An environmentalist movement sprang up, calling for the shutdown of the Metsamor reactors. The authorities backed down, and the two reactors were turned off on February 25 and March 18, 1989.
Environmentalists defeated the Soviet Union? You would think that would have made the newspapers.
Areg Danagoulian is an associate professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT
This was a green movement perceived as useful idiots by the empire, that was in its death throes already.
Accepting this pressure was a way to save face, by feigning to accept the lie that all power plants were dangerous, in spite of differences in design and management.
How save? Chernobyl's exclusion zone today is 2600 km², it initially affected 150000 km², Armenia is what? 40000 km². One well planned sabotage or airstrike, and the energy independence is not only gone but also an eventual long term disaster for much percentage of that land..
> It is now clear that Western use of natural gas and petroleum from aggressive dictatorships—which use cash flows from oil and gas sales to reinforce and expand their hold on power—has backfired badly.
This feels awkwardly over repeated today. Embargos as always of course don't work, still most of the West more easily than all doomsayers expected reoriented (while they ideally could have been off that much dependence already longer).. there is enough market to other countries and also circumventing embargos. Do the Armenians btw dig the uranium out of their soil and refine it?
You choose to ignore one key difference between Chernobyl and the Armenian plants: the size of the exclusion zone in Ukraine was large because of the mad graphite combustion. As the plants in Armenia didn't have an insane design, no matter how well placed a strike the worst you'd get is a meltdown, like the Fukushima situation that killed nobody except collaterals of the rushed evacuation...
that disaster will continue killing people far into the future with the way it was handled at nearly every step of the recovery. Tepco was great at playing the victim and spinning every facet of PR at their disposal to avoid looking like jerks.
the 'Fukushima situation that killed nobody' comment is a direct reflection of how well Tepco played it reputationally, even if they did a piss-poor job of handling it practically.
Thankfully the whole thing wasn't entirely unjust[1].
There is still melted reactor in the ground, nothing is "cleaned up" we just dont really talk about it. Much like Chernobyl this is going to be a "generational" project for Japan.
Its handling of contaminated materials remains "questionable".
The reason we get less coverage than Chernobyl is that Japan doesn't have its hand out for money and technical support as Ukraine did to get the latest covering built.
Last I checked, Wikipedia is not entirely accurate here. Yes, the worker had worked at the Fukushima plant since 1980, and his cancer was regarded as a work-related injury for insurance purposes. However, it was not actually linked to the accident and such a link would be very difficult to prove.
"A decade after the triple tragedy that occurred in Japan in March 2011, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) said that future health effects, e.g. cancer directly related to radiation exposure are unlikely to be discernible, in its 2020 Report launched today."
The empire is not a person to perceive something -- inside the communist party and government, there were many of points of view on the eco-movements. The "empire" had no single stance on the question.
Your sacrasm reveals your ignorance, not an exaggeration or a hole in the story.
Yes, environmentalist movements in 1989 were all across the country, and were significant. It was 2 years into Perestroyka and Glasnost [1] policy, and such things were not restricted from discussion, and 1989 was the year when a lot of non-CPSU new local politicians were elected in local councils and the soviet deputy council [2].
In my region, people would protest a projected Katun river dam [3]. It's not clear, whether the pressure stopped it, or financial shortages, but it was noteable -- at least I as 1st grader saw it discussed everywhere.
To add to that, Chernobyl disaster and the subsequent coverup attempt clearly showed that Glasnost lacked actual substance. It was the one of the main reasons behind lifting the censorship regime (since the 1987 the press was essentially free to write about anything, and did so), and a major contributor to allowing competing factions inside the party. Nemtsov in particular became a prominent figure after his Chernobyl-related activism.
However, claiming that environmentalists took down the whole Union is downright silly. Yes, the fears of the crumbling infra and coverups, Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Spitak earthquake, and Ufa train disaster dominated the media of the late USSR (and especially Armenia, due to the Spitak earthquake), but that was only a small factor, the reasons were much more fundamental.
It's been discussed since 1985, with implementation attempts in 1986 before the Chernobyl disaster, but only accepted as the official policy (Glasnost-Perestroika-Acceleration) in 1987. I still have a Uborevich-Borovsky's satirical comic book published in 1986 with Glasnost taking probably one third of it.
To add to that, environmental opposition to a Soviet mining project was actually a key trigger for the Baltic independence movement (hence, in part, the dissolution of the USSR),
- "The Phosphorite War (Estonian: Fosforiidisõda) is the name given to a late-1980s environmental campaign in the then-Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, against the opening of large phosphorite mines in the Virumaa region[...] In Estonia it is regarded as a catalyst that led to the destabilization and dissolution of the Soviet government in Estonia.[3]"
We have a dormant (scrapped because fears of Chernobyl) nuclear power plant which politicos are currently looking to revive. This might be a good case study.
The YouTube video above is inaccurate. Simon says we tend to pursue nuclear weapons back then, it’s not true. It’s in our constitution that specifically states we don’t intend to pursue nuclear weapons.
Plus, that plant is not designed to create weapons grade nuclear weapons.
Never found that person to be accurate or actually informative. Go watch something he has made about something you already know a lot and ask yourself if you want his view on matters where you do not.
Anyone know why the referendum wasn't held BEFORE spending billions building a nuclear plant? Chernobyl hasn't happened at that point for the population to suddenly have a boogieman to fear.
Most theories point to Russia lobbying for Austria to stay hooked onto its gas exports, so they had to run a FUD propaganda campaign against nuclear before the referendum.
Especially that Austria isn't big on holding referendums to ask the population what it wants, like Switzerland does, and a few former Austrian ministers have worked or still do for Russian oil & gas companies.
Afaik it was a combination of several things. On the one hand it was a referendum against the Kreisky administration supported by the OEVP to damage him. On the other hand it was the beginning of the green movement with a more important role of civil movements and protests.
The part I find most interesting is that the current political elite of ... I don't quite know what to call it. The US clique? Places that speak English + Germany + Japan and maybe a chunk of the EU. Global North perhaps.
Anyway, whoever they are seem to have limited interest in energy security. Much like someone who has no interest in food security, that is going to change at some point. The anti-nuclear lobby has done terrible things and should be ashamed of the position they've put us in. We'd be so much better positioned if they had been rational instead of panicked.
It is trivial to make people better off when the energy supply is growing. It is much harder (or impossible) to improve lifestyles at an industrial scale when it is shrinking.
> It is much harder (or impossible) to improve lifestyles at an industrial scale when it is shrinking.
The abundant consumerism wrecks peoples lifestyles. I don't see the need to jump through hoops to support planned obsolescence consuming of widgets and eating so much food obesity becomes the major health concern.
Define growth. I dont think you know what that term means, I dont blame you because its misused nearly 100% of the time in media, but its important to be clear.
Thank you, now if I may. Lets rewind to 2008/2009, the banks were gambling on risky mortgages, those mortgages were adjustable rate and sold at a low interest rate. When interest rates rose it caused widespread defaults, and the fear was that the banks would also default on their loans too. So we dropped several hundred billion dollars on it and "saved" the banking sector. In reflection, people will say the economy "grew", but it is indistinguishable from an upward transfer of wealth, and it led to a "k-shaped recovery", where the upper echelons gained and the lower echelons lost.
More concerning is the actual lack of explicit definition, appologies for the trick question. There isnt a great metric to measure growth, some will point to GDP, or unemployment, but the former can be manipulated by increasing government spending (more on that later), and the latter doesnt account for the qualitative aspects like whether someone started as a business owner and now work at starbucks.
You could point at the stock market, but again this isnt a great measure. Wealthy people have a higher fraction of their wealth in the stock market, and benefit disproportionately to the less wealthy. Moreover, the stockmarket goes up for reasons that dont have anything to do with production. When interest rates go down the stock market goes up (generally), at first this might make sense, businesses can better afford the resources they need; except, at any given price point there are only so many resources available, all you have done is increased demand and driven up prices. The same occurs with government stimulus, you are giving people more receipts for wealth, you havent created the actual wealth though.
