According to Bloomberg, China has more nuclear reactors under construction than any other country, having approved a dozen in each of the past two years. The nation is on track to become the world’s largest producer of nuclear energy by 2030, overtaking France and the United States. Moreover, it was the first country to connect a small modular nuclear reactor to its grid in the Shandong province.
The EAST fusion-research tokamak at the Chinese Academy of Science’s Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP) in Hefei, China.
China has approved five new nuclear power projects, adding 11 reactors with an estimated investment of 220 billion yuan ($30.79 billion), marking a new record in the country’s atomic energy expansion. The decision was taken at an executive meeting of the State Council, presided over by Premier Li Qiang on Monday, the state-run Xinhua news agency said. State-controlled Chinese business news outlet Jiemian said the reactors will be constructed across the provinces of Jiangsu, Shandong, Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Guangxi.
Jiemian estimates are based on the average cost of 20 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) per reactor. Typically, China completes such projects within five years of approval. Six of the reactors will be managed by subsidiaries of the state-owned China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN), with several expected to be third-generation Hualong One reactors.
The China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) will build three more reactors, while the State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC) will oversee the construction of two others. Both CNNC and SPIC are also publicly owned. Notably, the Xuwei project in Jiangsu, operated by CNNC, will include a fourth-generation gas-cooled reactor designed to supply both heat and electricity, featuring enhanced safety measures.
China connected its first commercial onshore small modular nuclear reactor to its power grid, making it the first country in the world to draw power from such a machine, a report from Bloomberg reveals. China Huaneng Group Co.‘s 200-megawatt unit 1 reactor at Shidao Bay is connected to the grid in the Shandong province.
As part of its energy security and emissions reduction strategy, China is heavily investing in nuclear power alongside renewable sources like wind and solar. Beijing aims to double nuclear energy’s share of the national energy mix from 5 percent to 10 percent by 2035. Dutton is correct in including it in Australia’s energy mix.
Britain’s new Labour government has said small nuclear plants will play an important role in helping the country meet its net-zero targets.
Britain’s Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR) said the Rolls-Royce SMR 470 megawatt (MW) Small Modular Reactor (SMR) design had completed stage two of its three-step generic design assessment (GDA) – the formal process for approving a new reactor.
“The team will move directly into Step 3 of this rigorous independent assessment of our technology – ideally positioning us to deliver low-carbon nuclear power and support the UK transition to net zero,” said Helena Perry, Rolls-Royce SMR’s Safety and Regulatory Affairs Director.
The overall duration for the Rolls-Royce SMR GDA is expected to be 53 months, reaching completion in August 2026.
A unique approach
According to Paul Stein, Chairman of Rolls-Royce SMR, “The UK SMR heralds a new approach to the cost of nuclear power by broadly rethinking the manufacturing and construction methods and by the extensive use of digital twinning, keeping the physics package exactly the same. The SMR uses a pressurised water reactor, a type we know and love.”
The production will utilize commercially available, off-the-shelf components from within the UK supply chain, injecting revenue into the British economy and avoiding high-risk, complex construction principles.
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
The second volume of The NEA Small Modular Reactor Dashboard is another milestone in the ongoing efforts of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) to comprehensively assess the progress toward commercializing and deploying SMR technologies. It is important to note that the present publication is not an update to the complement of reactors assessed in Volume I. Instead, the work extends the same methodology to a further 21 SMR designs worldwide to evaluate their progress toward commercialization and deployment as of 21 April 2023.
Australia is a member of the OECD and has access to the publications of its Nuclear Energy Agency on SMR’s and would be aware that the widespread use of SMRs is underway.
Notable public announcements, even in the intervening months since NEA published Volume I in March 2023, now reflect technology choices and plans by chemical manufacturers, oil companies, and copper mine owners. Market signals suggest that this trend will only continue to accelerate as awareness grows about the potential for SMRs to provide alternatives to fossil fuels for both power and non-power industrial applications.
Nuclear Energy allows us to use the existing transmission lines and infrastructure, which is extremely important in Australia with a widely distributed, small population in a large country. The proposal submitted by the Liberal Party for replacing cold fire power stations with SMRs and larger-scale nuclear reactors utilizes the existing transmission lines so is a cost-efficient option.
Wind and Solar in remote locations means a whole new transmission infrastructure to get the power to where it is needed. Moreover, they only work when the wind blows and the sun shines, so the power output is unreliable.
Blocking nuclear is a major setback for Australia’s industrial sector. In the past with our own coal and natural gas Australia provided industry with comparatively cheap energy that will change dramatically without nuclear. Also, Australia has the world’s largest economic demonstrated resources of uranium. In 2021, it was the world’s 4th largest uranium producer. However, Australia has only one commercial nuclear power plant therefore, it has limited domestic uranium requirements. It has and will continue to provide excellent export income.
