Comment by cm2187
12 days ago
The fact that they are building known and tested nuclear designs is rather a good thing in my mind. Less chance of a major fuckup.
It also illustrates that nuclear is not inherently more expensive. We just make it so with over regulation and lack of scale.
They are actually building everything. They have traditional LWR reactors on legacy designs (VVER, EPR, AP1000), bigger LWRs on homegrown designs (Hualong One etc), breeder reactors (CANDU) new 4th gen pebble bed HTGR using acquired German technology and homegrown development and Thorium based MSRs (TMSR-LF1).
Let's wait until a few get done before we calculate how much it is.
So are they innovating or are they using known and tested designs?
Both. They are advancing tech from Germany, building pebble bed reactos for instance. In fact they do this with every design. They license, build, operate and then they build their own improved version. India did it as well with the CANDU, but they were rather forced to.