----------
Lastly, and most importantly, there is the mechanics of our monetary system. It would be nice if there was a thing we called money, and that money had some kind of value based on available goods and services. This is not accurate though, we have "legal tender" or "currency", which can be used to settle debts.
The distinction is important, because it necessarily implies that debt cant be paid back, and here is the crux. Every dollar in the economy was created through debt, like when you took out a home loan, or when the government takes on debt; that debt has an interest rate, and new dollars cant be created except through more debt. If debts were to all be repaid, there would be zero dollars left in the economy, and there would still be debt left to pay.
The only, and I mean only, way to prevent this from causing a cascading default, is to continuously add more dollars (and debt!) into the system, prolonging the pains of inflation and delaying the date of reckoning for an ever shorter period of time.
So how do you respond to your money being devalued constantly? The answer for many is, "follow the money" and blow it on a new car. Very few investments will ever beat the actual rate of inflation, so a dollar saved is a dollar wasted.
It’s easy to write that from the comfort of a western nation with reliable electricity where bellies are full and most household chores are done by machine.
The rest of the world very much would like that same standard of living (food, physical comfort and safety), and for that - they need affordable energy.
However, much of the abundance in western nations, need the cheap production of those countries. Trading wheat for Rolex clocks might be a bad deal for them (hyperbolic point, I know).
E.g. countries like Nigeria have a simultaneous obesity and malnutrition (low bmi) problem.
Imagine that you live in a civilization where for every billion watt we might get from the sun we only consume one watt. That's the kind of world we live in today.
In actuality, the biggest issue is the amount of pollution we emitted, not growth per se.
So the path of a small nation in the shadow of petro dictatorships seems to be getting that petro dictatorship to build you a nuclear plant and supply fuel, so that you can continue to badmouth them from warmth and safety.
Russia also supplied the majority of their energy as gas and oil, quote from IEA:
> Lacking indigenous resources, Armenia imports natural gas and oil for most of its energy needs (78.6% of total energy supply in 2020), mainly from the Russian Federation (hereafter, “Russia”). Natural gas is imported from Russia via pipeline through Georgia, but also from Iran through a barter agreement under which it exports electricity in exchange.
> The world is currently in the process of reevaluating its past rejection of nuclear power and is increasingly starting to view it as a reliable source of power that allows for greater energy security.
I would love to see a source on that since the statistics don't show that [0]. Production actually fell by 4% [1] and even China, THE country with the most ambitious plans for nuclear, rather goes for renewables[2].
The only thing this policy does is to guarantee EU taxpayer money for rotting fleets. Especially in France where national taxpayer money has to jump in where former Governments failed to establish a diversified energy infrastructure.
How would you "statistically show" a reevaluation that is in process?
You obviously can't evaluate by the outcomes, because the reevaluation is still in process, and in this particular case outcomes in terms of power to grid take at least 3 years after you have finished evaluating and started building. And sometimes a bit longer. And of course you do have plants reaching their end of life during that time, so you might not see a net positive total for a bit.
On the other hand, 22 countries just pledged to triple nuclear output by 2050 at COP28, so just a little over a month ago. That's a significant departure and includes countries that were getting out of nuclear power altogether, like Japan. It also includes all of the G7 except Germany and Italy.
France removed its legal requirement to reduce nuclear to less than 50% last year, and just committed to building 14 new reactors (up from only 6 just 2 months ago).
Unlike what some people think, France was not very pro-nuclear the last few decades, in fact nuclear was being actively sabotaged.
That has changed. A lot has changed since the Ukraine war revealed the dirty little secret of Germany's "Energiewende", also known nowadays as the Gazprom-Wende.
Yes, China is going for renewables. That's because China goes for everything. Including more coal. Yes, they are building out renewables, but that's because they have little to none at present, so they are still at a stage where adding more renewables won't destabilize the grid. They are also massively expanding their nuclear fleet, with no fewer than 20 (twenty!) reactors currently under construction and another 70 currently being planned. That's a tripling of what they have now.
They are also building all sorts of next generation reactors. A thorium pebble-bed reactor was connected to the grid in 2023, a thorium molten salt reactor got its operating license last year and is supposedly close to completion.
India is also planning (and on track) to triple their nuclear generating capacity, though not by 2050, but by 2031.
> You obviously can't evaluate by the outcomes, because the reevaluation is still in process
Things are always "in the process" or "being reevaluated" around nuclear. Meanwhile, global warming is on the way and faster here than a single nuclear reactor is constructed, even if you start building today.
Meanwhile, renewables are already there, build in 1–2 years and are getting better and cheaper every year.
> On the other hand, 22 countries just pledged to triple nuclear output by 2050 at COP28, so just a little over a month ago
Are there any repercussions if they don't deliver, or how is this relevant?
Let's take a closer look at your links there:
> Speaking of Italy, they aren't there yet, but have just made getting back into nuclear official government policy.
Italy doesn't have the funds for any significant nuclear project. The nuclear meme the ruling parties spread is highly popular within the right wing parties throughout Europe and, just like Poland (where the meme goes back to the time of Socialism), every serious person knows: nothing at all will come of it.
> Germany, of course, remains a basket case, even though a majority of its citizens now oppose the "Atomausstieg".
No they don't.
There was a rush around the time the last one closed. With the biggest tabloid BILD and the opposition (which consist mainly of the party which is responsible for the shutdown) shouting useless claims to fire up people who are unhappy with the Government. Today, just like before: nobody cares about nuclear anymore and the only polls suggesting that there might be some kind of support for the cause come from Civey and are being paid by Nuklearia. A small lobby club of former nuclear engineers and their Twitter-friends from the right-wing AfD bubble.
> The UK government just announced a massive (to 4x) nuclear expansion this month (January 2024).
I'm sure that after the elections and with the complete mess that is HPC, there will be not a single new reactor being build in the UK.
> France removed its legal requirement to reduce nuclear to less than 50% last year, and just committed to building 14 new reactors (up from only 6 just 2 months ago).
I wonder where the money for that might come from especially after the failure of EDF and the fact that despite subsidizing every single watt of nuclear energy by taxpayer money (tarif bleu) they now even have to rise the prices https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/france-fin...
But sure, something has to be done since their existing fleet is rotting away and they have not diversified anything. Let's hope those old reactors will hold up for another decade because we all know: France can't build faster.
> Unlike what some people think, France was not very pro-nuclear the last few decades, in fact nuclear was being actively sabotaged.
> That has changed. A lot has changed since the Ukraine war revealed the dirty little secret of Germany's "Energiewende", also known nowadays as the Gazprom-Wende.
What secret is this supposed to be? Because Germany got rid of Russian gas and gas prices went down again?
Or do you mean the secret that France still supports the invasion in Ukraine through their nuclear deals?
> Things are always "in the process" or "being reevaluated" around nuclear.
Well, that was a quick turnaround! Just a post ago there was no evidence for this, now you claim it is "always" the case. Which is it? Or both at the same time? Is it in a quantum superposition?
>> The world is currently in the process of reevaluating its past rejection of nuclear power
> I would love to see a source on that since the statistics don't show that
>I'm sure that after the elections and with the complete mess that is HPC, there will be not a single new reactor being build in the UK.
The new policy was announced in January of 2024, less than a month ago. They probably knew about Hinkley Point. But what does the UK government know about energy policy in the UK? They should have asked you!
Anyway: how about a friendly wager? Since you are "sure", that means you should take any odds I'd be willing to give you. How about a million to one? Or maybe 100:1? The UK timeframe is 2050. If the UK does not build a single nuclear reactor by 2050, I owe you € 100,- If they do, you owe me € 10.000,-
Deal?
> Italy doesn't have the funds for any significant nuclear project.
LOL. Interesting claim you plucked out of thin air. Any evidence for this? Certainly the Italian government appears to disagree with you. But what do they know about their country? Oh, and nuclear is cheaper than renewables. See France vs. Germany.
