China’s Nuclear Power Building Boom

The demand for emission-free nuclear electricity in China is growing as quickly as its megacities and middle-class. Some analysts estimate that China will need to build as many as 300 new nuclear power plants by 2050 — a nuclear building boom so ambitious that it threatens to tax the world’s supply of uranium to its limits. China currently has 17 nuclear reactors under construction or in the planning stages and 11 in operation. For comparison, the United States depends on 104 active reactors to provide about 20 percent of nation’s electricity.

Construction takes place on the Taishan 1 Areva SA EPR reactor at the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group Co. atomic plant in Taishan, Guangdong Province, China, on Thursday. Guangdong Nuclear Power Group Co., the nation’s second-biggest builder of atomic plants, hopes to build six reactors in Taishan, southern Guangdong province, Areva SA’s China deputy president Eric Neisse. Photo by Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images