Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

> China is to phase out coal and become carbon neutral by 2060, it will need an energy source that can help it reliably meet baseload demand (the minimum level of power required to keep things running). Wind and solar are less suited to this, as they depend on the co-operation of nature. But nuclear fits the bill.

In any scenario, renewables are going to do more of the heavy lifting in displacing coal in China. This framing seems designed to avoid this reality.

> When it comes to energy generated, China’s nuclear stations outperform today’s installed solar capacity (though not wind).

Again, I could argue about the framing here, but their underlying facts are suspect too.

I wonder what their source is, as I believe both wind and solar are above nuclear production as of 2022 and growing at a faster rate.

solar: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-share-energy?tab=ch...

wind:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wind-share-energy?tab=cha...

solar and wind:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-primary-energy-f...

nuclear:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-primary-energy?ta...

second source that agrees:

https://ember-climate.org/countries-and-regions/countries/ch...

Looking forward here's the IEA on the plan for Chinese carbon neutrality by 2060:

> Renewables-based generation, mainly wind and solar PV, increases seven-fold between 2020 and 2060, accounting for almost 80% of generation by then. By contrast, the share of coal drops from over 60% to just 5%, and unabated coal-based generation stops in 2050.

https://www.iea.org/reports/an-energy-sector-roadmap-to-carb...

https://nitter.net/CleanPowerDave/status/1729784959890506150... says China will likely install 240GW of solar this year, which is about 90% of what the entire world installed last year.

I agree that the piece sounds as if it's trying not to mention renewables.

The update to the old IEA misprediction of solar graph found in that thread is illustrative:

https://nitter.net/pic/orig/media%2FGADZCdnWEAA6XhK.jpg

They built more solar and wind in the first nine months of this year than the total future generation of their whole reactor fleet under construction. And with battery storage manufacturing rates/cost also on a similar (albeit earlier) exponential curve, it’s hard to see the economic case for nuclear 20-30 years from now.

Solar and wind are great but they don’t provide a continuous source of energy. Batteries are great too and should help smooth out the supply dips. That said you should absolutely have something around that can rapidly scale in the event of the inability to provide enough energy.

Nuclear probably won’t be the main source but it will be a necessary mow part of the solution.

As of today, China is anticipating that nuclear will make up only 18% of its electrical generation by 2060, and nearly all of the rest will be renewables and storage. That 18% isn't enough generation to handle the "surge to make up for renewable sources suddenly drying up" use case, even if that's a real thing to worry about (which it isn't, when you're building a mostly-renewable grid at continental scale.)

But even that 18% is already starting to look like it's out of date. Energy generation, battery storage and renewable generation are all growing exponentially and well beyond the government's targets. I think it's much more likely that renewables and storage will vastly outpace nuclear generation, and that 18% estimate will prove to be absurdly high. Once you've got a grid that's 90+% renewables and storage, a few nuclear plants aren't going to make much of a difference.

> which it isn't, when you're building a mostly-renewable grid at continental scale

Can you give any arguments for that surprising statement?

I hope we can agree that solar energy will dry up across all of China on a nightly basis.

Wind strength is also often strongly correlated over large areas. Sweden has learned this the hard way in recent winters.

I think you may assume that wind strength are correlated over Sweden-sized areas in China as well, and that sunset will surprise no one and can accommodated by normal planning.

>Solar and wind are great but they don’t provide a continuous source of energy.

This is a solved problem through various forms of storage (synthetic gas, pumped hydro, batteries etc).

Nuclear is a solid baseline for sure but I don't think there is a way around the security requirements, which means it will become too expensive to keep around when free energy from the sun can be stored cheaply.

Literally the first sentence of the article:

> To wean their country off imported oil and gas, and in the hope of retiring dirty coal-fired power stations, China’s leaders have poured money into wind and solar energy.

Its silly that an article about nuclear can't just exist. Even though it does discuss renewables, all the comments here are just "wut about solar"

"pouring money into" something is an ambiguous phrase, I'd say tending towards the negative in context, and they do mention renewables later, they talk about their alleged flaws and limitations. And then mislead about the amount of solar production.

There's definately some degree of framing going on here that you'd perhaps not expect from a magazine except in advertorial content.

Regardless of what The Economist has to say the stated China objective (which they have to hold to) is a nuclear (20%) renewable (805) future .. which makes sense in their planning.

https://www.iea.org/countries/china

Gives the International Energy Agency overview of the China mix and history 1990 - 2020, in recent years nuclear and wind|solar have increased together from bugger all to roughly similar proportions when compared to the overbearing coal + gas + oil consumption.

IIRC IEA charges for the most recent reports with most up to date tabulations along with a handful of teaser stuff that's up to date.

Why does China have to hold to those plans?

It seems to me that the government there has an unusual ability to change its policy abruptly.

They have stated a goal, they have have to hold to a path to reach that goal.

