They dabble in nuclear, but it is not their focus. China can do what the developed world cannot because they are a command economy with less expensive labor, which will only last for a bit longer due to their structural demographics. Unless the developed world no longer has labor regulations, developed world wages, and capital based allocation systems, my statement stands with regards to investment. If capital and labor does not matter, certainly, anything is possible (Paraoh demanding pyramids, for example).

Your citation comes from an organization with pro nuclear bias.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Institute

Can China Break Nuclear Power’s Cost Curse—and What Can the US Learn? - https://rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/can-china-break-nuclear-... - September 17th, 2025

China built more solar power in the last 8 months than all the nuclear power built in the entire world in the entire history of human civilisation. And even if you adjust for utilisation rate to compare against nuclear utilisation China built more solar power generated per hour than all the nuclear power currently in operation generate in an hour - and did so in 12-18 months - https://bsky.app/profile/climatenews.bsky.social/post/3lggqu... - January 23, 2025

China is installing the wind and solar equivalent of five large nuclear power stations per week - https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-07-16/chinas-renewa... - July 15th, 2024

Nuclear Continues To Lag Far Behind Renewables In China Deployments - https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/12/nuclear-continues-to-la... - January 12th, 2024

Nuclear Energy & Free Market Capitalism Aren’t Compatible - https://cleantechnica.com/2023/11/06/nuclear-energy-free-mar... - November 6th, 2023

https://x.com/MoreBirths/status/1910780131318374524 | https://archive.today/iu9jx (China demographics citation)

Pellworm is something like 95% renewable without storage. That really doesn’t sound like failure to me.

Solar panels do not become useless in 25 years and need to be discarded, do not leach toxic chemicals, and do not contain cadmium. They do contain small amounts of lead, but leaching metallic lead out of landfills is very difficult and probably does not ever happen unintentionally.

Solar panels are recycled at almost 100% of total materials. Redwood Materials (founded by Tesla's former CTO) has already established a supply chain to ingest and recycle EV and stationary storage batteries at scale. The problem is that the hardware is lasting longer than expected, and meaningful recycling volume does not yet exist.

Conversely, ~95,000 metric tons of nuclear waste in the US does not have permanent storage or recycling solutions, as of this comment, and there is no plan for long term storage or recycling. Nuclear generation is experiencing a negative learning curve; we keep spending more the more we attempt to build it.

(solar PV panels have a 25-30 year service life, at which point they will still produce power at ~80-85% initial rating, batteries have a 15-20 year service life, with sodium ion chemistries estimated to have up to 50 year service life assuming once daily cycling)

https://www.epa.gov/hw/solar-panel-recycling

https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/articles/beyond-recycling-...

https://e360.yale.edu/features/solar-energy-panels-recycling

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/09/nuclear-power-energy-radioac...

https://www.gao.gov/nuclear-waste-disposal

https://decarbonization.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-all...

(nuclear power accounts for about 10% of electricity generation globally, as of this comment)

A nuclear plant about 50 miles from my house was closed 15 years ago. The spent fuel rods will be stored there indefinitely until a federal facility is built.