OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Originally Posted By: PandaBear
Follow the Chinese, they as the owner of a dictatorship, producer of the energy, and consumer of the energy, knows what they are doing and what make sense.
People there complains about the pollution, and they know the limit on when a life is too cheap or too expensive to start reducing pollution. Last time I heard from a coworker based in China, his hometown's small scale coal mine got shut down because (either corruption to get rid of competition or not enough political influence) of local pollution of the mining, as well as small coal plants getting forced shutdown (less political influenced owner) and replaced by larger plants (more political influenced owner).
They build a few massive dams that changed the national landscape so they can power millions of people using hydro power (and suppress protests about the forced relocation and environmental damages).
They build more new nuke plants than the rest of the world combined, with different types of reactors from aboard and home grown technologies (from technology transfer), so they will have the best and the worst designs, but not all eggs in one basket, so they will not need to shut down all of the nukes if they find problems later (and they will).
They build all sorts of renewable just in case it takes off, so they will not be left behind with old power generations when the rest of the world move forwards.
And most importantly: they are leaders in the high voltage DC power grid, when the rest of the world (like the US) is stuck with local power transmission limitation that makes production inefficient and fluctuate rather than stabilize.
A dictatorship tends to have fewer "not in my backyard" problems that a democratic and free nation faces everyday.
Due to the sheer size, China is an absolutely fascinating one to watch. I covered this in a previous thread but it bares mention here:
~80% of China's power comes from coal. They have 907GW of installed coal capacity that generates ~4,000TWh of electricity per year. By far the largest generator by a massive margin.
2nd in line is hydro electric. They have 300GW of HE installed that generates ~900TWh of electricity per year. Less than 1/4 of what they get from coal.
3rd in line are the thermal mix of bio/natgas. 135GW installed, that generates ~200TWh of electricity per year.
4th in line is wind power. They have 90GW of installed capacity which generates ~140TWh of electricity per year.
5th in line is nuclear power. They have 21GW of nuclear installed which generates ~125TWh of electricity per year.
6th in line is solar power. They have 28GW of solar power installed which generates ~9TWh of electricity per year.
From an efficiency standpoint of installed capacity versus output the nukes win by a landslide. Coal comes in at 2nd place with solar bringing up the bottom with a rather pitiful showing. Despite the massive investments in alternatives, China still relies most heavily on coal power and it makes up the vast, VAST majority of their energy production. Personally, the only thing I see as a viable alternative is more nukes. They require so much capacity to replace that coal and we really do want them to stop burning coal. On the other hand, their mix of nuclear technologies is a bit of a worry. They have a few CANDU's as well as a some of the advanced flexible fuel CANDU's, but they also have a pretty broad cross section of other stuff. One assumes they are properly managed of course but still.......
Follow the Chinese, they as the owner of a dictatorship, producer of the energy, and consumer of the energy, knows what they are doing and what make sense.
People there complains about the pollution, and they know the limit on when a life is too cheap or too expensive to start reducing pollution. Last time I heard from a coworker based in China, his hometown's small scale coal mine got shut down because (either corruption to get rid of competition or not enough political influence) of local pollution of the mining, as well as small coal plants getting forced shutdown (less political influenced owner) and replaced by larger plants (more political influenced owner).
They build a few massive dams that changed the national landscape so they can power millions of people using hydro power (and suppress protests about the forced relocation and environmental damages).
They build more new nuke plants than the rest of the world combined, with different types of reactors from aboard and home grown technologies (from technology transfer), so they will have the best and the worst designs, but not all eggs in one basket, so they will not need to shut down all of the nukes if they find problems later (and they will).
They build all sorts of renewable just in case it takes off, so they will not be left behind with old power generations when the rest of the world move forwards.
And most importantly: they are leaders in the high voltage DC power grid, when the rest of the world (like the US) is stuck with local power transmission limitation that makes production inefficient and fluctuate rather than stabilize.
A dictatorship tends to have fewer "not in my backyard" problems that a democratic and free nation faces everyday.
Due to the sheer size, China is an absolutely fascinating one to watch. I covered this in a previous thread but it bares mention here:
~80% of China's power comes from coal. They have 907GW of installed coal capacity that generates ~4,000TWh of electricity per year. By far the largest generator by a massive margin.
2nd in line is hydro electric. They have 300GW of HE installed that generates ~900TWh of electricity per year. Less than 1/4 of what they get from coal.
3rd in line are the thermal mix of bio/natgas. 135GW installed, that generates ~200TWh of electricity per year.
4th in line is wind power. They have 90GW of installed capacity which generates ~140TWh of electricity per year.
5th in line is nuclear power. They have 21GW of nuclear installed which generates ~125TWh of electricity per year.
6th in line is solar power. They have 28GW of solar power installed which generates ~9TWh of electricity per year.
From an efficiency standpoint of installed capacity versus output the nukes win by a landslide. Coal comes in at 2nd place with solar bringing up the bottom with a rather pitiful showing. Despite the massive investments in alternatives, China still relies most heavily on coal power and it makes up the vast, VAST majority of their energy production. Personally, the only thing I see as a viable alternative is more nukes. They require so much capacity to replace that coal and we really do want them to stop burning coal. On the other hand, their mix of nuclear technologies is a bit of a worry. They have a few CANDU's as well as a some of the advanced flexible fuel CANDU's, but they also have a pretty broad cross section of other stuff. One assumes they are properly managed of course but still.......
