Bill Gates on 60 Minutes just now.

[progree]

24. Well good for China, maybe you can do your "in this century" thing

for China -- should be interesting. Coal, nuclear, so-called renewable, natural gas, emissions, etc. "in this century". Also the last 5 or so years.

"I'm consistently unimpressed by cost considerations that ignore external costs."

By all means, include those where I ask how much will electricity rates change if we went all nuclear. Plus include all taxpayer subsidies. Something that will convince people to pay the however much higher utility bills.

Some excerpts from the The World Nuclear Industry, Status Report, 2020, September 2020 (WNISR2020)
https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/wnisr2020-v2_lr.pdf

I just went through and searched on China until I got bored at page 37. Then I flew through faster doing skim and stop, so it might be missing important stuff.

Many of these clips talk about world as well as China... some of the 2020 numbers are affected by Covid, although Chinese government claims their nuclear construction aren't.

The page numbers are the page numbers of the PDF file, but they appear to be the same as the page numbers in the actual report (a rarity).

I know its a mish-mash. Stuff in ((double parenthesis)) is my addition.

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p.14 - China continues to grow its nuclear capacity but at a slowing rate

p.19 - In 2019, nuclear power generation in the world increased by 3.7 percent of which half due to a 19 percent increase in China.
Three units were closed, not a single unit started up in the first half of 2020, including in China.

After declining for 5 years, the number of units under construction increased by 6 to 52 as of mid-2020 (incl. 15 in China) but remains well below the 69 units at the end of 2013.

In 2019, construction began on 6 reactors (incl. 4 in China), and on one in the first half of 2020 (in Turkey).

p. 20 - Startups. At the beginning of 2019, 13 reactors were scheduled for startup during the year; only six made it, three in Russia, two in China and one in South Korea. No new reactor started up worldwide in the first half of 2020, including in China.6

p. 22 - Construction Starts. In 2019, construction began on six reactors—four in China and one each in Russia and the U.K.—and in the first half of 2020 on one (in Turkey). These were the first construction starts of commercial reactors in China since December 2016. This compares to 15 construction starts in 2010 and 10 in 2013. Construction starts peaked in 1976 at 44.

p.27 - China. Nuclear power generation grew by 19.2 percent in 2019 and contributed 4.9 percent of all electricity generated in China, up from 4.2 percent in 2018. Plans for future expansion remain uncertain.

p. 32 - In China, electricity production of 406 TWh from wind alone again by far exceeded the 330 TWh from nuclear, while solar power is already at 224 TWh.

p. 37 - China’s newly installed solar capacity has recovered quickly after a year-on-year decline due to COVID-19 in the first quarter of 2020, and the half-year result is even slightly above 2019 (11.5 GW vs. 11.4 GW).35

p.40 - [In 2019] China started up only two new units after having connected seven reactors to the grid in 2018, which helped increase output by 19.2 percent in 2019.

p.47 - ((Per Table 1, China has 15 nuclear units under construction with a total capacity of 13.842 GW)).

p. 51 - ((China)) The five-year plan 2016–2020 had fixed a target of 58 GW operating and 30 GW under construction by 2020. As of mid-2020, China had 47 units with 45.5 GW operating and 15 units with 13.8 GW under construction

p.125 - there seems profound uncertainty about the future path of nuclear power in China. Nuclear Intelligence Weekly (NIW) reported in July 2020 that “China’s ultimate authority, the State Council, has mentioned almost nothing about newbuilds in its Government work plan; while the National Energy Administration (NEA) provided no details of new nuclear construction in its recent 2020 National Energy Work Guiding Opinions, unlike in previous years”.371

This uncertainty is best illustrated by ... blah blah blah

p. 126 - Another sign of uncertainty about the future of nuclear power in China is the decline in numbers. Even with these additional reactors counted by WNISR as being under construction, the current number of 15 represents a continuous decline over the corresponding numbers of 17 reported in WNISR2018 and 21 in WNISR2017.382 The decline highlights the slowdown of China’s nuclear power program, especially considering the target of the 5-Year Plan 2016–2020: the 15 units combine less than 14 GW while 30 GW were planned for as under construction simultaneously by the end of the period.

There are structural reasons for this slowdown. As previous issues of WNISR have discussed, China has been confronting a combination of overcapacity in the power market and a reduced rate of demand growth. These problems might be further compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, which, as in other countries, had a significant impact on electricity demand.383 China experienced a 7.8 percent cumulative drop in power consumption in January and February 2020.384 However, by May 2020, demand seemed to be back to pre-lockdown levels.385

A separate problem for nuclear power has been the Government’s lowering of electricity prices, especially for industrial consumers, in recent years.386 In combination with nuclear construction cost overruns, this makes the outlook for nuclear power “cloudier”.387 A more recent difficulty has arisen with the strain in U.S.-China relations and the Trump administration’s ban on most nuclear exports to China.388 This means that China is forced to avoid the use of any U.S. suppliers. A number of new-build projects in China that planned to construct AP1000 reactors are reportedly “caught in the political minefield of US-China relations due to their technology choice”.389

p. 127 - Of the 15 reactors currently under construction, ... Many of these are delayed (see Annex 5) and these delays may be part of the reason for not publicizing new construction starts.

p. 128 - Although the country was the first to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese authorities maintain that it will not impact nuclear reactor construction.403 This remains to be seen.

p. 129 - Meanwhile, renewable energy capacity in China continues to grow at a substantially higher rate. Total installed renewable capacity increased by about nine percent from 2018 to 2019, going from 695 GW to 759 GW; wind capacity expanding from 185 GW in 2018 to 210 GW in 2019, and solar capacity from 175 GW in 2018 to 205 GW in 2019. 407 ((yes yes, I know, a GW of solar or wind capacity is nowhere near the equivalent of nuclear capacity, given the difference of capacity factors, and the reliability (intermittency) issues. Also, since solar and wind combined is 415 GW in 2019, and total renewable is 759 GW, that means there is 344 GW of other renewable which is probably mostly hydro)).

p. 129 - According to the China Electricity Council, the two forms of renewable energy provided 406 TWh (wind) and 224 TWh (solar) to the grid respectively.408 These figures agree with those reported by BP.409 These have gone up by almost 11 percent and 26.6 percent compared to 2018. Electricity generated by wind continues to exceed the nuclear contribution, and solar energy is approaching two-thirds of nuclear energy’s contribution. (See Nuclear Power vs. Renewable Energy). IHS Markit estimates that in January and February 2020, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, nuclear energy’s contribution to the grid declined by 2.2 percent whereas renewables have remained resilient, with wind and solar energy growing by 0.9 percent and 12 percent respectively.410 ((depends on which has dispatch priority, I'm guessing that wind and solar have dispatch priority over nukes))