Where else are you going to go though? Germany threw in the towel, nuclear has been stagnant in France and USA for decades. Maybe Sweden/Finland? They do it but slowly, expensively and are a whole generation behind.
That leaves you with China. Which from an objective/technical standpoint is actually excellent because their current designs are extremely good.
However it's probably not tenable for the West to procure nuclear technology from China. Not that China wouldn't sell them plants, they almost certainly would, China has no qualms sharing civilian tech but the West couldn't stomach it geopolitically.
Which sadly is going to be the state of affairs for all cutting edge green energy tech. While the rest of the world was sucking off special interests in the fossil fuels industry China was taking it's pledge to be carbon neutral by 2060 extremely seriously.
This means China is now leading across the board in solar, wind, batteries, hydro, EVs, high speed rail and importantly nuclear.
Sad state of affairs for the West all things considered. We had first mover advantage in all of those fields and pissed it away for a few decades of investors profits and executive bonuses.
Sure but -also- all the other things. The fact they are still building coal because they literally can't build everything else fast enough doesn't invalidate their leadership in all the more advanced technology.
Is it leadership or just lower requirements, no rule of law and suppression of any opposition (political or technological)?
It's easier to build reactors when there are no environmental/safety/security concerns voiced, because those voice end up in prisons. China also builds up its coal power plants with high speed, while knowing that its air is already extremely polluted. Environmental concerns generally don't seem to be a priority. Each reactor built inside the country will heat up or dry the rivers, due to cooling requirements. Such a number of thermal power plants (coal and nuclear) will kill life in these rivers, when they return warm water into the rivers.
Is safety of these reactors also on this level of environmental neglect?
First of all you seem to be confusing their designs with the more common LWR design which is commonly used in Europe/US. Instead most of their new fleet is planned based on HTG pebble bed designs. These have much different cooling requirements and are actually being built at smaller size and being deployed into remote desert areas like Xinjiang. This design was selected specifically because it's low water and cooling requirements - also it's proliferation resistance as Xinjiang has historical instability and proximity to Afghanistan. The rest will likely be based on the Hualong One design which is an EPR reactor that has 5x the output of the HTG SMR designs but does require more extensive cooling and isn't proliferation resistant so will likely only be built in stable area with ample cooling.
Nuclear reactors are just one area I highlighted they are dominating in.
Are you saying the reason they are doing so well in solar, wind, batteries and coal is all just down to ignoring environmental concerns?
I know it's fashionable to pretend the Chinese are cheating or something but the data simply doesn't support that assertion.
I spent quite a lot of time in China over the last 10 years and everything has changed drastically. There was a time where I used to think "Hey China is basically caught up to the West". That time has long since past, on my recent visits it feels like going to the future instead and the slow realisation they completely passed us by has set in.
Right, it's planned. So far they have a demonstrator with 200MWe output. It supposed to be scaled up to 600MWe.
Small designs are generally not cost efficient.
These reactors are not that new, since they are in part based on old designs, for example from the AVR in Germany. A larger attempt was this 300MWe pebble bed reactor, which failed spectacularly in the 80s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300
> my recent visits it feels like going to the future instead and the slow realisation they completely passed us by has set
That authoritarian countries are the main deployers and providers of nuclear is no surprise. The central government decides and there is no opposition. In most democratic countries nuclear is not competitive in the market anymore. For a country like Russia it's much easier to sell nuclear cheap into the market: they want to make European countries dependent on their energy delivery. Western countries have much higher technology standards and with market prices they are not competitive.
It can be competitive, it's not politically tenable. Because it's not politically tenable it can't be allowed to be commercially competitive, the forces raising the prices will simply increase until it's priced out - such is the way of politics.
Not without market intervention of the government. In France the nuclear industry (EDF) is state owned.
> it's not politically tenable.
France. Pro nuclear country with a large fleet of aging reactors. -> huge costs of maintaining the reactors, large parts of the fleet is offline in the last months, building reactors is extremely costly and takes a long time, industry had to be rescued by the government.
That seems to be a legacy, not a necessary constraint.