China launches fourth-generation nuclear reactor, world's first (www.hindustantimes.com)

submitted 5 months ago by lntl@lemmy.ml to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

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The Shidao Bay plant in eastern Shandong province is powered by two high-temperature reactors cooled by gas rather than pressurised water, according to state news agency Xinhua

Think of how many renewables they could have made for all the monies wasted on this.

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[-] zerfuffle@lemmy.ml 19 points 5 months ago

Infinite money does not lead to infinite scale in zero time. China's nuclear industry is robust and growing, as is their solar and wind industry. Money can't be wasted if you're already tapped out on growth in other avenues.

This year, China deployed more solar panels than the entirety of all solar panels in the US.

[-] schizoidman@lemmy.ml 14 points 5 months ago

If I am not mistaken this is the 'pebble bed' reactor. Nice to see it finally make it out of testing phase.

[-] lntl@lemmy.ml -3 points 5 months ago

article says they're SMRs which i don't know another example of them ever being deployed commercially. this is also pretty neat

[-] nicetriangle@kbin.social 7 points 5 months ago

Hopefully this triggers some me-too behavior in the west. I am fucking sick of seeing the EU and North America drag their feet on this stuff.

[-] lntl@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 months ago

i wish we would space race for cleaning up energy production

[-] nicetriangle@kbin.social 4 points 5 months ago

Very much agree. I think it would work too. And the crazy thing is it would be a huge advantage for any country that reached true renewable energy independence.

[-] dRLY@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 months ago

I think the only reactions from the west will sadly be just endless propaganda about how they are "actually just using it as cover for making enough nuclear weapons for there to be one for every person in the US". Or some other BS that just serves the military industrial complex and contractors that stand to make even more mad profits from this new cold war we are groomed into more and more daily. Just look at how freaked out the federal government that won't shut the fuck up about how fucking perfect our "free market capitalism" is, has made damn sure to tell companies they can't sell lots of shit to any Chinese company.

Doesn't matter if those companies can pay. Just matters that they are artificially kept from having the most current tech at all costs. Also how our government also legally blocks certain Chinese products over here for additional BS reasons and even shown to not be issues by our own allies (before those allies also had to ban them because we said so).

Fortunately for China, they have said "fuck you, we will just do it then" and are closing the gap pretty fast. So all the sanctions/bans will just mean that China has the most to gain from being able to offer cheaper but similarly working (or close enough) tech to more places. But it will all just be used to bring back the "good old days" of history that really doesn't need to be re-lived.

[-] sonori@beehaw.org 6 points 5 months ago

Not that much actually, unlike most of the world China actually has been scaling up renewables at a significant rate. The only problem is that they’ve been adding new coal plants aswell, and it might be hard to justify shutting down brand new plants, but there is actually a argument to be made that solar production is increasing as fast as economically feasible.

Nuclear is not bottleneckd in the same fields, and does have some significant advantages for supplementing renewables, namely in reliability, transmission efficiency, footprint, and raw resource requirements.

[-] lntl@lemmy.ml 0 points 5 months ago

would be great to see a nuclear/renewable mix displace the king. i hope to see it while I'm here

[-] sonori@beehaw.org 2 points 5 months ago

Ya, the primary problem it’s had is that while profitable, it’s not nearly as profitable as solar and wind. That’s fine if your goal is a stable source of energy to form the bedrock of western society, but not so much if it’s just to make as much profit as possible as quickly as possible.