China has 21 nuclear reactors under construction which will have a capacity for generating more than 21 gigawatts of electricity, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. That is two and a half times more nuclear reactors under construction than any other country.
I love that China is not planning to power all future demand with more coal and gas.
The only reported incident has been from one of the European designed EPR reactors, which had a faulty fuel cladding that released some radioactive steam within the system.
Other than that, they’ve been pretty good. The main reason the reactors are safe is because we’ve designed them, especially with post-Fukushima improvements, to have a lot of passive safety built in by default.
Post-Fukushima improvements include, in addition to baseline passive nuclear safety, things like being able to take direct strikes from artillery without melting down. That’s also in addition to the natural disaster proofing we’ve done for earthquakes, floods and tsunamis. We’ve generally done a good job of over-engineering our reactors so that we can minimize any potential disasters.