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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

Only in the short term. It’s taking 10-15+ years to get nuclear online. Looking at the ramping up of battery production by you can build solar today, add batteries in 10 years and be much better off financially and environmentally.

Even China regularly spends 7+ years to build nuclear from the point where construction actually starts and even longer when you include planning.

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Hand waving the cost there both financially and environmentally as well a “well we assume things will work out” - there will need to be battery storage in the 100s of gigawatt hours and it needs to be cheap reliable and durable

What if they don’t? There’s no assurances there will be magic battery tech

There is a reason China India Russia and others are still building nuclear plants

We don’t need magic battery tech. Current PV + Batteries can already 24/7 power cheaper than nuclear. It’s only vs fossil fuels where batteries have trouble.

China is building nuclear because they are building everything, but they are effectively building 3x as much solar and 7x as much wind because nuclear just costs more than any other option.

From 2020-2022 China increased generation power by:

   51,600 GWh/year Nuclear
  156,600 GWh/year Solar 
  357,500 GWh/year Wind

Currently they get as much power from solar as nuclear and twice as much from wind. In total they are 34% renewable vs 5% from nuclear. It’s the US that’s heavily invested in Nuclear not China.

umm that doesn't explain why they are building nuclear - could it be because they realize they need the ability to produce power at night and when the wind isn't blowing?

They are literally adding 18+X as much fossil fuel as nuclear over that time frame. That’s what’s proving nighttime power.

Adding more capacity is an all hands on deck situation for the China they are throwing everything at it. Nuclear is simply achieving the smallest gains because the ROI is low.

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