Climate Change and Renewable Energy News and Discussion

tacoburger

Junior Member
Registered Member
Comment: Despite China being very pro-nuclear in policy, unlike much of Europe, it seems like the future of the energy transition is going to be WWS. Nuclear will have a minor role. I suspect the high cost and long lead times are to blame. It's just not as competitive for rapid scale-up whereas renewable energy costs are falling rapidly.
There's a common saying among renewables experts, "it's not the first 90% that I worry about, it's the last 10%". Which is to say that getting a grid to mostly renewables is easy, getting it to be all renewables will be much harder. Nuclear still has a place in China for baseload and that last 10-20%.

Anyway, China's nuclear industry is still in infancy. Do remember that just a decade ago China has building like 7 different designs of nuclear power, all foreign designs too. That's not a good way of doing mass production. It's only quite recently that China has a completely domestic reactor design and has started mass production. Even then, the first units took a lot longer then the expected 5 years of construction time, which is to be expected for a new design.

Due to this only a handful of Hualong-1, CAP-1000 have finished construction, although there's still a large number of them under construction. Eventually the construction time and speed will ramp up, which can be seen in the increase in the number of new nuclear plants approvals that China has been over the last 4 years. I think we will see 10+ gigawatts coming online every year once we reach the late 2020s.

And there's the other factors that will increase nuclear plant construction like the upgraded Hualong-2, which is expected to lower costs and construction time. Or once China has a more secure fuel supply via breeder reactors and has increased it's ability to produce the more exotic fuels like HALEU. Or better regulations like allowing nuclear reactors to be built inland like every other major nuclear country.
 
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gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
my point is that they got kazakhstan uranium and then enriched it.

I'm not sure where you are getting to with that, just pointing out this line
Look. There is no evidence of Kazakhstan making fuel rods based on Chinese enriched uranium. The supplier for enriched uranium has always been TVEL from Russia. Although supply of enriched uranium from alternate sites would be possible in theory it never happened in practice. And Kazakhstan itself does not have a full cycle to make fuel rods from uranium ore since they lack enrichment facilities.
 

mossen

Junior Member
Registered Member
There's a common saying among renewables experts, "it's not the first 90% that I worry about, it's the last 10%". Which is to say that getting a grid to mostly renewables is easy, getting it to be all renewables will be much harder. Nuclear still has a place in China for baseload and that last 10-20%.

Anyway, China's nuclear industry is still in infancy. Do remember that just a decade ago China has building like 7 different designs of nuclear power, all foreign designs too. That's not a good way of doing mass production. It's only quite recently that China has a completely domestic reactor design and has started mass production. Even then, the first units took a lot longer then the expected 5 years of construction time, which is to be expected for a new design.

Due to this only a handful of Hualong-1, CAP-1000 have finished construction, although there's still a large number of them under construction. Eventually the construction time and speed will ramp up, which can be seen in the increase in the number of new nuclear plants approvals that China has been over the last 4 years. I think we will see 10+ gigawatts coming online every year once we reach the late 2020s.


All very fair points. Let's look at nuclear deployments for China & RoW.

nuc.jpg

The trend for Nuclear energy in China is now lower than it was in 2019 and even lower than in a country like Korea. This is not because the Chinese govt is inept. It's because nuclear is simply losing competitiveness.

So what else is gaining? Above all else: solar.

sol.jpg

As an aside, I think India's insistence of keeping the Chinese supply-chain out is hurting its deployment. By contrast, Europe decided not to tariff solar imports, because everyone knows it's 90% coming out of China. And as a result, Europe's solar deployments are growing nicely.

Wind:

wind.jpg

High, but not spectacular growth like in solar.

Will be interesting to follow how Chinese wind companies like MingYang do. My impression is that they are outcompeting Örsted and SiemensGamesa. Seems like China is key not just to the solar rollout but possibly the entire cleantech transition all over the world. Countries that want to keep the Chinese out will see their deployments lag.
 

JebKerman

Junior Member
Registered Member
Compared to birds killed by cars, cats, and even windows on tall buildings, wind turbines don't do much to birds. If you really want to save birds put bells on your cat.

15195.jpeg
 

tphuang

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
VIP Professional
Registered Member
an illustration here of how much renewable power is required to generate the green hydrogen needed for 1000 FCEVs


another project here
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500MW solar/wind power can produce 100k ton of ammonia. This requires 50 1000 NM3/h electrolyzers, 6 3000NM3 compressed hydrogen storage at 2.0Mpa and 100k ton of ammonia conversion equipment
 

gabriel.shenton

New Member
Registered Member
There's a common saying among renewables experts, "it's not the first 90% that I worry about, it's the last 10%". Which is to say that getting a grid to mostly renewables is easy, getting it to be all renewables will be much harder. Nuclear still has a place in China for baseload and that last 10-20%.

Anyway, China's nuclear industry is still in infancy. Do remember that just a decade ago China has building like 7 different designs of nuclear power, all foreign designs too. That's not a good way of doing mass production. It's only quite recently that China has a completely domestic reactor design and has started mass production. Even then, the first units took a lot longer then the expected 5 years of construction time, which is to be expected for a new design.

Due to this only a handful of Hualong-1, CAP-1000 have finished construction, although there's still a large number of them under construction. Eventually the construction time and speed will ramp up, which can be seen in the increase in the number of new nuclear plants approvals that China has been over the last 4 years. I think we will see 10+ gigawatts coming online every year once we reach the late 2020s.

And there's the other factors that will increase nuclear plant construction like the upgraded Hualong-2, which is expected to lower costs and construction time. Or once China has a more secure fuel supply via breeder reactors and has increased it's ability to produce the more exotic fuels like HALEU. Or better regulations like allowing nuclear reactors to be built inland like every other major nuclear country.
nuclear power plant build-up is too slow, if China could ramp up 4th generation nuclear reactor production and use the clean energy to produce green hydrogen, then export green hydrogen to other nations, would vastly increase China's influence.
 
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