China leads the world in new nuclear reactors, with 29 currently under construction and another 59 proposed, according to the World Nuclear Association. And China has not confined itself solely to the typical reactors that employ water and uranium fuel rods; it has built everything from heavy-water reactors originally designed in Canada to a small test fast-reactor.

Yet, even if every planned reactor in China was to be built, the country would still rely on burning coal for more than 50 percent of its electric power—and the Chinese nuclear reactors would provide at best roughly the same amount of energy to the developing nation as does the existing U.S. fleet. Plus, nuclear requires emissions of greenhouse gases for construction, including steel and cement as well as the enrichment of uranium ore required to make nuclear fuel (or the downblending of uranium from nuclear weapons as in the case of the “Megatons to Megawatts” program). Over the full lifetime of a nuclear power plant, that means greenhouse gas emissions of roughly 12 grams of CO2-equivalent per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced, the same as wind turbines (which also require steel, plastics, rare earths and the like in their construction) and less than photovoltaic panels, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.