alt Hacker NewsBut coal is still 49%. The whole point of nuclear in a carbon-free, mostly-renewable grid is to avoid needing enormous amounts of storage and overproduction. That's a need that doesn't come up when you're still half fossil.
If you want to decarbonize as fast as possible, it makes sense to focus on rolling out wind/solar/battery as fast as possible for now, but keep developing nuclear technology to cover the last bit where it starts getting especially expensive to replace fossil with renewables without losing reliable power. That's exactly what China appears to be doing. They're not just building a few reactors, they're also the world leaders in developing various GenIV designs, like molten salt reactors.
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Enormous amounts of storage is awesome and overproduction is a good thing when its marginal cost is ~zero.
The problem is that the economics of a ”firming”/”peaking” nuclear reactor is absolutely stupid due to essentially being only fixed costs.
It is already stupidly expensive when running at 100% 24/7. Now try running it only when renewables and storage doesn’t deliver.
The coal argument about China doesn't hold water when you look at what they're actually building. Around 80% of their new power sources are renewable, and 10 to 15% is coal. They're aggressively focusing primarily on building renewable -- so to say that their coal is 49% is either misleading or entirely missing the point.
The most cost efficient new-build grid is 90-98% solar/wind/battery depending on your locales insolation & wind coverage. (Source Ember Energy) The remaining 2-10% is nat gas, if you have a piped source, or coal if you don't.
But 98% renewable doesn't mean you can hit 100% by adding 2% more of something else, it means your something else has to supply ~100% of the power 2% of the time.
If China is aiming for that cost-optimal 90-98% renewables, that means they need to build a lot of coal.