[stjohnswarts]

Yeah, at this point I've given up on the USA as an innovator in the nuclear field. China seems to be much less luddite in this field and AI, maybe they'll let us buy it off them as we become second or third in the field (and in science in general).

[yorwba]

> China seems to be much less luddite in this field

If by "luddite" you mean "not building more reactors due to worries about cost and safety", then not really.

"though reactors begun several years ago are still coming online, the industry has not broken ground on a new plant in China since late 2016, according to a recent World Nuclear Industry Status Report."

"The 2011 meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant shocked Chinese officials and made a strong impression on many Chinese citizens. A government survey in August 2017 found that only 40% of the public supported nuclear power development."

"Within days of Fukushima, nuclear reactor construction in China was frozen. When building resumed months later, after a wave of inspections, Beijing insisted that future nuclear power projects adopt more advanced designs with extra safety features."

"The bigger problem is financial. Reactors built with extra safety features and more robust cooling systems to avoid a Fukushima-like disaster are expensive, while the costs of wind and solar power continue to plummet: they are now 20% cheaper than electricity from new nuclear plants in China, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Moreover, high construction costs make nuclear a risky investment."

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing-its-...

[4ntonius8lock]

Wind and solar don't deal with peak energy use.

See Germany vs France as an example.

[yorwba]

Nuclear plants don't deal with peak energy use either. For the peak, you need a plant that can quickly regulate it's power output up and down to respond to demand. Nuclear plants only work for base load.

[pedrocr]

There are nuclear power plants capable of throttling up and down at will. Not all designs work like that but some do.

[akvadrako]

Really? Are you talking about a tiny fraction of operating plants?

[pedrocr]

I think it's pretty common. I'm not an expert but I think most of France's grid is run that way. Wikipedia has a few details:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant#Nuc...

[4ntonius8lock]

I'm curious, when you say AI, what do you mean?

To me AI is machine learning. And the US is leading in that area, the forefront of which seems to be self driving technology.

Are there specific examples of cutting edge machine learning where China excels?

My understanding is they have IMPLEMENTED machine learning in an authoritarian type of way. But this implementation isn't innovative. There's no underlying tech improvement. Just the application of existing technology in a terrible way. We have the same face tracking, gait tracking tech. We just don't apply it en mass because of pesky human rights and such.

[stjohnswarts]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2018/12/16/how-ch... . The Chinese government is making a concerted effort to spend mega-bucks on AI, whereas the US government is just letting it happen organically and have no real plan.

[4ntonius8lock]

Yeah, that's not a concrete example of the SPECIFIC cutting edge area of AI that china dominates development of. At least I couldn't find it. I gave one for the US. I've yet to receive one for China. All I've seen is: "Look how known 'AI' can be applied toward totalitarianism. The US has none. We are at a disadvantage. " This is utter rubbish for reasons already discussed.

[nradov]

The Japanese government spent mega-bucks on a "fifth generation computer system", whereas the US government let it happen organically and had no real plan. History has proven the US approach to be correct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer