In the first 5 months of this year, China added 198 GW of solar PV and 46 GW of wind. Nuclear is a small side-hustle for them.

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StopDisinfo910 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

China strategy is clearly a mix of renewable and nuclear, renewable for bulk and nuclear for baseload.

At the moment, they are quickly building gaz-fired capacity to supplement the renewable during peak demand and when production is low. Their base load is mostly coal. Nuclear will allow them to phase out most of that. They are clearly targeting zero coal and are gaz poor anyway so nuclear allows them to limit their exposure to imports. That's basically France strategy in the 70s except France went all in while China can use renewable for bulk capacity as they produce a ton of the required mineral themselves

The opposition between intermittent and nuclear doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to run a grid purely on intermittent sources.

A lot of the discussion on statistics here don't make sense. China wants to switch off coal and gaz. You are looking at transition numbers focusing on current shares when you should be considering trajectories.

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pyrale 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

nameplate capacity of different generation sources can't be compared, if only because capacity factor is not comparable.

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derriz 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

China's plan is to add 100GW of nuclear by 2040.

In 2024 alone, it added 360GW of wind and solar and the trajectory for renewables is steepening, not declining so this year's number looks like it will exceed this number - 450GW or more.

Capacity factors are just noise when you're dealing with nearly 2 orders of magnitude of difference in scale. Apply whatever adjustment for capacity factor differences that you like but 100GW of nuclear over 15 years is not going to catch up with 450GW of wind and solar per year.

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bigbadfeline 3 days ago | parent [-]

China has 1,000 GW installed solar and 26 GW of wind which generate 2k TWh/yr. The total installed nuclear in China is a mere 60 GW which generate 450 TWh/yr. Therefore, the capacity factor of solar is 2 TWh/GW and that of nuclear is 4 times higher at 8 TWh/GW.

Calling an 4 times higher capacity factor "noise" is actual noise.

Besides, nuclear provides uninterrupted energy supply, no need for storage or special convenient places for installation. That's why China is building capacity of both types as fast as they can.

Europe is in a colder geographic area with less sunshine and more needs of energy during the cold/rainy days, nuclear is an absolute necessity there.

	▲	ViewTrick1002 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Unless half the fleet is offline like happened in France during the energy crisis and twice in Sweden in the last year. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fr... > That's why China is building capacity of both types as fast as they can. Nuclear power as a percentage of the Chinese grid mix is backsliding. Will likely land somewhere in the 2-3% range when their grid is fully built out. China is building renewables and storage as fast as they can and provide a token investment (in terms of their grid size)for new built nuclear power.
	▲	derriz 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The scales of rollout are so vastly different, it is just noise. China will add 450GW or more renewables this year alone. Even after dividing by 4 this represents more additional energy production capacity in ONE year than their 15 year target for nuclear. This is after your capacity factor adjustment. Nuclear’s contribution to Chinese electricity production at the end of their 2040 nuclear plan is likely to be below 5%. Even less than nuclear’s current global share of about 9% - down from just under 20% in the mid 1990s.

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t_tsonev 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

But you can compare generated power, right?

> In the 12 months to June 2025, wind and solar (2,073 TWh) generated more electricity than all other clean sources (nuclear, hydro and bioenergy) combined (1,936 TWh). Just four years ago, wind and solar generated half as much electricity as other clean sources combined.

https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/china-energy-transi...

	▲	bigbadfeline 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		So, both types generated approximately the same amount of power and it still isn't enough, one type cannot replace the other, they complement each other, that's why China is building more of each type, they know what they're doing.