With some light searching I found that the total amount of nuclear power capacity on Earth today adds up to 371.5 GW
Meanwhile, China built 315 GW of solar capacityin the last year. Solar panels don’t charge at night, obviously, which is why China is also installing base load in the form of grid-scale battery storage and already has 215 GWh online today with plans to surpass 721 GWh by 2027.
While we wait 10-15 years to build more nuclear power plants, China is just going to keep pumping out more and more solar panels and base-load battery stations faster and faster. I’m entirely soured on nuclear.
China also has over half of the world’s coal power generation. They are also still building more, just not as much as solar, but it’s still being added to. Coal power share in China fell in 2025 for the first time. But not because they reduced it, but it was the first time where they added enough solar/wind to outpace the adding of coal.
China also has quotas that require utility companies to buy a certain share of coal power. So you can’t get clean energy there by law, as individual or industrial user.
China also has the rare earths needed to produce batteries, from what I remember they sit on the largest reservers for them by quite a margin, but I don’t remember a source for that. So for them, adding battery based grid storage is easier than most of the world. Plus they are basically the only ones that even make any batteries anymore in the first place.
What this demonstrates is that China will use whatever the most efficient power generation is that gets electricity to the maximum number of people and industries for the lowest cost. They aren’t installing solar because they want to save the world, they’re doing it because it works. It’s better than anything else on the market and so they’re investing.
Notably, they are not installing nuclear power at the same rate. They plan to have 200 GW of nuclear capacity by 2035, but they’re installing more than that in solar capacity every year. That should tell you something.
Solar is great, as is wind, and hopefully tidal sooner than later. Still, nuclear has a part to play. The cost is almost entirely due to over-regulation, as designed by the existing energy lobby. It’s the second safest source of power, including disasters, and including clean energy. Yes, that means it’s safer than wind. It’s about as safe as solar by this source, though I heard solar is worse at one time, though that must have changed. When it was smaller scale, and a lot was on houses, not in fields, solar was worse.
Nuclear is great for a 100% reliable source of power. It is a good foundation to build upon. Yeah, solar+wind with batteries is good, but it isn’t perfect. Nuclear is clean, safe, and reliable. There are also effectively zero hazards with a modern reactor, unlike what the media would like you to believe. The waste isn’t actually an issue, and it’s all accounted for. Also, the risk of meltdown is effectively zero.
The time to build a reactor also should not be 10-15 years. It should take ~5 years at most, and that should speed up with more reactors built. The reason it takes so long in the US (and other western nations) is regulations, once again. It’s explicitly designed to prevent nuclear from competing with coal/oil/dirty energy.
But China has twice as much base-load battery capacity 100% of the time and built three times as much solar capacity this year alone. In my other comment I highlighted how they plan to have a mere 200 GW of nuclear capacity by 2035 - they plan to have 6 times that much solar capacity by 2030! Nuclear is not a priority. Whatever part is has to play, it’s not the star of the show.
Do you think regulations are holding back nuclear in China too? Or do you think, maybe, it’s just an inferior power source?
I never said renewable+battery was bad. You said nuclear was. The fact of the matter is that well rounded energy infrastructure is the priority in China. Solar doesn’t just not generate power at night. It also doesn’t during storms, and other times. It’s sporadic. Yes, batteries can help with this, but so can nuclear. If you rely solely on solar, the infrastructure needed to support it is significantly higher.
Nuclear allows you to have a reliable baseline. It let’s you have a reliable load so you don’t need as substantial infrastructure to be able to capture 100% peak solar, and be able to discharge it quickly too.
Do you think regulations are holding back nuclear in China too? Or do you think, maybe, it’s just an inferior power source?
Again, you’re the one making claims about superiority. I don’t think either are superior. They both provide different kinds of utility, and clearly nations like China and Japan see this. Both can be invested in. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing like you claim. They have different roles to play and they both play them very well.
I said that nuclear is inferior, and it is. It will play a minor role in the transition, the hype generated by techbros around nuclear is vastly overblown. The main advantages that nuclear has is that enriching uranium is also important for producing medical isotopes, for nuclear submarines and nuclear-powered satellites/spacecraft, and the process is similar for making bombs. Solar can’t do any of that.
But there’s a reason that nuclear will always lag behind, at least enriched uranium reactors. It’s extremely expensive and it’s comparatively not as good at the primary task of generating power for the cost it has.
Now if thorium reactors could ever get off the ground that would be interesting.
One thing of interest is that costs have increased as we build more, which makes no fucking sense unless the cost is being raised by external factors. Prices should always go down as we get more practice, knowledge, and technology. You really can’t compare the prices as they currently exist to make an argument for what we should do. What we should do is remove unnecessary regulations, for nuclear, solar, wind, etc., and stop subsidizing dirty sources, the build more of anything that makes sense at whatever location.
Neither are inferior. They’re very different technologies with different uses. They’re all sources of clean energy that all have a purpose. A nuclear baseline (or whatever base load you have, including coal or natural gas) makes infrastructure costs cheaper for solar. Without the solar is more expensive than current estimates would appear. We need both.
I’m not even necessarily comparing costs, I’m demonstrating that that solar is surpassing nuclear in the real world and it’s only going to accelerate. Dirty energy doesn’t benefit from being lapped by solar, there is no advantage for dirty energy if we just invest in solar+grid-scale battery storage instead of nuclear energy. You can’t just say “every power source is the same, nothing is different” and expect that to be a coherent idea. Some clean energy sources are better than others.
Nuclear has its place, but it’s small and it always will be.
