A draft of China’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) released in March 2021 showed government plans to reach 70 GWe gross of nuclear capacity by the end of 2025. China is currently just short of 50GWe of nuclear. Annual average new nuclear capacity has been 2005 to 2020 is 3.4 GWe/yr and this will increase from 2020 to 2030 to 9.0 GWe/yr.
The Haiyang Nuclear Energy Heating Project is using the heat from two AP1000 nuclear reactors to provide heating to the entire Haiyang city by 2021. This is about 20 TWh/year of heat.
There has been a 400 MW Thermal deep pool heating reactor. Those should be very low cost and easy to scale up. However, there has not been any word on those reactors for a couple of years. The Haiyang project is a larger-scale clean heating solution. China could take the heat from forty other large reactors to heat cities and eliminate over 100 million tons per year of coal usage.
China has completed a 200 MWe pair of pebble bed reactors. There will be scaled up 600 MWe pebble-bed systems.
China has built some fast neutron reactors.
SOURCES- world nuclear
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Should try maximizing renewable. Its a lot cheaper.
I think its great China is proliferating safe clean affordable nuclear energy. They are closing in on no coal or oil, imagine in 30 years how clean China will be.
Good that the world has another centre of capability to advance complex technologies and projects. US decision making is great, but not always.
Not TOO expensive, yes nuclear does require subsidies even in China. Considering the needed air quality improvements in China well worth it even counting the subsidies.
I like the idea of using waste heat from the reactors to provide heat for homes and businesses. Might as well make the most of it.
For this to work, the rectors need to be located very close to population centers and industrial centers. No room for NIMBY scoffers who want the reactors placed many miles away.
Nuclear reactors are still too expensive even for the Chinese. I had heard years ago they were working on a Thorium Molten Salt Reactor. But I haven't hear anything about recently.