Chinese Economics Thread
- Thread starter Norfolk
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I don’t think it’s because Tesla is doing bad(apart from their sales in Europe and US that declined due to musk political involvement recently), even today they are still a top seller in China. It’s Just that Chinese companies have been improving very fast.
I’m more surprised that ICE still dominate by 65% of exports. I thought NEVs will make up almost 50% this year. It’s even more surprise that BYD has emerged as Chinas second largest car exporter despite exporting only NEVs and no ICE. Since BYD transitioned far faster and better to NEV than other Chinese brands
supercat
Colonel
5% growth in volume is decent. There is still a lot of potential for China to increase the value of its vehicle exports, though.
The mega dam over the Yarlung Tsangpo River (雅鲁藏布江) will cost about $168 billion and generate 300 billion kWh of electricity a year, 3 times the amount of Three Gorges Dam. It is equivalent to approx. 35 nuclear power plants, and about the same amount of electricity generated by France (18 nuclear power plants) and Italy combined. In comparison, 94 nuclear power plants generate about 782 billion kWh of electricity in the US, approx. 20% of its total power generation every year.
The Yarlung Tsangpo River dam project is more expensive than the equivalent of 35 nuclear power plants. The average cost in China of building 1GW nuclear capacity is about $3 billion USD based on 2022 figures () so 35 nuclear power plants would cost $105 billion.
Need to factor in fuel costs.
I'm not sure this is the case, one nuclear reactor in China costs around $3 billion USD and has roughly 1 GW of capacity (there were 55 reactors in China in 2023 with around 53 GW in capacity). So the total cost would be $180 billion to match the capacity of the Yarlung Tsangpo dam, which has a capacity of 60 GW.
Just to note that a single nuclear power plant can have multiple reactors, most US power plants have at least two reactors.
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At the end of the day, it is cost per watt of power generated. Once built, the dam is forever. The cost per watt is something like a few cents. The nuclear power plants have a certain lifespan (30 years?). At the end of which you need to dispose of the waste and build a new one. You have to consider the cost for the entire project.