Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant • Hacker News Board

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#81

Post by cucumber3732842 » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 1:04 PM UTC

andor wrote: post #66

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and that's a good thing, because this is a political decision by default, Why is it a good thing that everyone and their brother seeks to apply state violence to micromanage what should be a fairly arcane technical issue? >We can't let decisions like these be taken by unelected technocrats alone. Do you feel the same way about topics where your opinion differs substantially from the local majority?

Very few things are purely technical decisions. In this case, it’s about centralized vs. distributed electricity generation (or freedom vs. dependence if you want to state it that way). One of these options makes it much easier for the billionaire class to continue extracting money out of the people. Edit: I don’t understand how you get from „political decision“ to „state violence“. Politics are at play at all levels…

>In this case, it’s about centralized vs. distributed electricity generation (or freedom vs. dependence if you want to state it that way).

The venn diagram between people who act like renewables are "freeing" (which make no mistake, they absolutely could be) and the people who advocate nonstop for government management of how they are deployed is too close to a circle for me to take such commentary seriously.

>One of these options makes it much easier for the billionaire class to continue extracting money out of the people.

Ah, yes, billionares. Famous for not getting a cut when I buy a plug in solar panel from my preferred e-commerce site or big box store. /s

The billionares have their money in everything. They get a cut of everything. You're just changing who gets the cut. And even if no billionaire is getting a cut, a publicly traded/owned investment bank or other corporate interest that would replace them is not really any less evil.

>: I don’t understand how you get from „political decision“ to „state violence“. Politics are at play at all levels of civilization where actors have different goals,

By not gaslighting myself into thinking politics is anything other than the process of deciding where, when and how state violence is applied.

What backs up all those decisions other than credible threat of violence?

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#82

Post by cucumber3732842 » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 1:11 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #67

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're probably going to struggle to come up with a motive for that behaviour. It is much more likely that they simply aren't very thoughtful. Complex webs of deception in a public argument are certainly possible, but it generally relies on some group having a clear financial incentive to misdirect. That doesn't exist in the nuclear debate.

>You're probably going to struggle to come up with a motive for that behaviour.

No, I'm not. Not in the slightest.

Number in top right go up. Monkey brain feel goooooood when that happen. Monkey brain keep doing behavior that make that happen.

> It is much more likely that they simply aren't very thoughtful.

They're plenty thoughtful. They'll contrive all sorts of arcane logic, plausibly deniable lies and witty turns of phrase (some of which are quite impressive).

What they're not is self aware (the dishonesty is a byproduct of that).

> Complex webs of deception

Those are possible but I don't think that's what's happening here.

> but it generally relies on some group having a clear financial incentive to misdirect.

Internet fanboys work for free. They have no financial incentive. Therefore we fall back to the monkey brain incentive.

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#83

Post by one33seven » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 1:21 PM UTC

Luc wrote: post #43

Of course a 1960's design isn't adapted to current weather conditions. That doesn't mean the whole technology is useless, like so many commenters imply. Any new build can and will include cooling adapted to hotter conditions.

There's a nuclear reaction in the sky beaming free energy to us, let's just use that

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#84

Post by one33seven » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 1:22 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #67

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're probably going to struggle to come up with a motive for that behaviour. It is much more likely that they simply aren't very thoughtful. Complex webs of deception in a public argument are certainly possible, but it generally relies on some group having a clear financial incentive to misdirect. That doesn't exist in the nuclear debate.

> a clear financial incentive to misdirect. That doesn't exist in the nuclear debate.

It's very obviously not in the interests of "big fossile" to go either solar or nuclear.

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#85

Post by ben_w » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 1:22 PM UTC

deepsummer wrote: post #80

ben_w wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet there are whole weeks practically without wind in winter. And most climate models estimate that global warming reduces wind further. Not for the combination of [continent-wide, offshore, the Atlantic coast]. The Atlantic continental shelf isn't correlated with the Baltic. Offshore Dunkelflaute is much shorter than on-shore. > Storage in the required dimensions is an unsolved problem. Also false. The required qu…

> The Atlantic continental shelf isn't correlated with the Baltic. How do you transmit the power? Do the countries on the Atlantic even want wind power, set up the transmission lines, and pay for it? > Offshore Dunkelflaute is much shorter than on-shore. That reduces the storage requirements a bit, but there is not nearly enough offshore. And offshore is expensive. That's why it's getting harder to find investors. >…

> How do you transmit the power?

The usual way.

> Do the countries on the Atlantic even want wind power, set up the transmission lines, and pay for it?

They can sell the power, you know. This already happens.

> That reduces the storage requirements a bit, but there is not nearly enough offshore.

It more than covers it.

Even a Dunkelflaute period is reduced, not zero, output. Those seas are huge, and the normal wind there is fast; even on a continental-shelf-spanning Dunkelflaute (much rarer than "just Germany and Poland"), the capacity in those waters *even with that reduction* is more than EU demand just by itself, which in practice means "not building as much as possible".

