This Is How China Builds So Much Nuclear Power

SPEAKER_2 (0:03)

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Joe Weisenthal (0:20)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:25)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:26)

Tracy, you know, we've been talking a lot about the US energy system for obvious reasons. At least when it comes to electricity, I don't know about you, I kind of feel like the more we talk about it, the less I understand it.

Tracy Alloway (0:36)

Yes, yes, absolutely. I think there are a couple problems here. So like even beyond the actual different technologies for generating power, there's the patchwork of like how different grids work in different states. There's the different regulations, the different like interoperability and all of that. And then even if we look like beyond the US, it gets, I guess, even more different.

Joe Weisenthal (1:01)

Yes. Well, I sort of wonder, maybe we can learn something about the US by a little compare and contrast, right? So if we look at the US and we still don't totally get how it works, maybe, I don't know, just a thought, maybe we'll learn something about the US by looking at some different system. And then we have something to compare it to. It might be a way in by looking at the outside world.

Tracy Alloway (1:23)

I'm a big fan of doing this, by the way, just to identify like different choke points in a particular domestic process. If you think that the US can't do something for whatever unidentifiable reason, or I don't know, cultural like hold back. But if you look at a different country and they're doing it at scale very, very quickly, then I think you can learn a lot about yourself.

Joe Weisenthal (1:47)

Well, that's exactly right. And so one of the things again, that comes up from time to time here in our conversations is nuclear. And this is just one example of a source of power that may or may not be important in our future. But according to, and I'm looking at a story from The Economist, over the past decade, China has added 37 nuclear reactors, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. I don't know, maybe we've added like two. I forget how many there are at that Georgia plant. A couple more may be restarted. But we talk all the time about nuclear and how hard it is and how hard the financing is and the labor force and the learning laws.

We forgot how to build them for various reasons. But that's not, and it's so expensive. There's all these cost overruns every time. But apparently that is not the case everywhere and that there are other parts of the world, particularly China, where they just keep building at scale. And maybe we could learn a little bit of how they do that and how they finance it and how they avoid forgetting how to build them.

Tracy Alloway (2:47)

I think this is so interesting, this particular approach, the compare and contrast. And it is absolutely true. I think the US has the most nuclear reactors out there, like almost 100 or something like that. But it took us decades and decades to build them. And as you rightly point out, we haven't built many new ones that recently. Meanwhile, China is adding more and more and they make it look easy. I mean, I guess they are just like giant things to boil water. But China really makes it look easy. So what can we learn from China?

Joe Weisenthal (3:16)

We really do have the perfect guess. By the way, we've had this guest on in the past. We talked to him about something completely different.

Tracy Alloway (3:23)

Yes. This was during the depths of the COVID crisis. And we were talking to this person. He was based out in Shanghai. And we were talking basically about how they were getting food into apartment buildings and staying alive during that time.

Joe Weisenthal (3:37)

Yeah, so that was an interesting sort of logistical story in its own right. If you're under complete lockdown in a Shanghai apartment building, how do you actually get food? And anyway, I'm thrilled because now we're recording this December 17th, 2024 We are talking to him in completely different times.

Tracy Alloway (3:54)

He's been freed from lockdown.

Joe Weisenthal (3:56)

He is now here in studio with us. So we are going to be speaking with David Fishman, senior manager at The Lantau Group. He's based in China, typically, where he mostly focuses on the Chinese energy system. So literally the perfect guest and a repeat guest. So David, thank you for coming on Odd Lots. Welcome to New York City. Welcome back.