Everything that pushes the state of the art has challenges. With the development of on-shore wind farms you are probably looking at 3-5 years timeline even in quite bureaucratic countries. With nuclear, it is at least 5x that and nuclear might never pay for itself without subsidy and it might go Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima on you. Nobody sane is going to insure or finance the power plant without strong guarantees from the government.
I would like for nuclear to be more competitive but the industry was cornered (has cornered itself) into so much bureaucratic overhead it is hard to almost impossible to do any kind of innovation in anything nuclear and make aggressive deadlines needed in order to be competitive while being safe/ robust and on budget. A falling 500 meter tall wind turbine is really bad. It might kill some people. A failure at a nuclear power plant might relocate whole cities and make life a living hell for thousands of people and the land basically uninhabitable for decades.
Because ideally we will develop a number of energy solutions simultaneously. We need diverse energy sources, and specifically ones that harness abundant amounts of energy that isn’t beholden upon our ability to refine resources sourced from other countries.
I believe nuclear is the future to bulk stored energy, but we need solar and wind to provide energy that doesn’t consume a resource. Otherwise we will always have to control/ration said energy usage and it may limit future capabilities.
Yes, because nuclear reactors never fail and don’t cause a catastrophe when they do! And if it ever happens, it’s due to some mistake that surely won’t happen the next time!
Does anyone know where the turbine blades are being manufactured? Is it China, which also happens to be building more reliable nuclear plants rather than finicky wind turbines for their own infrastructure?
You don't actually know how reliable nuclear power plants are in China. They tend to selectively report only stuff that paints them in good light (see COVID-19). Anything bad that is reported/ leaked from China is usually much worse in reality.
Seeking truth in a democratic country is often hard enough already. Seeking truth in a somewhat competent dictatorship is much harder.
Your're right, China installed 34GW of new net nuclear average generation vs. 30GW net of new average wind and solar.
...Oh wait, that number is an entire decade of new nuclear generation vs. one year of wind and solar. The most pessimistic estimates of amount of new VRE coming online this year is within 10% of the entire nuclear fleet (and could go either way).
Anything that is purpose-built to catch the wind is susceptible to destruction by a bad storm. Add to that the fact that offshore wind is a pain in the ass to install and maintain. Solar and nuclear, once installed, tend to be more reliable. Maybe there's a better way to harness the power of the wind?