[France nuclear renaissance]
> I wonder where the money for that might come from
Very simple: from the massive profits the current nuclear fleet generates operationally, which the state no longer requires EDF to forego in oder to finance massive renewable expansion.
Oh, evidence for your claim? The statista link (paywalled, not accessible) appears to be something on the widespread support of nuclear by the French public. The article was not about the public, specifically:
"Our nuclear industry has been weakened by a war waged for decades by a cabal of green politicians, civil servants, and activists."
So there is no relation whatsoever. But what does the "former president of the French House of Representatives" know about the politics of his country? They should have interviewed you!
Of course, the reason the French public likes their nuclear is because it's been providing cheap, reliable and green electricity for decades now. But what do they know about the benefits of nuclear power, they just have those benefits. Oh and it only took them 10 years to do it. The German Energiewende has been ongoing for 20+ years now, and our electricity...
> Well, that was a quick turnaround! Just a post ago there was no evidence for this, now you claim it is "always" the case. Which is it? Or both at the same time? Is it in a quantum superposition?
What I meant was that there are always excuses. Not that there is growth.
> But glad you don't deny the obvious evidence.
There was no evidence. There were wishes, pledges, political propaganda. Nothing that would outweigh the whole trend.
> Oh, and nuclear is cheaper than renewables. See France vs. Germany.
Last time I looked, Germany wouldn't have to support every Watt of their energy with taxpayer money the way France does with tarif bleu. Did you even know about this because that claim is ridiculous. Nuclear energy is nowhere on this planet cheaper than renewables.
I don't understand why you keep on linking to some conspiracy op-ed on google docs. How is someone supposed to take that seriously? Don't you have anything serious?
> Oh, evidence for your claim? The statista link (paywalled, not accessible) appears to be something on the widespread support of nuclear by the French public. The article was not about the public, specifically: Our nuclear industry has been weakened by a war waged for decades by a cabal of green politicians, civil servants, and activists."
This "article" is nothing but unsourced conspiracies and opinions. The fact that this seems to you more credible than actual facts speaks for itself.
> Of course, the reason the French public likes their nuclear is because it's been providing cheap, reliable and green electricity for decades now.
They've actually been lying to their population by spending their taxpayer money to simulate a cheap energy price. Linke Tasche, Rechte Tasche. ...and the only green thing about nuclear is the glow on Simpsons.
> . Oh and it only took them 10 years to do it. The German Energiewende has been ongoing for 20+ years now, and our electricity is ~7x dirtier and more expensive.
Turns out: if you plan to nuke the world, money flows faster. Today, it takes them 10+ years to build a single reactor. Much success. PS. the reason Germany still produces "dirt" is related to jobs in areas which are already struck with unemployment and the fact that the previous Government did nothing for 16 years. Other than that, Germany is well off. Thank you. We replaced what we lost with nuclear years ago with renewables. Despite the previous Government.
> And we fired up more of our coal power stations.
We shut them down after a few weeks already and continued to shut down even more of them. We're still on plan to phase out coal completely.
> However, they are smart enough not to remove their nuclear fleet. Instead, they are expanding it. Massively.
Of course, they're not removing their nuclear fleet. They need that for a coming war....and no, they're not expanding massively. I've shown you that with my links which you didn't read, as you have shown several times over here.
> And also an old one with Russia, from 1988.
You are not reading my links...what is this?
> The Gazprom-Energiewende was problematic completely separately from the geopolitical problems due to the simple fact that gas is a fossil fuel and emits a lot of greenhouse gases
So do you think I might forget that Rosatom vs. Gazprom thing now with that?
> What does Nuscale have to with anything?
You might know if you'd have read anything around that debacle. Instead, you are not reading anything which might even smell like it would make nuclear look bad, even in a discussion here. Instead, you keep on parroting statements you caught on social and leave everything out where you don't have a statement ready.
This is not a discussion. You are preaching...
There was no claim of current growth. There was a claim of reevaluation. Which you first denied, and then claimed was "always" happening.
> unsourced conspiracies and opinions.
The article is an interview with the former president of the French parliament. Or as you call it "unsourced". And the former president of the French parliament obviously knows less about French politics than you do. Gotcha.
By the way, what's your source? Apart from "I made it up"?
> They've actually been lying to their population by spending their taxpayer money to simulate a cheap energy price.
False.
> Today, it takes them 10+ years to build a single reactor.
It takes them 10+ years to build a prototype of a brand new reactor design that has been deemed too complex and has already been simplified, with an industrial base that no longer has experience building nuclear reactors due to chronic under-investment the last 20+ years.
However, outliers have always existed, but the time to build a nuclear power plant has remained fairly constant the last 50 years, at 6-8 years. With a lot being built in 5 years and a few in 3 years. Alas, we are not building that design, we are building more complicated ones.
False. Coal burning increased in 2021 and 2022. Went down a little in 2023 due to the recession-induced reduction in consumption. Recession caused by high energy prices. The irony!
> We replaced what we lost with nuclear years ago with renewables.
Sorry, that's silly. Had we kept nuclear, that renewable capacity would instead have replaced coal. Had we expanded nuclear, we would be long done with our Energiewende. The Frenchies did it in 10 years. Bavaria had 70% green energy, decades ago. We decided to get of CO2 reliably, cheap, CO2-free energy during a climate crisis caused by CO2 emissions.
The rest of the world is laughing at us.
[China]
> no, they're not expanding massively.
Yes they are. Their current plans are a tripling of capacity. A 200% expansion.
[Rosatom]
>You are not reading my links...what is this?
Sadly, I am reading your links, which continue to be entirely irrelevant.
> Nuscale ... debacle.
Once again: one project by one of the many companies getting into the SMR space goes sideways, and for you, somehow, the entire field is a "debacle".
No it's not.
Come back when you are no longer blindly parroting the silly talking points of the German anti-nuclear bubble.
> There was no claim of current growth. There was a claim of reevaluation.
Of course there is. It says just after the claim of reevaluation: "is increasingly starting to view it as a reliable source of power that allows for greater energy security"
> The article is an interview with the former president of the French parliament.
The article is an interview with an obviously drunk person who talks of cabals and sects :D
> False
Wow, much crediblé. Now google tarif bleu. I've mentioned it twice. You didn't even read that or did you and you ignored it because you know I'm right?
> It takes them 10+ years to build a prototype of a brand new reactor design
As I said...there are always excuses in nuclear. HPC and Flamanville are not EPR prototypes. But you know where prototypes just deliver? In renewable tech.
> However, outliers have always existed,
Yeah, those weird, weird outliers. All of them in countries with proper safety standards. Meanwhile, in countries with corrupted ones, nuclear reactors shoot up as if it's some water tower they're building. I'm sure that's just some kind of coincidence.
Also, stretching the average measurement 70 years in the past where it's been fashionable to build reactors is ridiculous. It doesn't say anything about the present time.
Btw, it's hilarious like all the links you delivered here have already been clicked by me at some point in the past. Are you one of those Nuklearia fanboys?
> False. Coal burning increased in 2021 and 2022. Went down a little in 2023 due to the recession-induced reduction in consumption. Recession caused by high energy prices. The irony!
> Sorry, that's silly. Had we kept nuclear, that renewable capacity would instead have replaced coal.
There is no single factual reason why we'd have less coal today with nuclear. As I said: we replaced what we lost with nuclear years ago with renewables, and the reason we keep coal around is because of jobs. You can read that, googling the commission tasked with the phaseout. The commission's name is: "Commission on Growth, Structural Change and Employment" :D
> Yes they are. Their current plans are
The current reality is that they delivered 4% less last year, as I have shown in one more link you didn't read above. Also, they cancelled some of those planned reactors too. Even if they would triple a tiny bit, it wouldn't be MASSIVE compared to the MASSIVE expansion of renewables. You can spend every Dollar once, and China decided that it's rather worth spending it on renewables.
> Sadly, I am reading your links, which continue to be entirely irrelevant.
Funny though because I've shown you several times over that you didn't. Just above this paragraph is another one. Why are you lying?
