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China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

johnmenadue.com

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Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#51

Post by concinds »

hangonhn wrote: post #29
janalsncm wrote: post #9

It is telling that a country with basically none of the American barriers to nuclear (NiMBYism, slow construction) is also shifting focus to solar and wind. It’s just simpler. You can put up a solar panel tomorrow and start generating power. A solar panel is a self-contained prefab power generating unit. Even with all of the advancements in nuclear, we still don’t have anything like that.

I was going to say... if a country like China, with its massive engineering/building capacity and authoritarian "efficiency" cannot hit their nuclear construction targets, it is quite telling how difficult it must be in reality to build nuclear reactors in general. I am still very pro-nuclear but it seems PV + wind + battery storage are coming down in price much faster than people expected and it just makes sense to…

It's ironic that we're only now seeing renewed pro-nuclear sentiment, as a backlash to the mistakes of the German Energiewende (and the preceding decades of stupid anti-nuclearism), just as renewables and battery tech are becoming highly affordable. They're now cheaper than nuclear in most (probably all) cases.

Hopefully we avoid trying to fix the dogmatic mistakes of the past and in so doing, make a new dogmatic mistake in the present. Anti-nuclear policies were wrong back then, but I think the time for nuclear has probably passed.

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#52

Post by loeg »

com2kid wrote: post #44
loeg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, rooftop home solar doesn't make a ton of sense at this latitude and especially not adjacent to this much hydro power.

> Yes, rooftop home solar doesn't make a ton of sense at this latitude and especially not adjacent to this much hydro power. I know people in Seattle who run their entire house off solar for 6-8 months on the year (important now that AC is increasingly needed around here...) and who don't fully deplete the credit they've saved up with the power company until January. Also only Seattle gets the majority of their energ…

> I know people in Seattle who run their entire house off solar for 6-8 months on the year (important now that AC is increasingly needed around here...) and who don't fully deplete their battery bank until January.

So what? They've invested a large amount of capital in order to avoid low $0.13/kWh residential electricity rates that come from more or less entirely carbon-free sources (mostly hydro, some nuclear/wind). You can do it, it just doesn't make any sense.

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#53

Post by [deleted] »

hangonhn wrote: post #29
janalsncm wrote: post #9

It is telling that a country with basically none of the American barriers to nuclear (NiMBYism, slow construction) is also shifting focus to solar and wind. It’s just simpler. You can put up a solar panel tomorrow and start generating power. A solar panel is a self-contained prefab power generating unit. Even with all of the advancements in nuclear, we still don’t have anything like that.

I was going to say... if a country like China, with its massive engineering/building capacity and authoritarian "efficiency" cannot hit their nuclear construction targets, it is quite telling how difficult it must be in reality to build nuclear reactors in general. I am still very pro-nuclear but it seems PV + wind + battery storage are coming down in price much faster than people expected and it just makes sense to…

[deleted]

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#54

Post by JumpCrisscross »

pfdietz wrote: post #17
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is slower and more expensive to deploy than solar or wind. Nobody should dispute that. We should deploy the latter as quickly as possible. In addition , we should build nuclear plants, certainly until we’ve phased out coal and oil for primary generation. The article describes China scaling back new plants at a slower pace—about 5 a year instead of ten–but that’s still a multiple of anything we’re doing.

The analysis I've seen doesn't support the position we should also be deploying nuclear. We come out ahead rolling out renewables and storage as fast as possible, driving these technologies down their experience curves. Any new nuclear added will likely close early when it can't even make an operating profit.

> We come out ahead rolling out renewables and storage as fast as possible, driving these technologies down their experience curves

We don’t have storage technology to absorb a 2% year-long grid-wide output decrease [1]. That means overbuilding or, more practically, sticking with natural gas. If we aren’t building nuclear, then continuing to build gas plants is the right move.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61943

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#55

Post by jauntywundrkind »

janalsncm wrote: post #9

It is telling that a country with basically none of the American barriers to nuclear (NiMBYism, slow construction) is also shifting focus to solar and wind. It’s just simpler. You can put up a solar panel tomorrow and start generating power. A solar panel is a self-contained prefab power generating unit. Even with all of the advancements in nuclear, we still don’t have anything like that.

> You can put up a solar panel tomorrow and start generating power.

And you don't spend 10,000 years hoping & working to make sure nothing goes wrong with the 95% of fuel (unburned) & decommissioned reactors debris you wind up with in the end.

There are good tech answers to try to decrease these problems, but they'd involve building more advanced nuclear fuel lifecycle reactors. Which no one is going to fund. Especially since waste seems to be externalized from generation.

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#56

Post by bryanlarsen »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #10

It’s very difficult to estimate the true cost of nuclear power because so many resources are spent on safety features rather than the basic stuff essential to power generation. New construction cost per energy out can vary by 5x, even against the grain of expected purchasing power parity advantages: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-britain-is-building-...

