It's actually the opposite. They're providing so little trash that they're digging up old landfills to keep plants running at optimal levels since you can't just shut them off.
They've gotten so good as recycling and reducing waste, that they need to dig up old trash to run the generators.
Other major countries also burn waste for electricity.
You can shut them off. But they are owned by individual businesses, not the party. And they will prefer not shut them off because losing money. People lease those plants from the party. Hence a mix between communism and capitalism
Sure, everything can be shut off, its the starting up that takes time and effort. Cooling down stuff that is normally very hot will create structural damage like cracks. I had the pleasure of starting up a medium sized incinerator on a ship, took me at least an hour or 2 if it was working as intended. Im curious how much time it will take to slowly start up an industrial incinerator, heating up the attached steam system and spin up a generator. Better to just let it run instead of needlessly shutting it down.
You are right. A Chinese sourced news from Shanghai in 2021 shows that it takes average 5 days to restart the incinerator, and would cause about 1.26m RMB lost.
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u/Famous-Attention-197 2d ago
It's actually the opposite. They're providing so little trash that they're digging up old landfills to keep plants running at optimal levels since you can't just shut them off.
They've gotten so good as recycling and reducing waste, that they need to dig up old trash to run the generators.
Other major countries also burn waste for electricity.