> And offshore is expensive. That's why it's getting harder to find investors.

Compared to onshore wind. But even offshore wind is cheaper than new-build nuclear, coal, and has strong overlap with new CCGT.

Even then, it's not hard to find investors: the US went as far as banning it because the investors were actually happy to invest.

The limitation on investors right now is that we're transitioning faster than any previous energy transition before, while also having other things to also invest in. It's like how big tech in the US is running out of people to get money from to spend on data centres, the limit isn't actually building them, it's how fast they're getting built when your answer to "how many would you like to order?" is "yes".

> That doesn't prove it's possible, but makes it even harder to get the required quantities.

The fact that EVs are for sale, however, does.

> Hydro requires the right geography. Is there any potential for hydro left in central Europe?

I thought you might say something like that, *which is why I literally wrote what I wrote*:

  people often mix up: generation, and storage. Of these, only generation requires an associated upstream supply and watershed; storage can be done with a hole in the ground, of which there are plenty

And then linked you to a document, with a quote from that document, about using coal mines. The document you replied to with doubts, supports the conclusion you've just denied.

Also, I already saw all of Tom Scott's videos when they were new. As per the document:

   Finally, the realisable potential includes projects that are not only technically and economically feasible but also aligned with regulatory, environmental, social and implementation timelines, facilitating their implementation within short to medium time frame.

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#86

Post by josefritzishere » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 1:38 PM UTC

Desertification is next.

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#87

Post by deepsummer » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 1:39 PM UTC

deepsummer wrote: post #80

ben_w wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet there are whole weeks practically without wind in winter. And most climate models estimate that global warming reduces wind further. Not for the combination of [continent-wide, offshore, the Atlantic coast]. The Atlantic continental shelf isn't correlated with the Baltic. Offshore Dunkelflaute is much shorter than on-shore. > Storage in the required dimensions is an unsolved problem. Also false. The required qu…

> The Atlantic continental shelf isn't correlated with the Baltic. How do you transmit the power? Do the countries on the Atlantic even want wind power, set up the transmission lines, and pay for it? > Offshore Dunkelflaute is much shorter than on-shore. That reduces the storage requirements a bit, but there is not nearly enough offshore. And offshore is expensive. That's why it's getting harder to find investors. >…

Max comment nesting reached. Instead of going through your response one by one, let me just say one thing: the premise and promise of the whole energy transition are based on studies that completely underestimated the physical and engineering challenges in practice. That's why we are where we are. Energy costs have gone up; CO2 emissions have not. I wouldn't believe any study before it has been implemented at scale, at least in a region or small country.

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#88

Post by voakbasda » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 2:22 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #73

shakow wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely wrong. A difference of a couple degrees is not going to hamper cooling a reactor that is running at many hundred degrees. Just imagine what it would spell for your car otherwise.

I think both nuclear steam and car engines are affected by high ambient temp, gas and coal engines too. That is after all why they bring in water or air to car radiators, to cool them. Probably only a single percent or so for a few degrees change though.

Begs the question: coul reactors use radiative air cooling? Channel the water through a huge radiator and transfer the heat to the air

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#89

Post by masklinn » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 2:56 PM UTC

voakbasda wrote: post #88

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think both nuclear steam and car engines are affected by high ambient temp, gas and coal engines too. That is after all why they bring in water or air to car radiators, to cool them. Probably only a single percent or so for a few degrees change though.

Begs the question: coul reactors use radiative air cooling? Channel the water through a huge radiator and transfer the heat to the air

Not really, a large reactor is way too power dense. An EPR reactor has a thermal output of 4.6GW. And the tertiary is cooling steam turbines so it's below boiling, you'd need something like 10 sqkm worth of surface, per reactor, with an environment cool enough that this could actually radiate.

Even using industrial air-cooling design you'd need on the order of a million sqm or two (for reference a good quality computer heatsink is about a third of a square meter worth of fins)

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

#90

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 3:31 PM UTC

number6 wrote: post #30

comrade1234 wrote: post #8

Here in Switzerland during some heatwaves they have to shut down nuclear plants too because the river water is too warm and adding warm water to it would kill the fish.

And it's not cold enough to cool the reactor

The principle cooling mechanism is vapourisation.

The heat of vapourisation for water, converting liquid to steam, is 40.66 kJ/mol, or 2257 J/g. It takes a lot of energy to boil off water.[1]

That compares with the latent heat of liquid water, the energy required to heat one unit of water by one degree, which is 4.2 J/g*K (where K is the delta temperature in Kelvin).

Raising the temperature of input by, say, 10 degrees, would only reduce the cooling factor by less than 2%.

________________________________

Notes:

1. Which is why live steam is so dangerous. Steam condensing will release a huge amount of thermal energy, making steam burns especially harmful.