Comment by credit_guy

China is innovative, period.

The whole song and dance about technology being known for decades is total nonsense. The devil is in the details, especially in the nuclear reactor industry space.

The article mentions Westinghouse AP1000, but fails to mention that in the end China decided to not use it on a large scale. China is going full on with a different design, called Hualong One [1], which evolved from a French design from the 1980's. The 4 decades of subsequent iteration and improvement were all Chinese.

China also built a small helium cooled gas reactor, HTR-10 [2] in the 90's. It operated it and learned from its operation, and built 2 more reactors of the same type, HTR-PM, each about 20 times larger. They got hooked to the grid late last year. There are too many good things to say about helium-cooled high temperature nuclear reactors. With these reactors in operation, China can learn so many lessons and go in so many directions.

The article's assessment that the US is 10 to 15 years behind is spot on. China deserves all the praise.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hualong_One

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTR-10