US has 150-200 yrs worth of coal. Coal is even convertible ["gasifiable"] into oil - at something like $30s a barrel. Thus we could afford to wait till the fusion energetics comes on line - which could probably take, say, 50-80 years at most. And if the Chinese want to build more Chernobyls - more power [double entendre] to them. Thus I also do not have any problem with China developing nuclear energetics.
They've been working on fusion since the 60's or 50's, and are no closer to achieving it than they were then. One of my highschool classmates was in the Princeton physics department. He chose Princeton because he wanted to work on the Tomahawk reactor research. I spoke to him a few years afterward, and he told me he abandoned the idea when one of the professors working on the project told him that he did not anticipate that it would ever be successful. This was during the 1970s. Run the tape 30 years ahead, and so far they've got nothing.