Nuclear power is China’s key for transitioning to a fully renewable grid design

China built 27 nuclear reactors in one decade. The U.S. only two. But that’s only half of the story.

[Photo: liuliming/Getty Images]

Between late 2016 and August 2026, China connected 27 new nuclear reactors to its grid. In the same period, the United States connected two. As Jacopo Buongiorno—professor of nuclear science and engineering and director of the Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—tells me, “China is the world’s leader in nuclear power plant (NPP) construction.”

It’s an impressive data point on its own but when you consider the greater picture, it’s even more striking. Those nuclear power plants are only a small fraction of China’s current power throughput, but they are........

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