Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Russian gas flows to Europe

berthub.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 279 posts

Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#71

Post by ithkuil »

shmerl wrote: post #26
kazen44 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what does this have to do with OP's post? Also, your question is far more complex and not comparable to the russo-ukraine war. For one, the geo-political situation prior to WW2 and especially compared to today might aswell be from a completely different planet. Prior to world war 2, a intranational political union like the EU did not exist, not to mention most countries in europe weren't democracies at the time.

I don't see a lot of differences really in regards to the question of doing business with such regimes which equals to aiding their war.

perhaps the worry is that if Europe collapses, we may discover some of the members actually align with Putin? That's the nature of democracy, all it takes is a candidate (which we usually label as "populist") to leverage the resentment of the hardship endured because of being anti-putin.

Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#72

Post by userbinator »

slenk wrote: post #67
turbinerneiter wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you honestly believe that is a fair summary of the article? The decision to shut them down happened long ago. They voted against a proposal from the opposition to revert that. The plants were planned to shut down since a long time, there is a lot of unsolved issues around keeping them running, like fuel and personnel. The plants also would impact gas usage only by 1% and electricity isn't a great replacement short…

I don't think there is any world where getting rid of nuclear power is better...it's one of the cleanest, least deadly forms of power generation.

The biggest concern is that when things go wrong with nuclear, they really go wrong.

Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#73

Post by DelightOne »

clemensley wrote: post #53
turbinerneiter wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you honestly believe that is a fair summary of the article? The decision to shut them down happened long ago. They voted against a proposal from the opposition to revert that. The plants were planned to shut down since a long time, there is a lot of unsolved issues around keeping them running, like fuel and personnel. The plants also would impact gas usage only by 1% and electricity isn't a great replacement short…

I wasn't summarizing the article, I was providing a source for my statement. It's irrational that Germany is shutting down secure and climate friendly power plants while Europe is in the midst of an energy crises and a war. The reason for the irrationality is that Germans (I'm one) do not want to admit that they've been wrong about nuclear energy for decades.

> shutting down secure

That is under dispute. Its the entire reason they are shut down in the first place.

Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#75

Post by mistrial9 »

bizarre to see strident, demanding stances among the replies since it is war but no mention of continuous public interest for thirty+ years to transition away from fossil fuels, discounted or ignored. No mention of efficiency anywhere to be found? "nega-watts" is from the 1970s. The current energy mix and its real-politik fossil fuel investors is taking down the biosphere harder than any regional firefight IMHO.

Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#76

Post by clemensley »

_ph_ wrote: post #54
clemensley wrote: post #22

Two days ago the German government voted to to shut off the three remaining nuclear power plants. https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/klima-nachhaltigkeit/...

1. As already noted by other posters, the decision to decommission these plants was made years ago. 2. As a consequence, the plants are in no shape to be run much longer without major refurbishment, rehinring and training personal. Also, the fuel rods are basically spent, new ones would have to be ordered and manufactured which takes quite some time. Want to guess where most fuel rods came from? (spoiler: Russia) 3.…

> Want to guess where most fuel rods came from? (spoiler: Russia)

Can you back that up? To me it looks like only 5% of uranium is in Russia (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/uranium-p...)

> They wouldn't have saved much, if any, gas burning

Compare to coal (that seems to be the tradeoff in Germany) nuclear energy kills 820x more people per produced energy unit. 820x the number of human lives lost.

C02 emissions are about 250x higher https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#:~:text=....

Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#77

Post by towaway15463 »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #70
clemensley wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't summarizing the article, I was providing a source for my statement. It's irrational that Germany is shutting down secure and climate friendly power plants while Europe is in the midst of an energy crises and a war. The reason for the irrationality is that Germans (I'm one) do not want to admit that they've been wrong about nuclear energy for decades.

The problem with nuclear is simply that it is irrelevant to the current situation. Won’t add enough energy to the grid, won’t solve the problem of gas demand at all, so it really doesn’t matter if Germany was right or wrong about it.

It very much matters over the timespan of several decades. That is enough time in which many more nuclear power plants could have been brought online. Just because Germany made the gross error of not building out enough nuclear power to provide for their needs doesn’t mean it is impossible.

Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#78

Post by OtomotO »

slenk wrote: post #67
turbinerneiter wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you honestly believe that is a fair summary of the article? The decision to shut them down happened long ago. They voted against a proposal from the opposition to revert that. The plants were planned to shut down since a long time, there is a lot of unsolved issues around keeping them running, like fuel and personnel. The plants also would impact gas usage only by 1% and electricity isn't a great replacement short…

I don't think there is any world where getting rid of nuclear power is better...it's one of the cleanest, least deadly forms of power generation.

Let's be fair: it's clean on the CO2 front, but the nuclear waste will be relevant for 100.000 years!

That is way, way longer than we have anything like civilization!

Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#79

Post by clemensley »

DelightOne wrote: post #73
clemensley wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't summarizing the article, I was providing a source for my statement. It's irrational that Germany is shutting down secure and climate friendly power plants while Europe is in the midst of an energy crises and a war. The reason for the irrationality is that Germans (I'm one) do not want to admit that they've been wrong about nuclear energy for decades.

> shutting down secure That is under dispute. Its the entire reason they are shut down in the first place.

There is no dispute about the safety of nuclear. We have statistics going back decades. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#:~:text=....

Re: Russian gas flows to Europe

#80

Post by Arnt »

clemensley wrote: post #53
turbinerneiter wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you honestly believe that is a fair summary of the article? The decision to shut them down happened long ago. They voted against a proposal from the opposition to revert that. The plants were planned to shut down since a long time, there is a lot of unsolved issues around keeping them running, like fuel and personnel. The plants also would impact gas usage only by 1% and electricity isn't a great replacement short…

I wasn't summarizing the article, I was providing a source for my statement. It's irrational that Germany is shutting down secure and climate friendly power plants while Europe is in the midst of an energy crises and a war. The reason for the irrationality is that Germans (I'm one) do not want to admit that they've been wrong about nuclear energy for decades.

It seems irrational because that's not what's happening.

Those power plants can't be run next winter.

Contracts have been terminated, replacement parts with long lead times haven't been ordered, maintenance windows have been shifted in anticipation of the shutdown. It's possible to write new contracts and order new parts, so they could be back in operation, maybe sometime late in 2023.

But that would still leave them them down precisely in the period that matters most: Next winter.

Post reply on HN