> Once again: one project by one of the many companies getting into the SMR space goes sideways, and for you, somehow, the entire field is a "debacle". No it's not.
I can understand that wasting massive amounts of taxpayer money is no debacle for a nuclear apologist (or should I say "sectist", now that you made that fashionable with that hilarious conspiracy interview?), however for the rest of the taxpayers it is. NuScale was the poster child for SMRs within your cult, and it failed spectacularly.
Come back when you have actually read what I write.
"...starting to view it as..." does not mean "there is actual growth". It describe a mental state, not electrons moving in the grid. If you can't understand the difference between a shift in thinking and construction, then discussing anything with you is completely pointless.
I am not going to comment on the rest, as it is even less coherent gibberish.
> How would you "statistically show" a reevaluation that is in process?
> You obviously can't evaluate by the outcomes, because the reevaluation is still in process, and in this particular case outcomes in terms of power to grid take at least 3 years after you have finished evaluating and started building. And sometimes a bit longer. And of course you do have plants reaching their end of life during that time, so you might not see a net positive total for a bit.
> On the other hand, 22 countries just pledged to triple nuclear output by 2050 at COP28, so just a little over a month ago. That's a significant departure and includes countries that were getting out of nuclear power altogether, like Japan. It also includes all of the G7 except Germany and Italy.
Just goes to show how strong the nuclear lobby is. Building out nuclear does not make economic or environmental sense. With the price trajectories of solar, wind are on we should be investing everything into renewables and research into storage to reduce required overprovisioning.
> Yes, China is going for renewables. That's because China goes for everything. Including more coal. Yes, they are building out renewables, but that's because they have little to none at present, so they are still at a stage where adding more renewables won't destabilize the grid.
What are you talking about? China had a third of worldwide installed solar in 2020 (250GW)[1]. In 2023 that had more than doubled to 530 GW [2] and that is accelerating (for 2024 they are projecting another 230 GW).
> They are also massively expanding their nuclear fleet, with no fewer than 20 (twenty!) reactors currently under construction and another 70 currently being planned. That's a tripling of what they have now.
So China has 57 GW of nuclear and want to get to 200 GW by 2035 (while also having missed their 2020 goal of 58 GW [3]). They are adding more solar every year than that every year. That just shows how completely disproportionate the economics are. The recently approved nuclear power plants (which get to 70GW i think) cost $80 billion [4]compared to $140 billion in solar which gets you 230 GW.
I am willing to bet a significant amount that China will get nowhere close to 200GW nuclear by 2035.
A side note it's funny how you state that China does not have any renewables why making nuclear sound like a huge part of their grid, while in reality just the installed solar capacity is 10 times that of nuclear.
"Just goes to show how strong the nuclear lobby is."
Er no. The nuclear "lobby" is incredibly weak, which is why, against all reason, Germany shut off perfectly fine nuclear power plants and almost all the world barely built any nuclear in the last 20 years.
However, reality is now starting to assert itself again.
China solar is 5%, wind a little more than that. Coal is at around 60%. At those levels adding more unreliable energy to the mix is OK. But you also need stable baseload power, which is why they are also massively expanding their nuclear capacity.
It's not a competition, we want all clean energy to stave of climate change, and we'll also almost certainly need additional energy to get all that CO2 out of the atmosphere again. Solar and wind is great for consumers that are OK to be turned off. But a lot of electricity consumption in an industrialized society isn't like that, particularly if we're also going to electrify a lot of the other primary energy consumption, for example heating. I'd rather not have to turn off my heater in winter because it's dark and there's little wind.
Communism. America's take on socialism (or democratic socialism) is largely unreasonable and they falsely equate socialism with soviet style communism, mostly because we've failed at teaching our children history and basic types of government.
I suspect the person is an actual communist and not one fond of dictators? no? :) . I still stand by the idea that real communism as professed by Marx can't survive in groups bigger than the hunter-gatherer groups of old for much more than a generation before it will self-immolate. Most people are "greedy" and will only truly sacrifice for their loved ones like family and their "best of" friends. I will dive to push my child out of the way of an oncoming vehicle without regret or pause (or at least hope I would) and would stand back in a similar situation happening to a neighor and hope my neighbor "survives that" or ponder "that's gonna hurt"
Actual communism is different than the communism tried by Stalin, Mao, Pol pot, Castro or any of the self-professed communists......is a hard sell.
It is especially odd given that most of these men were both well-read and wrote a lot about their intellectual commitment to communism.
At that point, it's better to start referring to Marx's academic theories as 'proto communism' or 'communist utopianism' .... the word 'communism' already has a tarnished legacy and it is further solidified by the convergent outcomes from each of those aforementioned regimes.
Communist/Socialist are very attached to their theoretical world construction. With tons of obscure terms and redefinition of common terms. So that whenever anybody who isn't an expert says anything they can say 'you are wrong because such and such'.
The fact is whenever Communist took over a country, they created mostly the same structure. And its the only form of socialism/communist that existed in a realistic long term setting.
Everything else is just theoretical talking about what true socialism and true communism really are depending on the subculture.
The soviet worldview was "We're trying to build communism and some day we will succeed, but for now what we have is socialism". So while it's easy to attribute all the wrongdoings to the Communist Party, it's not that easy to trace them back to socialism or communism. Was something done in an attempt to build communism or socialism? Hard to tell.
> mostly because we've failed at teaching our children history and basic types of government
Or you know the whole part of the history book where 20th century communists called themselves socialists too, least of which the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)...
Lenin was in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. China calls itself "Socialism with Chinese characteristics." North Korea is an "independent socialist state." Ho Chi Minh's roots were in the Socialist Party of France before being a founder of the French Communist Party.
The comparisons with Russia and Ukraine feel really weird; wasn’t Armenia the country occupying Azerbaijani territory for about 30 years? Do we now expect Ukraine to not cut off Russia’s access to resources?
It seems “Armenian minority” may have been meant in the context of all of Azerbaijan, not of that particular region, where it seems Armenians were a majority.
It "may have been", but the text itself does not say so.
Also, I mentioned "neutral perspective" but you are trying to disprove it using a biased website. If you want to see the bias, do what I did: Edit that page and include a made-up accusation(s) for both sides of the conflict at different times. Your accusation for the Armenian side will be removed within minutes if not seconds. On the contrary, your accusation for the Azerbaijani side will stay there for months. This clearly shows, the very same people who are in charge of that page (any other highly politicized page) has significant bias.
Now I feel guilty further politicizing HN, but I just cannot help it after being exposed to political content in not-seemingly political posts.
No need to apologize, plus, I think energy is always a political issue, though not always involving more than one country, much less countries at war.
I feel you did politicize this when editing your quote from the article, which prompted my response.
I am well aware Wikipedia is open to moderation abuse, but I stand by my use of it as a reference for the demographical distribution of population in that area.
For what it’s worth, I think this conflict is yet another leftover from the collapse of the Soviet empire and I suspect things may have turned out better for both sides if that enclave has been split into its own republic once the USSR no longer existed.
Thank you for the link. I have checked the official census data and found out that Armenians being minority in the region as the article reports is just wrong.
It seems the comment I just made a quote from the linked article is flagged. Here, I am writing it below again for future reference. It is interesting at the least the comment quoting the article is flagged/deleted but the article submission itself is intact.
I do not come to HN for politics and try to refrain from going into it, but does the author really not see how this sounds from a neutral perspective:
"an Armenian minority living in the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region ... demands for secession from Azerbaijan"
"The world is currently in the process of reevaluating its past rejection of nuclear power and is increasingly starting to view it as a reliable source of power that allows for greater energy security."
This thing only gets written on sharply pro-nuclear sources. Yes incumbent nuclear has a role in grid balancing. Sure, lets keep the lights on for say another decade.
But nuclear is just being eviscerated by wind/solar and storage in LCOE, aka the metric you use to plan whether to get new power sources or keep existing ones. And there is basically no way to drop the costs in the future with current commercial designs to close the gap.
