China Plans Astonishing Nuclear Power Surge by 2035

October 24th, 2011 by Susan Kraemer

According to the US Energy Information Administration’s International Energy Outlook 2011, China plans to add far more new nuclear capacity than any other nation. China will add 106 GW of nuclear capacity by 2035. Despite some temporary delay after Fukushima, China aims to have 40 reactors by 2020 and, by 2030, enough additional reactors to generate more power than all 104 reactors in the US.

For clean energy readers, familiar with China’s incredibly rapid deployment of solar and wind power, compared to the rest of the world, this kind of investment intensity may be less jarring, because we have already seen China’s level of commitment and effective implementation of its clean energy policies resulting from its pragmatic acceptance of the realities of a carbon-constrained future.

China has been competent in implementing effective climate policy. It rearranged the national grid to be able to accept long distance transmission within two weeks, for example – something that would not be possible here.

China’s nuclear power surge might seem less shocking in the context of the rest of its low-carbon energy investment – its new wind power is growing 1,000 times faster than its new coal power for example. The US invested just $90 billion on clean energy in the Recovery Act after the 2008 crash, but their renewables surge totaled $800 billion.

But I’ll bet that to many people – this level of investment in nuclear power might be a little frightening.

However, other than its being drily noted within this report from the US Energy Information Administration forecasting energy needs and use over the next thirty odd years, there hasn’t been any corporate media scaremongering over China developing nuclear power like there was about the so-called “Axis of Evil” nations or India or Pakistan doing so.

As with its equally ambitious renewable energy plans, China is making the right moves to make nuclear power big. It has an ambitious plan to train an army of nuclear engineers, unlike the US which has an aging nuclear workforce and few new nuclear engineers. State ownership of the industry guarantees capital and relatively quick approvals of new plants.

Among non-OECD countries, China will have the highest percentage increase in emissions per capita, according the forecast, from 5.1 metric tons per person in 2008 to 9.3 metric tons per person in 2035, an average annual increase of 2.2 percent. In 2035, China’s energy demand is projected to be 68% higher than US energy demand.

In the 20th century, China perhaps did more than any nation to cut global greenhouse gas emissions. Its extremely draconian one child policy, intended to curb overpopulation (for economic development reasons) indirectly benefited all mankind. Human energy use adds heat-trapping greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, which causes increases in the number and frequency of climate extremes. The more people there are, living at a first world standard of living (which China is headed for) the more global greenhouse gases will destabilize our fragile climate balance.

And in the 21st century, if its carbon-free energy plans are ambitious enough, China will perhaps do more than any nation in this century too, to help reduce the spectre of climate change.

Susan Kraemer@Twitter
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Tags: China, climate policy, one-child policy

About the Author

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.

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Matthew Wright

China has a 1000GW of Wind Capacity target for 2050. Much bigger than the 106GW of Nuclear by 2035 Also China is yet to have built a Gen III reactor which are 70% foreign content. They claim many of their 13 gen II reactors are unsafe
Anonymous

Don’t forget, there are a lot more people in China than in the US.

If you look at energy use and pollution on a per capita basis you will see that we need to spend more time working on our faults and less time complaining about the Chinese.
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Anonymous

‘… there hasn’t been any corporate media scaremongering over China developing nuclear power like there was about the so-called “Axis of Evil” nations or India or Pakistan doing so.’

China has had nuclear weapons since the ’60s, so there’s no concern about a nuclear power program being used for cover. And the current rulers of China seem stable, so there’s not the concern there is with Ahmadinejad, or Kim Jong-il, or whoever might take over Pakistan.
- Anonymous
  
  China has never had a history of trying to take over other countries as has Japan, most European countries, etc. They do view Nepal and Taiwan as their historical properties and want them, but if you look at what they did in Vietnam and North Korea they showed no desire to conquer and hold.
  
  China is a most interesting country.
  - Susan Kraemer
    
    It is, isn’t it. If there had to be one country that is going to dominate the 21st century, the carbon-constrained century, make or break for the human race, I am increasingly happy it is China. I think we lucked out.
Anonymous

My word. A coercive totalitarian state whose huge investment in renewable energy is led by construction of hydroelectric dams displacing millions of people against their will is lauded because it has reduced population growth by infanticide. Why is it that those who suggest authority should be questioned willingly yield all authority to the state? It’s rather ghoulish, this belief that human life is bad, when all other life on earth is sacred.
- Susan Kraemer
  
  No, infanticide is not practiced in China. They use birth control and abortion.
Svein_utne

Cold Fusion will save the day. Look at Andrea Rossi from Italy. He will start a 1 MW cold fusion plant on Friday.
- Anonymous
  
  But the world ended last Friday.
  
  And spoons were bent….
- Anonymous
  
  Friday came and Friday went.
  
  Rossi pulled another one of his tricks. He kept his device hooked to the generator throughout the demo and produced no power that could not be explained by the generator input.
  
  He closed the demo to anyone objective. He allowed no one to test his device.
  
  Bogosity prevailed…
  
  http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2011/10/30/believing-in-cold-fusion-and-the-e-cat/