from Hacker News

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

by flgb on 5/3/24, 10:12 PM with 89 comments

• by janalsncm on 5/3/24, 10:43 PM

  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.

• by henry2023 on 5/3/24, 10:53 PM

  To this day I think that nuclear is the best way to produce clean and abundant energy. There only one problem. Only governments build nuclear reactors and if you want to innovate in this space you need to deal with these institutions which adds a lot of complexity.

  Solar on the other hand appeals to the public and can be deployed in large scale facilities. Large scale economics apply directly and we can see that by looking at the historic price per kW[1].

  Finally, me as a nuclear advocate own 14x550w panels + a 20 kWh battery. I’m off grid > 95% of the year. Solar is unstoppable now.

  [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices

• by WalterBright on 5/3/24, 10:47 PM

  In the Pacific Northwest, I see rooftop solar panels half-covered with mildew. I wonder how that affects the power generation, and how often one would have to climb up on the roof to scrape them clean.

• by spacebanana7 on 5/3/24, 10:43 PM

  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-...

• by aurareturn on 5/3/24, 10:25 PM

  On HN, there are a lot of nuclear proponents. Any comments from them on this article? Just curiosity from me because I don't know much about this topic.

• by TeeMassive on 5/3/24, 10:28 PM

  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 case even with the increase in announcements in "green" mega projects over the years.

• by tomohawk on 5/3/24, 10:42 PM

  China is building a lot of coal power plants.

  https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/chinas-new-coal-po...

  And industrializaing vast swaths of land by covering it with solar panels.

  https://www.facebook.com/XinhuaSciTech/videos/solar-panels-o...

• by peter-m80 on 5/4/24, 8:12 AM

  Quiet? No. But maybe US people who believe they are the center of the world are unaware of that