Even if you started nuclear power construction, the 10 year delay is 10 years of solar/wind dropping in price (they have a LOT of runway between simple economies of scale, and solar still has the perovskite evolution to come), so nuclear projects can't even target a price to compete with (with a straight face, that is).
And as usual the pro-nuclear article whines about regulations, environmental activists, and the like. Of course the rise of ACTUAL environmental sources like wind solar destroying by a huge margin the economic basis of nuclear power just raises the zealotry. They are doing the nuclear industry no good spouting all this propaganda.
I want you to keep in mind that I am a LFTR/Orion nuthead, and nuclear power is really really COOL.
It is my opinion that solid rod nuclear plants will go the way of the dodo, that once wind/solar have reached some degree of price stability there may be complete rethink nuclear power designs that might compete. It might take a generation of people with memories of Chernobyl, Three Mile, and TEPCO dying so the regulatory framework gets a bit more sound.
Or maybe China will get a good Thorium reactor going and we have to do it out of competition (which is why there are suddenly Thorium projects cropping up again in research labs).
Anyway, yeah, keep the existing plants going while we work on swapping out coal with alternative energy. But solar/wind/storage will probably come for the nuclear plants in the "soon" sense of a decade or two.
81 comments
[ 590 ms ] story [ 290 ms ] threadEnvironmentalists defeated the Soviet Union? You would think that would have made the newspapers.
Areg Danagoulian is an associate professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT
> It is now clear that Western use of natural gas and petroleum from aggressive dictatorships—which use cash flows from oil and gas sales to reinforce and expand their hold on power—has backfired badly.
This feels awkwardly over repeated today. Embargos as always of course don't work, still most of the West more easily than all doomsayers expected reoriented (while they ideally could have been off that much dependence already longer).. there is enough market to other countries and also circumventing embargos. Do the Armenians btw dig the uranium out of their soil and refine it?
well, that's wrong.[0]
that disaster will continue killing people far into the future with the way it was handled at nearly every step of the recovery. Tepco was great at playing the victim and spinning every facet of PR at their disposal to avoid looking like jerks.
the 'Fukushima situation that killed nobody' comment is a direct reflection of how well Tepco played it reputationally, even if they did a piss-poor job of handling it practically.
Thankfully the whole thing wasn't entirely unjust[1].
I agree with your points w.r.t. Chernobyl.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/13/fukushima-nucl...
We need to put a fine point on this.
https://apnews.com/article/japan-fukushima-daiichi-radioacti...
There is still melted reactor in the ground, nothing is "cleaned up" we just dont really talk about it. Much like Chernobyl this is going to be a "generational" project for Japan.
Its handling of contaminated materials remains "questionable".
The reason we get less coverage than Chernobyl is that Japan doesn't have its hand out for money and technical support as Ukraine did to get the latest covering built.
Last I checked, Wikipedia is not entirely accurate here. Yes, the worker had worked at the Fukushima plant since 1980, and his cancer was regarded as a work-related injury for insurance purposes. However, it was not actually linked to the accident and such a link would be very difficult to prove.
"A decade after the triple tragedy that occurred in Japan in March 2011, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) said that future health effects, e.g. cancer directly related to radiation exposure are unlikely to be discernible, in its 2020 Report launched today."
https://unis.unvienna.org/unis/en/pressrels/2021/unisous419....
The empire is not a person to perceive something -- inside the communist party and government, there were many of points of view on the eco-movements. The "empire" had no single stance on the question.
Who benefitted from the green movement then and now? Fossil fuel. Putin and his cronies, just to name an example.
Yes, environmentalist movements in 1989 were all across the country, and were significant. It was 2 years into Perestroyka and Glasnost [1] policy, and such things were not restricted from discussion, and 1989 was the year when a lot of non-CPSU new local politicians were elected in local councils and the soviet deputy council [2].
In my region, people would protest a projected Katun river dam [3]. It's not clear, whether the pressure stopped it, or financial shortages, but it was noteable -- at least I as 1st grader saw it discussed everywhere.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasnost
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Soviet_Union_legislative_...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katun_(river)
However, claiming that environmentalists took down the whole Union is downright silly. Yes, the fears of the crumbling infra and coverups, Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Spitak earthquake, and Ufa train disaster dominated the media of the late USSR (and especially Armenia, due to the Spitak earthquake), but that was only a small factor, the reasons were much more fundamental.
What do you mean? Glasnost (policy of open discussions) started in 1987, a year later than Chernobyl disaster and the coverup attempt.
This may be a tad exaggerated, and the main reasons were indeed much more fundamental, but the impact was massive. It was the coup de grace.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1137086/chernobyl-hbo-s...
- "The Phosphorite War (Estonian: Fosforiidisõda) is the name given to a late-1980s environmental campaign in the then-Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, against the opening of large phosphorite mines in the Virumaa region[...] In Estonia it is regarded as a catalyst that led to the destabilization and dissolution of the Soviet government in Estonia.[3]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorite_War
(I'm surprised this has never appeared on HN before in any context,
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Fosforiidisõda&type=comment
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=phosphorite%20war&type=comment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_Nuclear_Power_Plant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjxZwbg69Fc
*note, this is not anti nuc power, its all about how corruption, politics and really bad engineering have screwed the project from the beginning
Plus, that plant is not designed to create weapons grade nuclear weapons.
what he said was "Former Marcos Deputies have alleged that it was also intended to facilitate nuclear weapon design"
Also, its not like The Marcos regime was a stickler for the rules mate....
Most theories point to Russia lobbying for Austria to stay hooked onto its gas exports, so they had to run a FUD propaganda campaign against nuclear before the referendum.
Especially that Austria isn't big on holding referendums to ask the population what it wants, like Switzerland does, and a few former Austrian ministers have worked or still do for Russian oil & gas companies.
But yes, pretty stupid.
Wasting a highly expensive taxpayer funded energy project as a political weapon just to spite the opposition party is peak politics.
Anyway, whoever they are seem to have limited interest in energy security. Much like someone who has no interest in food security, that is going to change at some point. The anti-nuclear lobby has done terrible things and should be ashamed of the position they've put us in. We'd be so much better positioned if they had been rational instead of panicked.
It is trivial to make people better off when the energy supply is growing. It is much harder (or impossible) to improve lifestyles at an industrial scale when it is shrinking.
The abundant consumerism wrecks peoples lifestyles. I don't see the need to jump through hoops to support planned obsolescence consuming of widgets and eating so much food obesity becomes the major health concern.
The growth worship need to stop.
Well, is that entirely unreasonable?
More concerning is the actual lack of explicit definition, appologies for the trick question. There isnt a great metric to measure growth, some will point to GDP, or unemployment, but the former can be manipulated by increasing government spending (more on that later), and the latter doesnt account for the qualitative aspects like whether someone started as a business owner and now work at starbucks.
You could point at the stock market, but again this isnt a great measure. Wealthy people have a higher fraction of their wealth in the stock market, and benefit disproportionately to the less wealthy. Moreover, the stockmarket goes up for reasons that dont have anything to do with production. When interest rates go down the stock market goes up (generally), at first this might make sense, businesses can better afford the resources they need; except, at any given price point there are only so many resources available, all you have done is increased demand and driven up prices. The same occurs with government stimulus, you are giving people more receipts for wealth, you havent created the actual wealth though. ---------- Lastly, and most importantly, there is the mechanics of our monetary system. It would be nice if there was a thing we called money, and that money had some kind of value based on available goods and services. This is not accurate though, we have "legal tender" or "currency", which can be used to settle debts.
The distinction is important, because it necessarily implies that debt cant be paid back, and here is the crux. Every dollar in the economy was created through debt, like when you took out a home loan, or when the government takes on debt; that debt has an interest rate, and new dollars cant be created except through more debt. If debts were to all be repaid, there would be zero dollars left in the economy, and there would still be debt left to pay.
