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0 pointsGolfPopper10mo ago0 comments

I can't speak for the prior poster, but I am highly skeptical that the current business ecosystem in the United States is capable of effectively and safely building new nuclear power infrastructure, particularly if and when the ever-popular but, to the best of my knowledge, never-completed Small Modular Reactor pitch gets involved.

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XorNot10mo ago

Conversely China has built a lot of new nuclear capacity, and has projects for SMRs in the works too.

The problem as you allude to isn't the technology.

bee_rider10mo ago

Yeah, we have political issues around infrastructure in the US, but those probably aren’t going away. If we can do nuclear with just technology (no politics), then it might be viable. So, as I said, good luck Google!

derriz10mo ago

I wouldn't call it "a lot" when you put it into perspective.

China has about 60GW of nuclear generation capacity - this is after 70 years of building their first nuclear plant. It has about 1600GW of wind and solar after about 10 years.

In 2024, China added 80GW of wind capacity and 277GW of solar. In the first 3 months of 2025 alone, 60GW of new solar capacity and 15GW of new wind capacity were added. In 2024, 4.3GW of nuclear was added.

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