… a steady construction pipeline helps […]. Equipment and component makers can standardize production when they know there will be demand for their specialized goods year after year, and more experienced construction crews can avoid costly delays. […] And, of course, China’s one-party system has proven more adept than America’s messy democracy in recent decades at permitting and constructing all kinds of infrastructure projects.
I hope these ambitions transition global manufacturing away from coal.
I’ll preface this by saying I don’t really know anything about the Chinese Nuclear Energy Industry so I can’t really give an informed opinion on the matter, but if I had to guess what makes Chinese nuclear reactors cheaper and faster to build, my guess would be that Chinese Government regulations surrounding nuclear reactor construction are looser than those in the West (and it makes sense on some level, China is a fast-growing nation and Party officials are probably more concerned about getting power plants built to meet rising demand than they are about potential disasters that may result), meaning that Nuclear Reactor designs in China can be simpler, lacking many of the same safety devices and controls that are mandated on Western nuclear reactors, and as a result are cheaper and faster to build, just like how Soviet nuclear reactors were cheaper and simpler than their Western counterparts as a result of lacking many of the features designed to make reactor operation safer and reduce the risk of a catastrophic failure.
The problem is it only takes one Chernobyl-scale catastrophe (and sometimes not even that) to bring the entire industry to a screeching halt and permanently damage the public’s trust in the industry and confidence that it is indeed a safe source of energy to be pursued further.
The piece seems to indicate they are and have been building lots of infrastructure for awhile now. Author claims this adjacent work helps brings cost down. (Probably because of an abundance of skilled labor, manufacturing, and supply chains)
Could be lax regs too I guess and it’s not like China doesn’t know about Chernobyl out Fukushima.
I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law applies to this comment, even with the preface.
What’s the point of sharing your baseless speculation? I hope you’re wrong, and that they’re building passive safety systems without making any significant mistakes, but the amount of research required to refute your ideas would be enormous.
Ontop of this, that’s totally aside from safety, things just get done much much quicker due to less bureaucracy. Take any sort of rail system for instance, they’ve built ENTIRE rail systems (light and heavy) in the time it’s going to take Seattle to build 2 miles of lightrail.
It’s both cheaper and faster, while I don’t know the safety statistics I certainly don’t see train derailments happening left and right.
It turns out when you don’t cater to businesses and can relocate residents at their whim it has some advantages for better or worse depending on your perspective.