Comment by bastawhiz

A dozen $7B nuclear plants is $84B, which is incidentally almost exactly the estimated cost of the SF-Gilroy-Palmdale plan for California's high speed rail. If you count all of phase 1, the P50 estimated cost goes up to $106B. That's the equivalent of 15 nuclear plants.

China has over 28 plants in progress, which should provide a total of >32GW of capacity when they're completed. That's 32×24×365= 280TWh of electricity per year. California's total electric grid in 2024 produced 216TWh.

Which is to say, $7B is a huge sum. But as far as infrastructure goes, China is currently building 130% of all of California's generation capacity that'll be complete within a decade or so, for much less than double the estimates for a high speed rail system that'll serve almost nobody by 2038.

$7B is a lot of money. But it's actually a very reasonable amount of money because the projects are actually happening. 28 $7B projects in the US are actually probably closer to a trillion dollars in investment for far less net public good over five times the timeline.