Comment on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29151741.
“The cost of China’s new nuclear ambition has been estimated at US$440 billion.” But it doesn’t say how much power that is, just that it’s 150 new reactors, so it’s about US$3B per reactor. https://archive.md/A5B6S shows that the article didn’t say how much power it was 9 hours ago either. So, is this 15 GW, 150 GW, or 1500 GW?
PV modules are about US$0.2/Wp, so if it were PV panels, US$440B would buy them 2.2 terawatts peak. At an average capacity factor of 20% (though, as pfdietz points out, most new utility-scale solar has single-axis tracking, which pushes it to 30%) that would be 440 GW, but China’s historical PV capacity factor has been terrible, more like 12% IIRC (maybe due to a Chinese version of the irrational misregulation robomartin documents in California in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29155094). 12% would make it more like 260 GW. But a PV power plant includes things that aren’t panels; balance of plant (inverter, wiring, grid connection, monitoring, mounting, security) is typically roughly equal to the module cost. So it would be more like 130 GW. (Total costs of utility-scale solar in the US are about twice that in China https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Articles/2017/Jul/Bonn-Uni-Lecture--True-costs-of-renewables.pdf?la=en&hash=B7DD1720455A1ED042094C007D8B8C74F274AAFC at about US$0.89/Wp according to pfdietz https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29155644.
In the US, nuclear plants cost about US$8/We. If China’s program was at the same cost, it would provide 55 GW. If it was closer to the cost of US nuclear plants in the 01970s about US$1/We (and if the US$440B number is correct), it would provide 440 GW.
The threads at https://birdsite.xanny.family/pretentiouswhat/status/1293961095892279296 and https://birdsite.xanny.family/pretentiouswhat/status/1318838054891573249#m provide some more context, suggesting that the “HPR1000, aka Hualong One 华龙一号”, is the reactor being used at these 150 sites. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095809916301515 says the HPR1000 is 3.050 GW thermal, 1.070 GW electric, net. (See also https://www.ukhpr1000.co.uk/the-uk-hpr1000-technology/hpr1000-design/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hualong_One.) So 150 of them would produce 161 GW electric, which (if that’s US$440B) would put the cost around US$3/We, about twice the cost of the same generation capacity via PV with single-axis tracking, not including any cost of storage. But maybe that’s 150 power plants, each with nuclear reactors, not 150 nuclear reactors?