts China has bought a record 400 tonnes of gold in recent years.






China has also slated uranium as a critical mineral. The Chinese government has stated it intends to become self-sufficient in nuclear power plant capacity and fuel production for those plants.

According to the , China aims to produce one-third of its uranium domestically.

If China manages to have success with its fast reactor program then the uranium requirements will be hugely decreased.
From what I know most of the fuel used in the reactors in China is made in China. Of course the uranium ore used to make that fuel might be imported.

Breeder reactors will get you plenty of nuclear fuel at little cost. In fact it saves you money in the long run as it can basically use the really nasty radioactive waste that builds up, thus getting rid of it. It's just a matter of building enough breeder reactors. For reference

The amount of time for a breeder to produce enough material to fuel a second reactor is called its doubling time. Present goals for a breeder reactor's doubling time is 10 years, which means it would operate for 10 years producing energy and breeding fissionable material, after which this material could be used to produce the same energy output for another 10 years.

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An important concept for a breeder reactor is how much fissionable fuel is being produced compared to how much fuel is being used. This is known as the breeding ratio. For example for the breeding of plutonium, the ratio would be the amount of plutonium produced to the amount of uranium-235 used. In the liquid metal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR), the breeding ratio is 1.4, however the actual achieved ratio is around 1.2.

The number 1.4 is based off of the average number of neutrons given off by a fission reaction of uranium-235, which is 2.4. Only 1 neutron is needed for the fission chain reaction to be stable, so the remaining 1.4 neutrons (on average) could be used for the breeding of uranium-238

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Basically the doubling time for a breeder reactor is the amount of time it takes for the reactor to double its fuel supply, this includes the fuel that it consumes in the years of operation. While breeding ratio is how much fuel it produces compared to how much it uses.

Doubling time will depend on the reactor technology in question, no doubt that doubling time and breeding ratios will continue to improve with technology. I can't find any info on the CFR-600 on it's breeding ratio or conversion rate or doubling time, but I'm going to assume that it's breeding ratio and doubling time are also around 10 years and 1.4.

So basically it means that if there's 100 FAST reactors in China, in 10 years it breeds enough fuel to sustain itself with no additional fuel input and produces enough fuel for 100 more reactors, so it's basically producing enough fuel for 200 reactors in that 10 years. And there's the traditional methods of nuclear fuel recycling and reprocessing, but of course some reactors require some highly specific fuel mix and there's thorium reactors to consider now so it's very complex.

So for China's current fleet of 55 reactors, you would need around 28 breeder reactors to close the loop and be almost completely self sufficient just off the new fuel produced by the breeder reactors with very little new uranium input needed. We're still a long way off, but not impossible.