The only, and I mean only, way to prevent this from causing a cascading default, is to continuously add more dollars (and debt!) into the system, prolonging the pains of inflation and delaying the date of reckoning for an ever shorter period of time.
So how do you respond to your money being devalued constantly? The answer for many is, "follow the money" and blow it on a new car. Very few investments will ever beat the actual rate of inflation, so a dollar saved is a dollar wasted.
It’s easy to write that from the comfort of a western nation with reliable electricity where bellies are full and most household chores are done by machine.
The rest of the world very much would like that same standard of living (food, physical comfort and safety), and for that - they need affordable energy.
However, much of the abundance in western nations, need the cheap production of those countries. Trading wheat for Rolex clocks might be a bad deal for them (hyperbolic point, I know).
E.g. countries like Nigeria have a simultaneous obesity and malnutrition (low bmi) problem.
I am not claiming I know what needs to be done.
In actuality, the biggest issue is the amount of pollution we emitted, not growth per se.
- underfunding of journalism
- climate change
- chemicals like PFAs
- demographics
- social media
...
> Lacking indigenous resources, Armenia imports natural gas and oil for most of its energy needs (78.6% of total energy supply in 2020), mainly from the Russian Federation (hereafter, “Russia”). Natural gas is imported from Russia via pipeline through Georgia, but also from Iran through a barter agreement under which it exports electricity in exchange.
So the digs at Germany seem hypocritical.
I would love to see a source on that since the statistics don't show that [0]. Production actually fell by 4% [1] and even China, THE country with the most ambitious plans for nuclear, rather goes for renewables[2].
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa...
[1] https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/World-Rep... https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nuclears-share-world...
[2] https://cleantechnica.com/2023/02/06/renewables-in-china-tre...
The only thing this policy does is to guarantee EU taxpayer money for rotting fleets. Especially in France where national taxpayer money has to jump in where former Governments failed to establish a diversified energy infrastructure.
One is an implication in the lack of evidence and the other one are actually related facts.
You obviously can't evaluate by the outcomes, because the reevaluation is still in process, and in this particular case outcomes in terms of power to grid take at least 3 years after you have finished evaluating and started building. And sometimes a bit longer. And of course you do have plants reaching their end of life during that time, so you might not see a net positive total for a bit.
On the other hand, 22 countries just pledged to triple nuclear output by 2050 at COP28, so just a little over a month ago. That's a significant departure and includes countries that were getting out of nuclear power altogether, like Japan. It also includes all of the G7 except Germany and Italy.
https://www.energy.gov/articles/cop28-countries-launch-decla...
Speaking of Italy, they aren't there yet, but have just made getting back into nuclear official government policy.
https://www.montelnews.com/news/1498405/italian-parliament-b...
Germany, of course, remains a basket case, even though a majority of its citizens now oppose the "Atomausstieg".
The UK government just announced a massive (to 4x) nuclear expansion this month (January 2024).
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/biggest-expansion-of-nucl...
Poland is getting into nuclear, having just approved construction of 24 (small) reactors at 6 locations.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/poland...
France removed its legal requirement to reduce nuclear to less than 50% last year, and just committed to building 14 new reactors (up from only 6 just 2 months ago).
Unlike what some people think, France was not very pro-nuclear the last few decades, in fact nuclear was being actively sabotaged.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ePZUamAzNA4IzdR1dlkE2wtl...
That has changed. A lot has changed since the Ukraine war revealed the dirty little secret of Germany's "Energiewende", also known nowadays as the Gazprom-Wende.
Yes, China is going for renewables. That's because China goes for everything. Including more coal. Yes, they are building out renewables, but that's because they have little to none at present, so they are still at a stage where adding more renewables won't destabilize the grid. They are also massively expanding their nuclear fleet, with no fewer than 20 (twenty!) reactors currently under construction and another 70 currently being planned. That's a tripling of what they have now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
They are also building all sorts of next generation reactors. A thorium pebble-bed reactor was connected to the grid in 2023, a thorium molten salt reactor got its operating license last year and is supposedly close to completion.
India is also planning (and on track) to triple their nuclear generating capacity, though not by 2050, but by 2031.
Things are always "in the process" or "being reevaluated" around nuclear. Meanwhile, global warming is on the way and faster here than a single nuclear reactor is constructed, even if you start building today.
Meanwhile, renewables are already there, build in 1–2 years and are getting better and cheaper every year.
> On the other hand, 22 countries just pledged to triple nuclear output by 2050 at COP28, so just a little over a month ago
Are there any repercussions if they don't deliver, or how is this relevant?
Let's take a closer look at your links there:
> Speaking of Italy, they aren't there yet, but have just made getting back into nuclear official government policy.
Italy doesn't have the funds for any significant nuclear project. The nuclear meme the ruling parties spread is highly popular within the right wing parties throughout Europe and, just like Poland (where the meme goes back to the time of Socialism), every serious person knows: nothing at all will come of it.
> Germany, of course, remains a basket case, even though a majority of its citizens now oppose the "Atomausstieg".
No they don't.
There was a rush around the time the last one closed. With the biggest tabloid BILD and the opposition (which consist mainly of the party which is responsible for the shutdown) shouting useless claims to fire up people who are unhappy with the Government. Today, just like before: nobody cares about nuclear anymore and the only polls suggesting that there might be some kind of support for the cause come from Civey and are being paid by Nuklearia. A small lobby club of former nuclear engineers and their Twitter-friends from the right-wing AfD bubble.
> The UK government just announced a massive (to 4x) nuclear expansion this month (January 2024).
I'm sure that after the elections and with the complete mess that is HPC, there will be not a single new reactor being build in the UK.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/cost-of-uks-flagship-nuclear-pro...
> France removed its legal requirement to reduce nuclear to less than 50% last year, and just committed to building 14 new reactors (up from only 6 just 2 months ago).
I wonder where the money for that might come from especially after the failure of EDF and the fact that despite subsidizing every single watt of nuclear energy by taxpayer money (tarif bleu) they now even have to rise the prices https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/france-fin...
But sure, something has to be done since their existing fleet is rotting away and they have not diversified anything. Let's hope those old reactors will hold up for another decade because we all know: France can't build faster.
> Unlike what some people think, France was not very pro-nuclear the last few decades, in fact nuclear was being actively sabotaged.
Yeah...no. That's bs.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/750035/france-opinion-su...
> That has changed. A lot has changed since the Ukraine war revealed the dirty little secret of Germany's "Energiewende", also known nowadays as the Gazprom-Wende.
What secret is this supposed to be? Because Germany got rid of Russian gas and gas prices went down again?
Or do you mean the secret that France still supports the invasion in Ukraine through their nuclear deals?
Well, that was a quick turnaround! Just a post ago there was no evidence for this, now you claim it is "always" the case. Which is it? Or both at the same time? Is it in a quantum superposition?
>> The world is currently in the process of reevaluating its past rejection of nuclear power
> I would love to see a source on that since the statistics don't show that
But glad you don't deny the obvious evidence.
[Germany]
> No they don't. [oppose the Atomausstieg]
You're a bit behind the times.
2011: "Breiter Rückhalt für Atomausstieg"
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/deutschlan...
2023: "Mehrheit ist gegen Atomausstieg"
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/deutschlan...
59% against. 34% for. Almost 2:1 against.
Conducted by infratest dimap.
[UK]
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/biggest-expansion-of-nucl...
>I'm sure that after the elections and with the complete mess that is HPC, there will be not a single new reactor being build in the UK.
The new policy was announced in January of 2024, less than a month ago. They probably knew about Hinkley Point. But what does the UK government know about energy policy in the UK? They should have asked you!
Anyway: how about a friendly wager? Since you are "sure", that means you should take any odds I'd be willing to give you. How about a million to one? Or maybe 100:1? The UK timeframe is 2050. If the UK does not build a single nuclear reactor by 2050, I owe you € 100,- If they do, you owe me € 10.000,-
Deal?
> Italy doesn't have the funds for any significant nuclear project.