A coal power plant costs $2M - $5M per megawatt just in capital costs. A solar plant costs $1M per MW. Given a coal capacity factor of 0.9 and a solar of 0.3, they're roughly equivalent.

A coal power plant is similar to a nuclear plant -- they heat water to turn a turbine to generate water. There's no way a nuclear plant would ever be cheaper than a coal plant to build, and it would have to be to be competitive with solar in cost.

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#57

Post by pfdietz »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54
pfdietz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analysis I've seen doesn't support the position we should also be deploying nuclear. We come out ahead rolling out renewables and storage as fast as possible, driving these technologies down their experience curves. Any new nuclear added will likely close early when it can't even make an operating profit.

> We come out ahead rolling out renewables and storage as fast as possible, driving these technologies down their experience curves We don’t have storage technology to absorb a 2% year-long grid-wide output decrease [1]. That means overbuilding or, more practically, sticking with natural gas. If we aren’t building nuclear, then continuing to build gas plants is the right move. [1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/de…

Sure we do. It's e-fuels like hydrogen. Yes, the round trip efficiency sucks, but for year-long storage the cost of inefficiency is very low (compared to system capital cost), because there are so few charge-discharge cycles.

A simple cycle gas turbine might be $0.6/W, vs. $10/W for a new nuclear power plant. So we can back up the grid with these turbines for a very small fraction of the cost of building nuclear power plants to power the grid.

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#58

Post by TeeMassive »

MegaDeKay wrote: post #7
TeeMassive wrote: post #3

I've always found these articles about China adopting green policies and shifting its industries towards green energy sources to be suspicious. If they were true then why are China's emission ever increasing year after year: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china If their share of renewables / nuclear energy were increasing then there would be a decrease in C02 emissions per capita, but that has never been the…

From the article: "Previously China expected that its energy emissions would peak in 2030, but revised forecasts are now indicating that this could happen as early as 2024, 5-6 years ahead of target."

From the various graphics there is not data suggesting that. Its increase year by year is in line with previous pre-pandemic years.

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#59

Post by maxglute »

hangonhn wrote: post #29
janalsncm wrote: post #9

It is telling that a country with basically none of the American barriers to nuclear (NiMBYism, slow construction) is also shifting focus to solar and wind. It’s just simpler. You can put up a solar panel tomorrow and start generating power. A solar panel is a self-contained prefab power generating unit. Even with all of the advancements in nuclear, we still don’t have anything like that.

I was going to say... if a country like China, with its massive engineering/building capacity and authoritarian "efficiency" cannot hit their nuclear construction targets, it is quite telling how difficult it must be in reality to build nuclear reactors in general. I am still very pro-nuclear but it seems PV + wind + battery storage are coming down in price much faster than people expected and it just makes sense to…

Article seems to suggest moderation of nuclear post Fukushima caused shift to renewables when PRC simply wants as much clean domestic energy generation as possible. No one expected renewable prices to drop this fast, or PRC to kill real estate to free up millions of construction labourers whoes skills can transfer into renewables but not nuclear.

Currently, PRC now largely hitting nuclear construction targets fine after switching to domestic nuclear. What PRC couldn't seem to do, like the west, is build _western_ nuclear tech economically, because industry seems to be a mess. 2010s nuclear ambition under 13th 5-year plan was delayed largely due Fukushima reassessement and drama over original pursuit of western nuclear tech (French EPR / US AP1000 technical and political issues like US sanctions / Westinghouse bankruptcy), adding delays, forcing PRC planners to switch to domestic tech, which is now coming online at expected pace. Current 14th 5-year plan still aiming for ~180-200 GWe by 2035 with ~150 total reactors, which is in line with mid 2010s assessments. IMO as more nuclear comes online, and associated nuclear expertise, there's likely going to be faster improvement on nuclear side. Not unlikely next gen nuclear will beat economics of renewables + storage.

Re: China's quiet energy revolution: the switch from nuclear to renewable energy

#60

Post by TeeMassive »

janice1999 wrote: post #4
TeeMassive wrote: post #3

I've always found these articles about China adopting green policies and shifting its industries towards green energy sources to be suspicious. If they were true then why are China's emission ever increasing year after year: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china If their share of renewables / nuclear energy were increasing then there would be a decrease in C02 emissions per capita, but that has never been the…

is this so hard to explain? - CO2 comes from sources other than energy (electricity) production. - Overall energy usage is increasing, outpacing % growth of renewables.

> Overall energy usage is increasing, outpacing % growth of renewables.

This is why I pointed out per capita emissions. If renewables had a bigger proportion, then it would decrease. It didn't. In fact it accelerated.

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