China built out 180-230 GW of solar last year. They deployed more in one year than the total installed base of nuclear that China is expected to have by 2030.

Nameplate capacity. Divide by 6 to get average capacity. And then you need something to cover the variance at the low end, which tends to be zero.

Preferably something that's also CO2 free.

Ideas?

A lot, but none you ever wanted to listen to so far. Fact is, even China isn't massivley investing in NPPs, but rather wind and solar. I'll risk a guess and say that they have a plan to cope with a grid in a highly industrialized environment that trends more and more towards renewables.

Oh, non-intermittent CO2 free energy sources that we have now and can just build?

In the quantities required?

Why are we building out solar and wind then, this is so much better!

All ears!

All ears? Really? Ok, the solution lies in the grid and demand flexibility, combined storage, mainly batteries, and keeping existing NPPs running as long as possible to allow the above to catch up.

Feel free to google all of that, because I am tired of trying to explain that to people by now, sorry...

So it doesn't actually exist.

Thanks for clearing that up.

And the old tired mechanism of "we have some very rough ideas of technologies that might come together if developed, together with some techniques that have never really been tried and where it is unclear whether the market will accept them". This is obviously a done deal.

On the other hand we have: "there are these power plants we know how to build, because we have already built quite a lot of them. all we need to do is build more of them." That is insane crazy talk that could never possibly work.

And even better: "various countries have just committed to doing this, some have enacted laws, some have ordered plants, etc. All have changed policy". -> I cannot see the results RIGHT NOW, so it doesn't exist.

> By 2027, China is expected to have a total new energy storage capacity of 97 GW

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/Five-things-powerin...

"there are these [energy storage plants] we know how to build, because we have already built quite a lot of them. all we need to do is build more of them."

energy storage is going to lag renewables because until you have enough renewables you don't have enough of a storage problem to solve.

Hmm...interesting article that talks about planned capacity for later this year, then projects future capacity based on those plans ... and gives the capacity of that future storage based on the planned installs in ... GW.

Hmm...

50GW, 88GW, it's all small potatoes compared to the hundreds of GW of annual additions for other technologies.

If nuclear could compete, China would be building the hell out of it, and selling it internationally. Getting other countries to use your nuclear supply chain for their electrical infrastructure is such a huge geopolitical win that if it were possible, it would be one of the key political and economic strategies of China.

If China, one of the few countries with a mastery of large construction projects, can't make nuclear cheap, what hope do more advanced economies have with their higher labor costs?

Those "hundreds" are nameplate capacities. For wind/solar you need to divide them by factor of 6 to even get to actual average production, as the capacity factor of wind/solar is below 15%, whereas for nuclear plants it is greater than 90%.

And of course average is not good enough for an electric grid, the variance is highly relevant. As my statistics professor used to quiet: if your left leg is standing in liquid nitrogen and your right leg is standing in boiling oil, you are enjoying a perfectly comfortable mean temperature.

Variance matters. A lot. In an electric grid, you need to be able to cover minimum requirements even when solar and wind are having a bad day or night.

China got their solar industry financed by German subsidies, and they have plentiful deserts with lots of sunshine. The Gobi desert is the place on earth with the most sunshine hours, apparently more than the Sahara(!). It would be insane for them to not take advantage of that to reduce their use of coal, now at what, 65%?

But they also apparently think that safe, reliable and cheap nuclear energy is an important part of their energy mix, otherwise they wouldn't be planning on tripling their generating capacity, would they now?