Of the more than 60 nuclear reactors now under construction around the world, 25 of them are in mainland China, with two additional reactors under construction in Taiwan. China has approved (including the 25 under construction) 34 new reactors.
China now has about 10 GWe of nuclear power. The new reactors will add 34 GWe of capacity.
Nuclear power has, overall, the highest capacity utilization of any source of energy in the world, on the order of 90%, making it the most reliable energy source in the world, exceeding its next closest competitor, coal, which, ignoring for a moment the filth and destruction associated with coal, has about 72% capacity utilization world wide.
If China meets world standards for nuclear reliability then the amount of energy produced with this capacity will be...
...in terms of pure electricity, 1.25 exajoules of electricity per year, again at 90% capacity utilization.
The thermal efficiency of most heat engines without fancy stuff is roughly 33%.
One can increase thermal efficiency to a higher level, but the second law of thermodynamics, which is as incontrovertible as the laws of gravitation - to digress (who me?) one should read Wheeler's book if only because of the beautiful passage about apples and geodesics with which the book begins - shows that one can never have a system that does work that is 100% reversible, and thus 100% efficient. Some commercial industrial heat engines have been built that have thermal efficiencies that approach 60%: combined cycle engines combine Brayton cycles and Rankin (steam) cycles: Most such plants are fueled by dangerous natural gas, although there is no intrinsic reason that any heat source (including nuclear energy) cannot operate as a combined cycle system.
(My friend Rod Adams designs reactors with Brayton cycles.)
But right now, to my knowledge, no nuclear reactor operates a combined cycle system, although some nuclear reactors, notably those in Romania, some former Soviet reactors, Swiss reactors and a few British reactors do use waste heat for district space heating. I have written in this space about a Czech proposal to do the same.
There is a type of reactor known at the HTGCR - yes the Chinese have one of these too but it's small scale, a research affair operating at 10MW - that can also (in theory) operate on the Stirling cycle, but I am not an expert on these types of reactors. Almost all Stirling type systems on earth today are solar thermal systems which have proved wholly and totally useless - despite much carrying on - at addressing even a smidgeon of a fragment of a mote of a particle of climate change.
Thus, anyway, the long winded point is that we are justified in using the 33% figure for Chinese nuclear thermodynamic efficiency.
It follows that the 44 MWe of Chinese capacity that either now exists, is under construction or is approved for immediate construction, would produce about 3.8 exajoules of primary energy.
How much energy is this?
It is more energy than the nations of Denmark, Austria, Greece, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Iceland consume, um, combined. I am not including just electricity here, but everything, dangerous fossil fuel powered automobiles, water pumps, home heating, um, everything. It is more than three times as much energy as Italy consumes, 75% as much energy as the entire nation of Germany consumes.
But note, this is only what's operating, under construction or approved as of today. Chinese plans are far more agressive. In the next decade Chinese nuclear build plans call for 100 GWe of nuclear capacity and, in fact, there is talk of enlarging this number.
Some in China are calling for China to slow down on this score.
To wit:
China should 'keep a clear head' on nuclear power, concentrate more on Generation-III reactors and keep its new build ambitions for 2020 to around 100 GWe, said a state body yesterday.
The advice came from the State Council Research Office (SCRO), which makes independent policy recommendations to the State Council on strategic matters. It appeared officially in Xinhua's weekly Outlook publication.
While noting that 'the situation for the development of more nuclear power is good', the body said: 'We should keep a clear head. Not only seeing the favourable factors, but paying attention also to a variety of constraints to ensure steady progress.'
Going too far too fast 'could threaten the long-term healthy development of nuclear power.'
The country already has 13 reactors in operation with a total capacity of over 10 GWe. Some 32 more have already been approved by authorities to bring another 34 GWe - and construction has already started on 25 of these. The SCRO celebrated the progress made and the successful import of the Generation-III Westinghouse AP1000 design, which is meant to form the backbone of China's future nuclear fleet.
However, ambitious targets to deploy AP1000s with reduced foreign input have proven difficult due to frequent quality control issues in the supply chain. As a result, more of the Generation-II CPR-1000 and CNP design units are under construction or on order. Only China is building Generation-II units in such large numbers, said the SCRO, counting 57 on the books.
Reactors built today should operate for 50 or 60 years, meaning a large fleet of Generation-II units will still be in operation into the 2070s, when even Generation-III reactors would have been far surpassed,
Although China has more honors science and engineering students than the United States has any kind of science and engineering students, there is concern about having an adequate intellectual base of trained regulatory, operations and construction personelle.
Another factor potentially affecting safety is the nuclear power workforce. While staff can be technically trained in four to eight years, 'safety culture takes longer' at the operational level.
This issue is magnified in the regulatory regime, where salaries are lower than in industry and workforce numbers remain relatively low. SCRO said that most countries employ 30-40 regulatory staff per reactor in their fleet, but the National Nuclear Safety Administration has only 1000 staff - a figure that must more than quadruple by 2020. It was also noted frankly: 'The independence of regulatory authorities is not enough'.
The body calculated the present rate of nuclear development to require new investment of some RMB 1 trillion ($151 billion) by 2020, not counting those units being built now. This figure could rise if supply chain issues impact schedules, with repercussions for companies borrowing to build and for the economics of the Chinese nuclear program overall.
Six recommendations concluded the statement. First, said the SCRO, the government should exercise some control to make sure that enthusiastic companies or regions do not disregard the national interest in their ambitions to build nuclear plants. To avoid going too far too fast, China should aim for 100 GWe total nuclear capacity in 2020. This is down from the 120 GWe postulated last year but still enough for it to draw level with the USA, the largest nuclear power producer in the world. In 2008 China's plan was only for 40 GWe.
Maintain nuclear perspective, China told
My raising of these points should not be construed to represent that I agree with the statements in this report. I favor the complete and total phase out of all dangerous fossil fuels, for which I regard nuclear to be the only form of energy to be capable of accomplishing this task.
To state that there is some risk involved in such a course is not to imagine that it is comparable to the risk of continuing to operate dangerous fossil fuel plants of any kind. The operations of these dangerous fossil fueled plants, the normal operations kill about two million persons every year, like clockwork.
Have a nice evening.