Summary
China is rapidly surpassing the U.S. in nuclear energy, building more reactors at a faster pace and developing advanced technologies like small modular reactors and high-temperature gas-cooled units.
The U.S. struggles with costly, delayed projects, while China benefits from state-backed financing and streamlined construction.
This shift could make China the leading nuclear power producer within a decade, impacting global energy and geopolitical influence.
Meanwhile, the U.S. seeks to revive its nuclear industry, but trade restrictions and outdated infrastructure hinder progress.
if you want the United States to be more like this, you can always elect someone who- yeah you know what fuck it
by building nuclear energy plants
Who knew it was that simple
God please if there’s one pissing match the Orange Terror gets into it better be nuclear energy.
I could see Trump jumping on this if the right rich friend is invested in the right nuclear energy company. It feels like it’s within the realm of possibility.
Nuclear energy has a long tail of recent and less recent horrors. These horrors affect the globe in their consequences and should give great pause, despite the passive meltdown aversion systems being implemented in modern reactors. Being slow to implement nuclear energy plants is a feature, not a bug.
An important aside, humans generally have a problem with funding regulatory structures involved in keeping the public safe, constant vigilance gets an ax when budgets are manic. I certainly do not trust the US government to maintain regulatory pressure on nuclear power to keep the public safe from grave harm. Until the manic bipolarity of the current political climate subsides, this will be the case at the very least.
FWIW, if it is not clear, I see absolutely no reason to trust China on nuclear energy regulation either.
It does have some attraction over certain death of fossil fuels.
Nuclear apologists love defending this expensive, hazardous industry. In Texas, mining the uranium for these plants is ruining the water table just like fracking does.
Meanwhile solar, wind, and geothermal are cheaper and cleaner.
https://www.wired.com/story/a-uranium-mining-boom-is-sweeping-through-texas-nuclear-energy/
In St. Louis, nuclear waste in a landfill has caused cancer in north county black and brown neighborhoods for decades.
It is generally those who have not witnessed the ramifications of nuclear waste and/or disaster that are its proponents. Something that takes tens of thousands of years to decay, considering climate change, climate change catastrophe, movements in human population, and geologic change, we are full of hubris to consider it a green power option. But all the rose-tinted know-it-all tech bro will vote me down. Idgaf.
actually the US is developing small sized power plants. You saw in Ukraine what can happen if you rely on large plants.
None of the US based SMRs have been successful, even with hundreds of millions of funding and regulatory approval from the DOE.
I said developing.
There is nothing wrong with trying to make this work, but a more accurate statement is that the US has failed in its initial efforts to develop SMRs, and the outlook is grim.
With the DOE being gutted and no current commercial path forward, this state is unlikely to change in the near term in the US.
So that’s a fusion reactor, not fission reactor like SMR. It’s both way, way better and way further away than SMR.
I applaud all of them making headway, but none of them are anywhere near as useful as actual solar and actual batteries that are being actually deployed in mass now.
They are very sorry and will try to get there soon. Just gang in there please.
What can happen? The plant is pretty much working and is the only reliable point of Ukrainian power generation since it can’t be targeted. Also, when is the US going to get into a land war on its own soil, and how will smaller nuclear reactors help?
The smaller reactors are fail safe so if they get blasted you’ll end up with free aluminum parts on your backyard. And if you got one near every home that means you gotta spend a lot of firepower to get them all. And if they produced as much power as needed and are safe to repair and quick to build then good luck taking them all out. Right?
Ohh, I get it. The thing with Ukrainian power generation being a military strategic thing though is not that homes can be kept warm - that is great - but that military production is powered. I don’t think you can power a munitions factory from scores of smaller reactors, since that would need insane infrastructure that is just not there, and would still be an easy target.
Also, in Ukraine, it would mean a legitimate military target in every backyard. The Russians would be back to carpet bombings already. I’m not saying it would not help, but I think it’s a dubious advantage in wartime - which by the way, the US won’t be - and even more problematic at peacetime as again, most consumption is industrial.
The thing I don’t see is how do you route power from Bob’s small reactor to Bezos’ AI farm so that Wall Street can keep pretending the American economy exists?
But at what cost 😔😔😔
Paid for by Wumaoski Media Group
why the clickbait title if the original huffpost isn’t?