Germany was already reducing its greenhouse gas emissions before 2011, so it came as a surprise when Merkel announced that her government would “end the use of emissions-free nuclear energy and reach the age of renewable energy as fast as possible.” The Energiewende’s goal of reducing emissions 80 to 95 percent by 2050 was ambitious, but it was the prospect of achieving this goal without nuclear energy that truly turned heads. By shuttering nuclear plants and scaling wind and solar, Merkel made a poor bet that a green economy could run on wind and sunshine alone.
After a swath of decrees and guidelines, as well as tens of billions of euros in subsidies for, and investment in, renewable projects, Merkel boasted about creating hundreds of thousands of green-collar jobs. Many Germans embraced this vision for the future, taking pride in their nation’s turn toward an economy powered by nature. Yet it quickly became apparent that while the Energiewende plan offered vision, it lacked sound strategy.
Bureaucracy slowed the construction of necessary infrastructure for storing and transporting new renewable forms of energy. And suddenly Dunkelflaute—a term used to describe periods of low energy production when the sun failed to shine or the wind didn’t blow—entered the German vernacular. By 2019, the Federal Court of Auditors declared that the 160 billion euros ($180 billion) spent over the last five years were “in extreme disproportion to the results.”
By the tenth anniversary of the Energiewende, the scope of the project’s failure became clear. The year before, German leaders had celebrated renewables reaching 46.2 percent of national electricity consumption due to favorable weather conditions and lower demand. But in 2021, this trend reversed. During the COVID economic bounce back, energy demand exploded while wind power production decreased by 25 percent—leaving coal and natural gas generation to fill in the gaps.
German households have the highest electricity prices in the world, but many Germans are still committed to their utopian vision. Last fall, voters pushed out Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats in favor of a coalition led by the center-left Social Democrats. This wasn’t a refutation of the Energiewende though, since it appears that Chancellor Olaf Scholz will double down as he has expressed interest in being known as the “climate chancellor” and supports policies including an EU-wide carbon price.
The Energiewende has consequences beyond German borders too. The country can’t meet its energy needs with domestic wind, solar, and coal production. So Germans are eagerly awaiting the completion of Nord Stream 2, a pipeline that will deliver natural gas from Russia. It will pump fossil fuel into Germany while lining the pockets of Russian oligarchs with cash. Those excommunicated nuclear plants would have provided emissions-free energy without any reliance on Russia.
Meanwhile in Brussels, Germany’s new Economy and Climate Protection Minister Robert Habeck wants to force the Energiewende plan on the rest of Europe. He recently rejected the European Commission’s plan to label nuclear energy “green,” saying the move “waters down the good label for sustainability.” As long as Germany is miscategorized as the global climate leader, other nations will follow its mindless model including Australia.
The European Union’s REPowerEU Plan, initiated in May 2022, has put nuclear energy at the forefront of its strategy to secure energy and achieve climate goals. France continues investing heavily in nuclear power, whereas Germany has moved away from it.
Rolls-Royce SMR Ltd
The Small Modular Reactor (SMR) business is one of the ways that Rolls-Royce is helping to ensure the UK continues to develop innovative ways to tackle the global threat of climate change.
With the Rolls-Royce SMR technology, we have developed a clean energy solution that can deliver cost-competitive and scalable net zero power for multiple applications – from grid and industrial electricity production to hydrogen and synthetic fuel manufacturing.
The need for clean energy has created a global demand for our SMR as countries look for ways to provide reliable ways to achieve net zero. Our SMR has been designed in direct response to that enormous global challenge and our ambitions are set to match that global market as we build a world-class global product.
Team Biden is still intent on getting 100% hydrocarbon-free electricity by 2035. It wants to eliminate fossil fuels throughout the US economy by 2050: no coal or natural gas for electricity generation; no gasoline or diesel for vehicles; no natural gas for manufacturing, heating, cooking, or other needs.
America’s electricity demand would soar from 2.7 billion megawatt-hours per year (the fossil fuel portion of total US electricity) to almost 7.5 billion MWh by 2050. Substantial additional generation would be required to constantly recharge backup batteries for windless, sunless periods. Corn-based ethanol demand would disappear, but biofuel crops would have to replace petrochemical feedstocks for paints, plastics, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, cell phones, wind turbine blades, and countless other products.
This is just for the USA. Extrapolate these demands to the rest of a fossil-fuel-free developed world … to China and India … and to poor countries determined to take their rightful places among Earth’s healthy and prosperous people – clean, green energy requirements become monumental, incomprehensible.
We’re certainly looking at tens of thousands of offshore wind turbines, millions of onshore turbines, billions of photovoltaic solar panels, billions of vehicle and backup battery modules, and tens of thousands of miles of new transmission lines. Hundreds of millions of acres of US farmland, scenic areas, and wildlife habitats would be affected – blanketed with enormous industrial facilities, biofuel operations, and power lines.