LOL. Interesting claim you plucked out of thin air. Any evidence for this? Certainly the Italian government appears to disagree with you. But what do they know about their country? Oh, and nuclear is cheaper than renewables. See France vs. Germany.
[France nuclear renaissance]
> I wonder where the money for that might come from
Very simple: from the massive profits the current nuclear fleet generates operationally, which the state no longer requires EDF to forego in oder to finance massive renewable expansion.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ePZUamAzNA4IzdR1dlkE2wtl...
> Yeah...no. That's bs.
Oh, evidence for your claim? The statista link (paywalled, not accessible) appears to be something on the widespread support of nuclear by the French public. The article was not about the public, specifically:
"Our nuclear industry has been weakened by a war waged for decades by a cabal of green politicians, civil servants, and activists."
So there is no relation whatsoever. But what does the "former president of the French House of Representatives" know about the politics of his country? They should have interviewed you!
Of course, the reason the French public likes their nuclear is because it's been providing cheap, reliable and green electricity for decades now. But what do they know about the benefits of nuclear power, they just have those benefits. Oh and it only took them 10 years to do it. The German Energiewende has been ongoing for 20+ years now, and our electricity...
What I meant was that there are always excuses. Not that there is growth.
> But glad you don't deny the obvious evidence.
There was no evidence. There were wishes, pledges, political propaganda. Nothing that would outweigh the whole trend.
> Oh, and nuclear is cheaper than renewables. See France vs. Germany.
Last time I looked, Germany wouldn't have to support every Watt of their energy with taxpayer money the way France does with tarif bleu. Did you even know about this because that claim is ridiculous. Nuclear energy is nowhere on this planet cheaper than renewables.
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ePZUamAzNA4IzdR1dlkE2wtl...
I don't understand why you keep on linking to some conspiracy op-ed on google docs. How is someone supposed to take that seriously? Don't you have anything serious?
> Oh, evidence for your claim? The statista link (paywalled, not accessible) appears to be something on the widespread support of nuclear by the French public. The article was not about the public, specifically: Our nuclear industry has been weakened by a war waged for decades by a cabal of green politicians, civil servants, and activists."
This "article" is nothing but unsourced conspiracies and opinions. The fact that this seems to you more credible than actual facts speaks for itself.
> Of course, the reason the French public likes their nuclear is because it's been providing cheap, reliable and green electricity for decades now.
They've actually been lying to their population by spending their taxpayer money to simulate a cheap energy price. Linke Tasche, Rechte Tasche. ...and the only green thing about nuclear is the glow on Simpsons.
> . Oh and it only took them 10 years to do it. The German Energiewende has been ongoing for 20+ years now, and our electricity is ~7x dirtier and more expensive.
Turns out: if you plan to nuke the world, money flows faster. Today, it takes them 10+ years to build a single reactor. Much success. PS. the reason Germany still produces "dirt" is related to jobs in areas which are already struck with unemployment and the fact that the previous Government did nothing for 16 years. Other than that, Germany is well off. Thank you. We replaced what we lost with nuclear years ago with renewables. Despite the previous Government.
> And we fired up more of our coal power stations.
We shut them down after a few weeks already and continued to shut down even more of them. We're still on plan to phase out coal completely.
> However, they are smart enough not to remove their nuclear fleet. Instead, they are expanding it. Massively.
Of course, they're not removing their nuclear fleet. They need that for a coming war....and no, they're not expanding massively. I've shown you that with my links which you didn't read, as you have shown several times over here.
> And also an old one with Russia, from 1988.
You are not reading my links...what is this?
> The Gazprom-Energiewende was problematic completely separately from the geopolitical problems due to the simple fact that gas is a fossil fuel and emits a lot of greenhouse gases
So do you think I might forget that Rosatom vs. Gazprom thing now with that?
> What does Nuscale have to with anything?
You might know if you'd have read anything around that debacle. Instead, you are not reading anything which might even smell like it would make nuclear look bad, even in a discussion here. Instead, you keep on parroting statements you caught on social and leave everything out where you don't have a statement ready. This is not a discussion. You are preaching...
There was no claim of current growth. There was a claim of reevaluation. Which you first denied, and then claimed was "always" happening.
> unsourced conspiracies and opinions.
The article is an interview with the former president of the French parliament. Or as you call it "unsourced". And the former president of the French parliament obviously knows less about French politics than you do. Gotcha.
By the way, what's your source? Apart from "I made it up"?
> They've actually been lying to their population by spending their taxpayer money to simulate a cheap energy price.
False.
> Today, it takes them 10+ years to build a single reactor.
It takes them 10+ years to build a prototype of a brand new reactor design that has been deemed too complex and has already been simplified, with an industrial base that no longer has experience building nuclear reactors due to chronic under-investment the last 20+ years.
However, outliers have always existed, but the time to build a nuclear power plant has remained fairly constant the last 50 years, at 6-8 years. With a lot being built in 5 years and a few in 3 years. Alas, we are not building that design, we are building more complicated ones.
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi...
[coal power]
> We shut them down after a few weeks already
False. Coal burning increased in 2021 and 2022. Went down a little in 2023 due to the recession-induced reduction in consumption. Recession caused by high energy prices. The irony!
> We replaced what we lost with nuclear years ago with renewables.
Sorry, that's silly. Had we kept nuclear, that renewable capacity would instead have replaced coal. Had we expanded nuclear, we would be long done with our Energiewende. The Frenchies did it in 10 years. Bavaria had 70% green energy, decades ago. We decided to get of CO2 reliably, cheap, CO2-free energy during a climate crisis caused by CO2 emissions.
The rest of the world is laughing at us.
[China]
> no, they're not expanding massively.
Yes they are. Their current plans are a tripling of capacity. A 200% expansion.
[Rosatom] >You are not reading my links...what is this?
Sadly, I am reading your links, which continue to be entirely irrelevant.
> Nuscale ... debacle.
Once again: one project by one of the many companies getting into the SMR space goes sideways, and for you, somehow, the entire field is a "debacle".
No it's not.
Come back when you are no longer blindly parroting the silly talking points of the German anti-nuclear bubble.
Of course there is. It says just after the claim of reevaluation: "is increasingly starting to view it as a reliable source of power that allows for greater energy security"
> The article is an interview with the former president of the French parliament.
The article is an interview with an obviously drunk person who talks of cabals and sects :D
> False
Wow, much crediblé. Now google tarif bleu. I've mentioned it twice. You didn't even read that or did you and you ignored it because you know I'm right?
> It takes them 10+ years to build a prototype of a brand new reactor design
As I said...there are always excuses in nuclear. HPC and Flamanville are not EPR prototypes. But you know where prototypes just deliver? In renewable tech.
> However, outliers have always existed,
Yeah, those weird, weird outliers. All of them in countries with proper safety standards. Meanwhile, in countries with corrupted ones, nuclear reactors shoot up as if it's some water tower they're building. I'm sure that's just some kind of coincidence.
Also, stretching the average measurement 70 years in the past where it's been fashionable to build reactors is ridiculous. It doesn't say anything about the present time.
Btw, it's hilarious like all the links you delivered here have already been clicked by me at some point in the past. Are you one of those Nuklearia fanboys?
> False. Coal burning increased in 2021 and 2022. Went down a little in 2023 due to the recession-induced reduction in consumption. Recession caused by high energy prices. The irony!
Everything about that is false :D
https://i.imgur.com/HjSIcbe.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/C7rUzdO.jpeg
https://www.bdew.de/service/daten-und-grafiken/bdew-strompre...
> Sorry, that's silly. Had we kept nuclear, that renewable capacity would instead have replaced coal.
There is no single factual reason why we'd have less coal today with nuclear. As I said: we replaced what we lost with nuclear years ago with renewables, and the reason we keep coal around is because of jobs. You can read that, googling the commission tasked with the phaseout. The commission's name is: "Commission on Growth, Structural Change and Employment" :D
> Yes they are. Their current plans are
The current reality is that they delivered 4% less last year, as I have shown in one more link you didn't read above. Also, they cancelled some of those planned reactors too. Even if they would triple a tiny bit, it wouldn't be MASSIVE compared to the MASSIVE expansion of renewables. You can spend every Dollar once, and China decided that it's rather worth spending it on renewables.
