[jpgvm]

They didn't lose their nuclear capability because they kept maintaining and building reactors instead of decommissioning them. US and to a degree most of Europe did not.

China in particular plans to build ~250 new reactors over the next few years, most like new HTG reactors based on the pebble bed technology Germany sold to them when they abandoned their next-gen nuclear plans.

Russia has reactor building capabilities that are still current but their domestic needs are stagnating so said capability could decay as they don't actually need to build modern reactors at this time.

Japan has a similar problem to Russia in that post-Fukishima there isn't domestic demand for nuclear reactors. However they are building reactors for other countries, in particular I think they are planning to build ~20 good sized reactors in India.

[ncmncm]

This "250" number for China keeps being trotted out, but nobody knows how many of those will actually ever be built or operated. There is anyway not fuel for that many, at present.

It would be more honest to cite the much smaller number that have actually broken ground. Nobody knows how many of those will be completed, or how many of those completed will be fueled or operated continuously, or where operated actually mainly generate power, as opposed to generating plutonium and tritium for weapons.

[jpgvm]

The pebble bed reactors are pretty much useless for making weapons grade material. The design was built with non-proliferation in mind. If they wanted to do that they would have just built more of their LWR design.

What do you mean there isn't enough fuel? Not enough pellets/pebbles? Well ofcourse.. there is only 2 operational reactors right now... not enough uranium? Yeah no. There is way more than enough uranium to fuel their projected fleet and it's not like they are building it tomorrow, it's probably going to take until around 2050 to complete.

China has a track record of saying they will do something and then actually doing it, I'm inclined to believe they will make good on that number.

I get that people don't like China but lets be serious, no-one else is actually as serious about nuclear power as them right now.

[ncmncm]

Xi is old. Will the next dictator share Xi's enthusiasm for high-cost power when the rest of the world is on low-cost power?

Any organization as big as the Chinese gov't makes lots of plans, and changes them as conditions change. It is one thing to be prepared to build a lot of nukes, entirely another to start building them, and entirely a third to finish them. The last will depend on conditions in the world, and of political alliances at the time.

[unrealhoang]

> when the rest of the world is on low-cost power?

And regret about it? The French are in much better position compared to the German with that low-cost power enthusiasm yet still heavily dependent on burning fossil.

[jpgvm]

I think you overestimate how expensive these reactors will be. Also they are part of a mix naturally. China has such vast energy needs they are still building coal, LNG, solar and nuclear all alongside each other.

My current feeling is that if they stick to their plan and build these smaller 600MW reactors that can mostly be built in factories and assembled on-site it's going to be a vastly different economic proposition than existing "big nuclear" that has been attempted in the West.

Of course there is no way to know exactly how it plays out but the inputs look good.

[natmaka]

> This "250" number for China keeps being trotted out

The source is a Bloomberg article ( https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli... ) which states that the boss of Chine General Power corp. announced his plans 200GW for 2035, nothing more. Admitting that it is an official governmental announcement (it doesn't seem so(?)) and given that China already has 50GW, that's maybe 100GW new (way less than 150 standard reactors).

Compare with renewables: 790GW already running (26% of the gridpower), and 1200GW planned for 2030. In 2020 China added 71,6GW windturbine power. Even considering the load factors the picture is pretty clear.