Within a decade, China is expected to overtake the United States as the leading producer of nuclear electricity. The United States owns 30% of the world’s nuclear capability but has been inactive for 30 years, while China has quadrupled its supply in ten years.
A new reactor being built along the Chinese coast, barely 135 miles from Taiwan, is said to include Russian-supplied nuclear material, and the combined arsenals of Moscow and Beijing might “dwarf that of the United States,” according to The New York Times. While there is no indication that Russia and China are working to manufacture nuclear weapons, the United States is now faced with the difficulty of managing a “three-way nuclear rivalry,” according to the Times.
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The Impact on Global Nuclear Power Expansion
Because of popular suspicion and fear of nuclear power, the Chernobyl and Fukushima tragedies had a significant influence on its expansion.• 2 . Prior to 1986, the globe added 500 terawatts of nuclear power every decade, enough to power almost 750 million households. As the world’s largest coal consumer, it is “encouraging to see China ramping up nuclear power,” writes chemical engineer Robert Rapier for Forbes. India, the world’s second-largest coal consumer after China, is also growing nuclear capacity.
China is also expected to attain 1 terawatt of solar power by 2026• 3, more than doubling its current output in only three years. In China, solar energy has outperformed other methods of electricity generation, with investment reaching about $16 billion in the first half of 2023. Though difficult to implement owing to land constraints in coastal areas, solar energy has become a popular choice in populous provinces such as Henan and Zhejiang, where panels are prevalent on rooftops.
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Source: Semafor
