China has quietly overtaken France to become the world's second-largest producer of nuclear energy.

The United States is still number one, despite President Bill Clinton, Senator John Kerry, anti-science environmentalists, and the rest of the Democratic Party creating a de facto ban on nuclear in 1994. That was the terminus of clean energy but Clinton was only fulfilling the goals of his constituents since the 1960s. He declared that any nuclear research could be weaponized, which was patently false, but science was not his strong suit, he is the same President who exempted alternatives to medicine from FDA oversight and threw taxpayer money at the National Institutes of Health to study acupuncture.


Sri Lanka listened to western environmentalists on food and switched to 'organic' and the government nearly got overthrown during the food riots that results. Why are we listening to them on something as important as the climate? 

It may be time to stop idealizing the latest fad of environmentalists, getting into new proxy wars while abandoning countries we promised to help and think about actual clean energy. Not intellectual placebos like the $4 trillion the world has wasted on solar and wind to move the needle of conventional energy share by 0.1%.

China has just connected Fangchenggang Unit 4 to its grid. Like Unit 3 it is a Hualong One (HPR1000) demonstration reactor producing 1180 MWe. It was started in 2016 but was delayed from 2020 until now because of the pandemic. With proof of concept they say they can now add 10 - each year.

Nuclear is not a token effort while they switch to solar, they have four other sites with nine more units under construction. They're selling us solar panels while they add 10 nuclear reactors per year, and will overtake us in viable clean energy by 2030. They'll have 400 gigawatts just of small reactors while we're stuck forcing poor people to pay higher utility costs so rich people can continue to sell 'electricity back at the same price they buy it' with their $25,000 and up vanity home solar projects.

Here's the real frustration. China has long been behind America in science and technology, so theirs are only Gen 3 reactors. Imagine if Democrats hadn't stunted research in America and we used the same creativity and determination for nuclear energy we used for cell phones. The private sector would have Gen 4 reactors in production that cannot melt down and have no worrisome spent fuel issues.

Instead we have brownouts in America's most progressive state while politicians encourage environmentalists to sue its last remaining nuclear plant into oblivion.

Let's not be like France and have 15,000 senior citizens die during heat waves because they can't afford electricity, let's make it affordable, President Biden. And reduce heat waves along the way, if your climate models are correct.