With some light searching I found that the total amount of nuclear power capacity on Earth today adds up to 371.5 GW
Meanwhile, China built 315 GW of solar capacity in the last year. Solar panels don’t charge at night, obviously, which is why China is also installing base load in the form of grid-scale battery storage and already has 215 GWh online today with plans to surpass 721 GWh by 2027.
While we wait 10-15 years to build more nuclear power plants, China is just going to keep pumping out more and more solar panels and base-load battery stations faster and faster. I’m entirely soured on nuclear.
China also has over half of the world’s coal power generation. They are also still building more, just not as much as solar, but it’s still being added to. Coal power share in China fell in 2025 for the first time. But not because they reduced it, but it was the first time where they added enough solar/wind to outpace the adding of coal.
China also has quotas that require utility companies to buy a certain share of coal power. So you can’t get clean energy there by law, as individual or industrial user.
China also has the rare earths needed to produce batteries, from what I remember they sit on the largest reservers for them by quite a margin, but I don’t remember a source for that. So for them, adding battery based grid storage is easier than most of the world. Plus they are basically the only ones that even make any batteries anymore in the first place.
Source for most of the info.
What this demonstrates is that China will use whatever the most efficient power generation is that gets electricity to the maximum number of people and industries for the lowest cost. They aren’t installing solar because they want to save the world, they’re doing it because it works. It’s better than anything else on the market and so they’re investing.
Notably, they are not installing nuclear power at the same rate. They plan to have 200 GW of nuclear capacity by 2035, but they’re installing more than that in solar capacity every year. That should tell you something.
China is also building nuclear power plants faster than anyone else, with 113 million kilowatts of capacity (100% of the time).
Solar is great, as is wind, and hopefully tidal sooner than later. Still, nuclear has a part to play. The cost is almost entirely due to over-regulation, as designed by the existing energy lobby. It’s the second safest source of power, including disasters, and including clean energy. Yes, that means it’s safer than wind. It’s about as safe as solar by this source, though I heard solar is worse at one time, though that must have changed. When it was smaller scale, and a lot was on houses, not in fields, solar was worse.
Nuclear is great for a 100% reliable source of power. It is a good foundation to build upon. Yeah, solar+wind with batteries is good, but it isn’t perfect. Nuclear is clean, safe, and reliable. There are also effectively zero hazards with a modern reactor, unlike what the media would like you to believe. The waste isn’t actually an issue, and it’s all accounted for. Also, the risk of meltdown is effectively zero.
The time to build a reactor also should not be 10-15 years. It should take ~5 years at most, and that should speed up with more reactors built. The reason it takes so long in the US (and other western nations) is regulations, once again. It’s explicitly designed to prevent nuclear from competing with coal/oil/dirty energy.
But China has twice as much base-load battery capacity 100% of the time and built three times as much solar capacity this year alone. In my other comment I highlighted how they plan to have a mere 200 GW of nuclear capacity by 2035 - they plan to have 6 times that much solar capacity by 2030! Nuclear is not a priority. Whatever part is has to play, it’s not the star of the show.
Do you think regulations are holding back nuclear in China too? Or do you think, maybe, it’s just an inferior power source?
I never said renewable+battery was bad. You said nuclear was. The fact of the matter is that well rounded energy infrastructure is the priority in China. Solar doesn’t just not generate power at night. It also doesn’t during storms, and other times. It’s sporadic. Yes, batteries can help with this, but so can nuclear. If you rely solely on solar, the infrastructure needed to support it is significantly higher.
Nuclear allows you to have a reliable baseline. It let’s you have a reliable load so you don’t need as substantial infrastructure to be able to capture 100% peak solar, and be able to discharge it quickly too.
Again, you’re the one making claims about superiority. I don’t think either are superior. They both provide different kinds of utility, and clearly nations like China and Japan see this. Both can be invested in. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing like you claim. They have different roles to play and they both play them very well.
Did I say nuclear was bad?
I said that nuclear is inferior, and it is. It will play a minor role in the transition, the hype generated by techbros around nuclear is vastly overblown. The main advantages that nuclear has is that enriching uranium is also important for producing medical isotopes, for nuclear submarines and nuclear-powered satellites/spacecraft, and the process is similar for making bombs. Solar can’t do any of that.
But there’s a reason that nuclear will always lag behind, at least enriched uranium reactors. It’s extremely expensive and it’s comparatively not as good at the primary task of generating power for the cost it has.
Now if thorium reactors could ever get off the ground that would be interesting.
Again, if your argument is cost, you’re just doing the dirty work of dirty energy. It is not inherently expensive. It’s been made to be expensive. Even in the US, which is one of the worst in the world for nuclear power cost it’s reasonably competitve
One thing of interest is that costs have increased as we build more, which makes no fucking sense unless the cost is being raised by external factors. Prices should always go down as we get more practice, knowledge, and technology. You really can’t compare the prices as they currently exist to make an argument for what we should do. What we should do is remove unnecessary regulations, for nuclear, solar, wind, etc., and stop subsidizing dirty sources, the build more of anything that makes sense at whatever location.
Neither are inferior. They’re very different technologies with different uses. They’re all sources of clean energy that all have a purpose. A nuclear baseline (or whatever base load you have, including coal or natural gas) makes infrastructure costs cheaper for solar. Without the solar is more expensive than current estimates would appear. We need both.
I’m not even necessarily comparing costs, I’m demonstrating that that solar is surpassing nuclear in the real world and it’s only going to accelerate. Dirty energy doesn’t benefit from being lapped by solar, there is no advantage for dirty energy if we just invest in solar+grid-scale battery storage instead of nuclear energy. You can’t just say “every power source is the same, nothing is different” and expect that to be a coherent idea. Some clean energy sources are better than others.
Nuclear has its place, but it’s small and it always will be.