> Sadly, I am reading your links, which continue to be entirely irrelevant.
Funny though because I've shown you several times over that you didn't. Just above this paragraph is another one. Why are you lying?
> Once again: one project by one of the many companies getting into the SMR space goes sideways, and for you, somehow, the entire field is a "debacle". No it's not.
I can understand that wasting massive amounts of taxpayer money is no debacle for a nuclear apologist (or should I say "sectist", now that you made that fashionable with that hilarious conspiracy interview?), however for the rest of the taxpayers it is. NuScale was the poster child for SMRs within your cult, and it failed spectacularly.
Come back when you have actually read what I write.
"...starting to view it as..." does not mean "there is actual growth". It describe a mental state, not electrons moving in the grid. If you can't understand the difference between a shift in thinking and construction, then discussing anything with you is completely pointless.
I am not going to comment on the rest, as it is even less coherent gibberish.
> You obviously can't evaluate by the outcomes, because the reevaluation is still in process, and in this particular case outcomes in terms of power to grid take at least 3 years after you have finished evaluating and started building. And sometimes a bit longer. And of course you do have plants reaching their end of life during that time, so you might not see a net positive total for a bit.
> On the other hand, 22 countries just pledged to triple nuclear output by 2050 at COP28, so just a little over a month ago. That's a significant departure and includes countries that were getting out of nuclear power altogether, like Japan. It also includes all of the G7 except Germany and Italy.
> https://www.energy.gov/articles/cop28-countries-launch-decla...
Just goes to show how strong the nuclear lobby is. Building out nuclear does not make economic or environmental sense. With the price trajectories of solar, wind are on we should be investing everything into renewables and research into storage to reduce required overprovisioning.
> Yes, China is going for renewables. That's because China goes for everything. Including more coal. Yes, they are building out renewables, but that's because they have little to none at present, so they are still at a stage where adding more renewables won't destabilize the grid.
What are you talking about? China had a third of worldwide installed solar in 2020 (250GW)[1]. In 2023 that had more than doubled to 530 GW [2] and that is accelerating (for 2024 they are projecting another 230 GW).
> They are also massively expanding their nuclear fleet, with no fewer than 20 (twenty!) reactors currently under construction and another 70 currently being planned. That's a tripling of what they have now.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
So China has 57 GW of nuclear and want to get to 200 GW by 2035 (while also having missed their 2020 goal of 58 GW [3]). They are adding more solar every year than that every year. That just shows how completely disproportionate the economics are. The recently approved nuclear power plants (which get to 70GW i think) cost $80 billion [4]compared to $140 billion in solar which gets you 230 GW.
I am willing to bet a significant amount that China will get nowhere close to 200GW nuclear by 2035.
A side note it's funny how you state that China does not have any renewables why making nuclear sound like a huge part of their grid, while in reality just the installed solar capacity is 10 times that of nuclear.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China
[2] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/china-...
[3]https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-starts-up-worlds-f...
[4]https://thediplomat.com/2022/09/powering-chinas-nuclear-ambi...
"It's not, where is the evidence"
"Here"
"Just goes to show how strong the nuclear lobby is."
Er no. The nuclear "lobby" is incredibly weak, which is why, against all reason, Germany shut off perfectly fine nuclear power plants and almost all the world barely built any nuclear in the last 20 years.
However, reality is now starting to assert itself again.
China solar is 5%, wind a little more than that. Coal is at around 60%. At those levels adding more unreliable energy to the mix is OK. But you also need stable baseload power, which is why they are also massively expanding their nuclear capacity.
It's not a competition, we want all clean energy to stave of climate change, and we'll also almost certainly need additional energy to get all that CO2 out of the atmosphere again. Solar and wind is great for consumers that are OK to be turned off. But a lot of electricity consumption in an industrialized society isn't like that, particularly if we're also going to electrify a lot of the other primary energy consumption, for example heating. I'd rather not have to turn off my heater in winter because it's dark and there's little wind.
I would like people to either reconcile this between themselves or stop pretending like they can correct on well-defined term usage.
It is especially odd given that most of these men were both well-read and wrote a lot about their intellectual commitment to communism.
At that point, it's better to start referring to Marx's academic theories as 'proto communism' or 'communist utopianism' .... the word 'communism' already has a tarnished legacy and it is further solidified by the convergent outcomes from each of those aforementioned regimes.
The fact is whenever Communist took over a country, they created mostly the same structure. And its the only form of socialism/communist that existed in a realistic long term setting.
Everything else is just theoretical talking about what true socialism and true communism really are depending on the subculture.
Or you know the whole part of the history book where 20th century communists called themselves socialists too, least of which the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)...
Lenin was in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. China calls itself "Socialism with Chinese characteristics." North Korea is an "independent socialist state." Ho Chi Minh's roots were in the Socialist Party of France before being a founder of the French Communist Party.
TBF, radioactive threats were pretty common in the (ex-)USSR. One example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident
“ feeling marginalized and discriminated against, had long been fighting to protect their civil rights.”
Further, looking at Demographics under https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagorno-Karabakh
It seems “Armenian minority” may have been meant in the context of all of Azerbaijan, not of that particular region, where it seems Armenians were a majority.
Also, I mentioned "neutral perspective" but you are trying to disprove it using a biased website. If you want to see the bias, do what I did: Edit that page and include a made-up accusation(s) for both sides of the conflict at different times. Your accusation for the Armenian side will be removed within minutes if not seconds. On the contrary, your accusation for the Azerbaijani side will stay there for months. This clearly shows, the very same people who are in charge of that page (any other highly politicized page) has significant bias.
Now I feel guilty further politicizing HN, but I just cannot help it after being exposed to political content in not-seemingly political posts.
I feel you did politicize this when editing your quote from the article, which prompted my response.
I am well aware Wikipedia is open to moderation abuse, but I stand by my use of it as a reference for the demographical distribution of population in that area.
For what it’s worth, I think this conflict is yet another leftover from the collapse of the Soviet empire and I suspect things may have turned out better for both sides if that enclave has been split into its own republic once the USSR no longer existed.
I do not come to HN for politics and try to refrain from going into it, but does the author really not see how this sounds from a neutral perspective:
"an Armenian minority living in the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region ... demands for secession from Azerbaijan"
This thing only gets written on sharply pro-nuclear sources. Yes incumbent nuclear has a role in grid balancing. Sure, lets keep the lights on for say another decade.
But nuclear is just being eviscerated by wind/solar and storage in LCOE, aka the metric you use to plan whether to get new power sources or keep existing ones. And there is basically no way to drop the costs in the future with current commercial designs to close the gap.
Even if you started nuclear power construction, the 10 year delay is 10 years of solar/wind dropping in price (they have a LOT of runway between simple economies of scale, and solar still has the perovskite evolution to come), so nuclear projects can't even target a price to compete with (with a straight face, that is).
And as usual the pro-nuclear article whines about regulations, environmental activists, and the like. Of course the rise of ACTUAL environmental sources like wind solar destroying by a huge margin the economic basis of nuclear power just raises the zealotry. They are doing the nuclear industry no good spouting all this propaganda.
I want you to keep in mind that I am a LFTR/Orion nuthead, and nuclear power is really really COOL.
It is my opinion that solid rod nuclear plants will go the way of the dodo, that once wind/solar have reached some degree of price stability there may be complete rethink nuclear power designs that might compete. It might take a generation of people with memories of Chernobyl, Three Mile, and TEPCO dying so the regulatory framework gets a bit more sound.
Or maybe China will get a good Thorium reactor going and we have to do it out of competition (which is why there are suddenly Thorium projects cropping up again in research labs).
Anyway, yeah, keep the existing plants going while we work on swapping out coal with alternative energy. But solar/wind/storage will probably come for the nuclear plants in the "soon" sense of a decade or two.