China gets only 2% of its electricity from nuclear - a tenth of what the US accomplishes. New reactors will get them to 6%. This strongly suggests to me that environmental regulation is not the limiting factor.

> This strongly suggests to me that environmental regulation is not the limiting factor.

Why does it suggest that?

China has only been seriously trying to cut back on coal for ~10 years.

All it shows is that coal is cheaper than nuclear and that to a rapidly industrializing country cheap is more important than environmentally friendly.

On the other hand the US is shutting down plants and decreasing overall capacity.

Yes, but... whenever reading discussions about nuclear power, I'm told over and over that the reason we don't have more nuclear is because of over-regulation and irrational environmentalism, not other factors - that if we weren't so regulated, it'd be cheap and easy to do.

China, as you observed, has no qualms about "environmentally friendly", so according to America's nuclear proponents, China should have more nuclear than us, not less, since it's cheaper. This is not the case, ergo their argument is flawed.

> This is not the case, ergo their argument is flawed.

Your argument doesn't really make sense.

Nobody is arguing that nuclear is cheaper than dirty coal.

Proponents argue that it's cheap and orders of magnitude more environmentally friendly than burning dirty coal.

China is still very price conscious and are building out nuclear in an effort to reduce pollution - proving that the Chinese do believe nuclear can be done cheaply and safely.