Or not - they could also decide ditching coal is too hard and abandon nuclear and solar altogether.

But they do have to hold to a plan in order to reach their most recently stated objective.

Seems to me they're rather better at sticking to a long-term constructive plan then most have been over the last few decades, whether it's long-distance UHVDC lines, high-speed rail, space stations or nuclear reactors.

Their high speed rail is a propaganda instrument. It is meant to be a high profile asset that makes their whole country look good, but it is a failure-prone money pit.

Still works better than UK rail: source: use both. Well, I won't use HS2 because they just killed it after getting halfway through and sold the land so no one else could finish it.

This kind of thinking is why we can't build high speed rail in the US. Nobody values the externalities.

It effectively moves hundreds of millions of people every year between every major city at faster than car, slower than plane speeds. It may not be immediately profitable to the rail line operator but the factories that employ the workers that use the lines certainly benefit, no?

It's more than hundreds of millions: over 2 billion journeys are made on the network per year. It's roughly 10 times what Japanese HSR does per year (195 million journeys), and 1000 times what the one American HSR route does (2 million, and only 50 miles of track at that speed).

In 2013, it moved twice as many people as domestic air travel. Today, it's more like 5 times. It's not exactly an unused ghost railway system.

>moved twice as many people as domestic air travel

Which is key point, PRC does not have enough air space corridors to scale air travel. 90% of PRC population on west of country, imagine 1.2B people concentrated in western US.

Is this something you know or something you assume?

«In 2022, Seoul Gimpo-Jeju continued its streak as the busiest route, with over 15.6 million passengers making the trip at an average of 226 daily flight movements.» If PRC is as congested as you say, wouldn't one of its city pairs be the record holder?

I currently live in Germany, where the population is about 50% denser than PRC, and haven't heard anything about air space corridors here being congested.

Following up to myself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_air_... has the most congested Chinese route at number 7, just behind Riyadh-Jeddah, and its traffic is only 31% of Seoul-Jeju.

Sorry for late reply.

The wiki data is covid timeframe, and not indicative.

Jeju's Gimhae airport lists 60k aircraft movements and served 10m passports in 2022. Shanghai's Pudong lists 350K aircraft movements and 30m passengers in 2021. Frankfurt Airport lists 380k aircraft movement and 50m passengers. Most major PRC airports have >300k aircraft movements and move 30-40m people.

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

Look at 2020 stats, that's what's saturating limited air corridors. There's 11 airports that moves over 20m people with over 200k aircraft movements. Which is fraction of HSR's near 2B trips. As more chinese get richer and want to travel internally, HSR is only choice. That's without mentioning New years which is impossible to accommodate with air. HSR moves huge number bodies and saves 100s of millions hours vs slow trains trip.

PRC domestic flight delays is well known for anyone that regularly flies in PRC and can compare to west, like EU/NA. The unspoken reason is US military bases in region means coastal flight corridors that are shared with military aviation which gets higher priority. There's a joke that PRC commercial flight would be smoother once they take over Taiwan, because then military aviation can push out away from coastal regions.

I rode it this summer. As a system it is worse than the Shinkansen, but it was pretty good.

China's high speed rail costs less than opportunity cost of transport projects. They're making money building it, especially when debt is cheap. And debt was cheap for quite a while until recently.

Not to mention, the economies of scale have decreased the costs exponentially over time. This is true for metro lines, as well. China builds metro for the cost of some countries building high speed rail.

>They're making money building it

That's without mentioning PRC _HAS_ to rely on HSR. 90% people on east half of country = not enough flight corridors, which is already highly congested. Only mass transit solution left is HSR, build off domestic tech stack = 100s of billions not going to Boeing or Airbus. Also helps with energy security since it's electrified = 100s of billions saved on oil imports. Indepth analysis of HSR shows roughly 8% return. Win-win-win all around. Same with all the infra building, especially transportation networks in mountainous regions. Bridges that saves a millions of kms of travel = less fossil fuel short term and less energy storage medium long term. Convert steel and concrete into short/medium/long term energy savings.

I don't see a conflict. They're able to execute large projects without changing their minds about them. That doesn't make them unable to change their minds.

You may recall that in 2020, they suddenly withdrew the production/export licenses for something like half of the rare earth production on short notice.

I know it's not your fault, but why in the hell do they have a number of TJ right next to a number of TWh?

God forbid we compare numbers that are right next to each other.

Not my doing at all .. the rationale is that Joules (or TerraJoules) are used for Energy Production | Supply.

If you consider pumped hydro you might lift 200 tonne of water 500m .. and that's joules in reserve, ready for use.

On the consumption usage side the convention is use joules with rate of consumption - how long will your supply last.

It's annoying as heck and trips people up and adds to confusion .. but there it is.

Here's another useful view that shows the breakdown in a stacked area chart: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

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