China breaks ground on yet ANOTHER nuclear reactor

[Statistical]

China National Nuclear Corp., the country’s biggest operator of nuclear power plants, started building a 19 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) generator on the southern island province of Hainan.

The first of two units will start electricity output by the end of 2014, the company said in a statement posted on its Web site today. The plant, a joint venture with top power producer China Huaneng Group Corp., has a capacity of 1,300 megawatts, China National Nuclear said in August 2008.

China, the world’s second-biggest energy user, wants 15 percent of its energy to come from renewable sources by 2020. The country currently has 9 gigawatts of nuclear capacity in operation, the China Electricity Council said in August. That will exceed 70 gigawatts by 2020, Wang Binghua, chairman of the State Nuclear Power Technology Corp., said in March.

According to some this is impossible:
1) China is abandonding nuclear power.
2) Nuclear energy is "dead".

This is the most activity from something dead since "Weekend At Bernies".

What is also interesting is that by limiting production to a few designs and building them back to back China has been able to slowly reduce construction timeline. There first "new" reactors (minus 11 built by foreign entities prior to 2000) took about 6 years to build. The next few took 5 to 5.5 years. Now China wants to get construction under 5 years. "end of 2014" would be 4.75 years at max.

70GW by 2020. With new reactor start every couple months that is certainly possible.
70GW of nuclear power is worth about 200 to 300GW of wind, or 350-400GW of solar power.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-26/china-national-nuclear-starts-building-plant-in-hainan-province.html

[amborin]

1. and huge $$$ investments in Niger, for uranium and oil

[Statistical]

2. Everything China is doing is about energy security.

US is looking 3 months ahead to next election cycle.

China has 10 year, 20 year, 50 year plans.
A timeline on how to get there and they revise that timeline every couple years.

Without energy security there is no such thing as economic or national security.

[joshcryer]

4. Yeah, the addition of all of those nuclear reactors to their plan tells me that...

...they are on track, if not beyond estimates for power generation.

[jpak]

8. Yeah, we should have a violent corrupt communist dictatorship like China - they get shit done!

that would solve all our energy security problems

:rofl:

[classysassy]

3. China and Iran

Commies can Persians can't develope atomic weapons,is there a double standard at the UN?

[joshcryer]

5. 4 years to generate power? Really?

That's a marked improvement over what we're seeing here in the US.

[Statistical]

10. Well to be fair it is more like 4 and a fraction years. (4.5 to 4.75).

Still their long term goal is to get it down to 3.5 years per reactor. Just like anything else if you build the same thing over and over then the technology, skills, processes all improve. One of the big problems in the US has always been our lack of standardization. All 104 reactors are essentially unique and custom built. At one time the US did build reactors in less than 5 years. There is no reason we can't do it again. That is different than saying we will do it but there is no technical reason we can't.

Even among the 28 planned reactors in the US there are a lots of different designs.



If we roll them out slow and keep 5 different designs it is unlikely we will ever get construction as efficient as Chinese are.

Still 4-5 years is not unusual around the world. PRIS only records start date and connection to grid date usually it is 3-6 months between construction completion and connection to grid.

Sadly PRIS is in frames which makes linking a pain:
http://www.iaea.org/programmes/a2/

Japan & South Korea both have built numerous reactors in less than 5 years.

Just three as examples

YONGGWANG-6 (South Korea) 4 years, 10 months from construction start to connection to grid
http://www.iaea.org/cgi-bin/db.page.pl/pris.prdeta.htm?country=KR&site=YONGGWANG&units=&refno=18

YONGGWANG-5 (South Korea) 4 years, 5 months from construction start to connection to grid
http://www.iaea.org/cgi-bin/db.page.pl/pris.prdeta.htm?country=KR&site=YONGGWANG&units=&refno=17

YONGGWANG-4 (South Korea) 5 years, 1 months from construction start to connection to grid
http://www.iaea.org/cgi-bin/db.page.pl/pris.prdeta.htm?country=KR&site=YONGGWANG&units=&refno=12

[joshcryer]

6. I found this rather prophetic article from summer of 2009:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKPEK33615120090420

The original 2020 target for nuclear was set at 40 GW, but China is now aiming for 60 GW and officials have spoken of 70 GW. China had 9.1 GW of nuclear power capacity at the end of last year and is building 24 reactors with a further 25.4 GW. At least five more are planned but not yet approved for construction.

That thousand GW of coal though is disconcerting.

[Statistical]

Yeah it seems China ramps up their projections every couple years.

Not only is the 2020 projection growing but the 2030 projection is also growing.

Standardization, technology transfer, and building "reactor factories" will pay dividends in rolling out hundreds of reactors.

China now has one of only 4 ultra heavy forges in the world capable of making reactor pressure vessel. Gen II reactor pressure vessels are made by making a loop and then stacking them to form a can. The loops are then welded together however the welds become the weak point and require expensive and time consuming inspections.

Newer way to make a RPV is to form it from a solid piece of steel however this is massive and requires thousands of tons of steel.

There were only 2 forges in the world capable of doing this: Japan & Russia. Now China has the third. UK is considering building one as is India.

Of course none of this matters because everyone "knows" nuclear is dead right?

[Statistical]

9. Delete. Dupe.

[jpak]

7. "According to some this is impossible" what a stupid ingorant and transparent stawman

sounds like FAUX News

:rofl:

[joshcryer]

11. Actually, when people pull out studies claiming 10-20 years to build a nuclear plant...

...and then demand that it can't be sooner than that, well, thereyago.

[kristopher]

13. How does anything on this thread disprove the claim you assert?

Hint: it doesn't. You are going off half cocked.

[joshcryer]

14. It indicates that the 10-20 year time frame is exaggerated.

Though it won't "prove" it until the reactors go critical. Deniers like to demand similar levels of "proof." I tell them to wait for CLARREO.

[joshcryer]

12. Kick.