The Chinese have built a small thorium reactor for research and development, and they went on to build a much larger Thorium reactor which they have refueled on the fly without taking it out of service.

I am still surprised that America hasn’t it treated it like a Sputnik moment, but we live in different times than the mid late 1950s. I think we’re waiting for the Chinese to ship it around the world like EV cars. Imagine a Thorium reactor that can be put into the bowels of a Hospital or an office building basement and supply electrical power.

They don't need to build reactors just to retain a military nuclear program. They specifically maintain a nuclear deterrent by policy, they don't need an excuse. They build reactors because they need more power. They have 60+ reactors and will have more nuclear the US by the end of the decade. They're also heavily investing in next-gen reactors which they wouldn't need to do if they just wanted a weapons program.

Yes it's subsidized, everything in China is subsidized, that's the best part of a planned-capitalist economy. But it's actually becoming more market driven so they can reduce financial pressure and force efficiency from competition. In 10 years those subsidies are gonna be a lot smaller

military is unrealated to plants. You are ill informed.

The statement about subsidies is false too for existing plants. IPEX data is public. There are more subsidies for new units because the west is bad at construction but the amount is still not that great. Heck, biomass in EU gets 2x the CFD's vs min profitability limit of french Flamanville...

> China probably fits in the "politically undesirable" category these days.

Considering the Europeans are currently hollowing out their industrial base by importing Chinese EVs instead of building their own, I don't see a nuclear reactor being a bridge too far.

There is. Hualongs and ABWR were/are about 3bn/unit. Local Korean APR is about 4.5bn/unit

I don’t know if it’s that much cheaper, but they have the well to execute on infrastructure. does Japan for that matter and Taiwan.

solar and wind is only cheaper up to a certain percentage of total power due to its unreliability. Every watt of wind and solar is subsidized by another dispatchable source. As a sysadmin it seems very comparable to the need to essentially buy 2x and only run things at 50% capacity.

The article is quite full of the classic nuclear fear mongering. Like:

"Most significant was the decision to abandon adding an extra wall in the reactor containment building—a feature designed to increase protection against radiation in the event of an accident."

Most reactors currently in operation have a single wall containment building. The EPR has double layer containment, but the new EPR2 reactor will have single-wall prestressed concrete containment structure with a metal liner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#EPR2_des...

Also Korea’s nuclear industry as pretty far from decline:

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/khnp-sets-out-pl...

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/sites-selected-f...

Indeed, it might be said that they underestimated the cost and timescales to get the project off the ground. But this is generally the case with mega-projects. Guess we shall see how the construction of Sizewell C goes.