Add in the enormous and unprecedented mining, processing, and manufacturing required to make all these energy-inefficient technologies – mostly outside the United States – and the land use, habitat loss, and toxic pollution would gravely threaten people, wildlife, and the planet.
Let’s take a closer look, now just from a US perspective, but knowing these are global concerns.
Indiana’s Fowler Ridge wind turbines
Solar power. 72,000 high-tech sun-tracking solar panels at Nevada’s sunny Nellis Air Force Base cover 140 acres but generate only 32,000 MWh per year. That’s 33% of rated capacity; 0.0004% of 2050 US electricity needs. Low-tech stationary panels have far lower efficiency and generating capacity, especially in more northern latitudes. Meeting 2050 US electricity needs would require Nevada sunshine and nearly 235,000 Nellis systems on 33,000,000 acres (equal to Alabama).
Triple that acreage for low-tech stationary panels in less sunny areas. For reference, Dominion Energy alone is planning 490 square miles of panels (8 times Washington, DC) just in Virginia, just for Virginia. Then add all the transmission lines.
Wind power. 355 turbines at Indiana’s Fowler Ridge industrial wind facility cover 50,000 acres (120 acres/turbine) and generate electricity just over 25% of the time. Even at just 50 acres per turbine, meeting 2050 US power needs would require 2 million 1.8-MW wind turbines, on 99,000,000 acres (equal to California), if they generate electricity 25% of the year.
But the more turbines (or solar panels) we need, the more we have to put them in sub-optimal areas, where they might work 15% of the year. The more we install, the more they reduce wind flow for the others. And some of the best US wind zones are along the Canada-to-Texas flyway for migrating birds – which would mean the massive, unsustainable slaughter of cranes, raptors, other birds, and bats.
Go offshore, and even President Biden’s call for 30,000 MW of electricity (2,500 monster 12-MW turbines) wouldn’t meet New York State’s peak summertime electricity needs.
Biofuels and wood pellets. America already grows corn in an area larger than Iowa, to meet current ethanol quotas. Keep-fossil-fuels-in-the-ground lobbyists need to calculate how many acres of soybeans, canola, and other biofuel crops would be needed to replace today’s petrochemical feedstocks; how much water, fertilizer, labor, and fuel would be needed to grow harvest and process them; and how much acreage would have to be taken from food production or converted from bee and wildlife habitat.
Climate activists also approve of cutting down thousands of acres of North American hardwood forests – nearly 300,000,000 trees per year – and turning them into wood pellets, which are hauled by truck and cargo ship to England’s Drax Power Plant. There they are burned to generate electricity so that the UK can “meet its renewable fuel targets.” And that’s just one “carbon-neutral” power plant. That’s one year to slash and burn the fuel, and fifty years to regrow replacement trees. This is not green, sustainable energy.
Organic farming. Environmentalists dream of converting all US (and even all global) agriculture to 100% organic. That would further reduce wildlife habitats – dramatically – especially if we are to simultaneously eliminate world hunger … and replace petrochemicals organically.
Organic farms require up to 30% more land to achieve the same yields as conventional agriculture, and most of the land needed to make that happen is now forests, wildflower fields, and grasslands. Organic farmers (and consumers) also reject synthetic fertilizers, which means more land would have to be devoted to raising animals for their manure unless human wastes are used. More lost wildlife habitat.
They reject modern chemical pesticides that prevent billions of tons of food from being eaten or ruined but utilize toxic copper, sulfur, and nicotine-based pesticides. They even reject biotechnology (genetic engineering) that creates crops that are blight-resistant, require less water, permit no-till farming, need fewer pesticide treatments, and bring much higher yields per acre. Translation: even less wildlife habitat
There are alternatives, of course. Government mandates and overseers could require that “average” American families live in 640-square-foot apartments, slash their energy use, ride only bicycles or public transportation, and fly only once every few years. They could also switch us to “no-obesity” diets.
Indeed, “scientists” are again saying we “common folks” could “reduce our carbon footprints” by eating less beef and chicken, and more insect protein, ground-up bugs – or roasted bumblebees. Or we could just reduce the number of “cancerous, parasitic” humans. (Perhaps beginning with wannabe overseers?)
It is interesting to consider what Jesus will do in the Millennium to provide power for the world. I would suggest nuclear fusion will finally be perfected for use as a power source. Cars will be powered by hydrogen or batteries. It will be interesting to see which of these technologies will be the most efficient.
Man’s time of ruling this planet under the influence of Satan and his demons is coming to an end. Satan and his minions will be bound in the abyss for a thousand years and Jesus and the Saints will rule the nations.
“The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron… even as I myself have received authority from my Father.” Revelation 2:26-27
“From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron.” Revelation 19:15
“She gave birth to a male child, One who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne,” Revelation 12:5
LIVING ETERNAL NOW 