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Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

world-nuclear-news.org

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Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#141

Post by mpweiher »

snowwrestler wrote: post #99

Maybe not well known, but during the 20th century a number of nations started a nuclear weapons program, but then were convinced to halt the work by security guarantees by the U.S. You better believe that every single one of those nations is now revisiting that decision. For those wondering if Italy can afford to build nuclear: their economy is larger than Russia’s. As is Brazil’s, another nation that put nuclear wea…

Exactly.

The US nuclear umbrella was not charity, contrary what some in the US appear to believe. It was and is a pure power play.

Another little tidbit that is not generally well-known is that the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) actually requires the current nuclear powers to get rid of their nuclear weapons...eventually.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#142

Post by scrlk »

datadeft wrote: post #24
frafra wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price != cost/value. You can produce cheap electricity at noon, which would have little value.

Most people do not understand this and think that we can reall talk about nuclear vs solar when we really need to talk about an energy mix where you pick one point (for example you pick nuclear or solar) and the rest depends on this choice. Than you can calculate the price.

To add, it's worth reading the Levelized Full System Costs of Electricity paper: https://iaee2021online.org/download/contribution/fullpaper/1...

Energy mix is key: the cost of 100% dependency on intermittent renewables is extremely high.

Going for 95% dependency on intermittent renewables with the remainder being filled in by low-cost dispatchable generation halves system costs (see table 6, pg. 21).

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#143

Post by erezsh »

MortyWaves wrote: post #114
sph wrote: post #111

As an Italian abroad, this came out of the blue and I was not expecting this change of mind, at all. There have been two referendums on nuclear energy in Italy: one just after the disaster of Chernobyl. They tried again decades later, in 2011; just after the disaster of Fukushima. The result was of course overwhelmingly negative both times. This is great news, and will hopefully lower the cost of electricity that we…

Who's brilliantly dumb idea was it to have the only two referendums ever also immediately after a disaster? That is what you'd do if you want an overwhelmingly biased referendum playing off people's rash and short term panic based decision making.

The green energy lobby has everything to gain, and it's been working extra to make it a reality. For example, Greenpeace has been fighting nuclear power all over the world.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#144

Post by legulere »

lelag wrote: post #57
est31 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italy neither has the engineers to build a nuclear power plant, they would have to ask another nation, like Russia, Canada or France, to build it for them. And where does the nuclear fuel come from? Russia.

> And where does the nuclear fuel come from? Russia. Not true at all. Russia is producing 5% of the world Uranium, and they probably use quite a lot of that domestically given they produce 8% of all nuclear power in the world with their own plant. Kazakhstan + Uzbekistan is 50% of the word production. Canada is second and will be happy to start selling to the EU. Namibia and Australia both produce twice as much as Ru…

That’s raw uranium ore. Uranium undergoes several refinement steps. In each Russia has an enormous market share.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#145

Post by delroth »

hengheng wrote: post #54
surgical_fire wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter. As far as I am concerned, self sufficiency comes before price concerns. Nuclear is very safe and reliable. By all means, EU countries should keep investing in Solar, Wind, Geotermal, etc. but that should be done alongside Nuclear.

As always with nuclear there are a few taboo topics. One of them being fuel supply. For European reactors that seems to be either Mali/Niger, or Russia. Both not excellent if the goal is geopolitical independence. Solar, wind and batteries have no fuel concerns, and they are inherently decentralized.

> As always with nuclear there are a few taboo topics. One of them being fuel supply.

It's not taboo, the answer is just extremely simple: mining needs people willing to work in a dangerous and exhausting field, so when practical, rich countries tend to prefer outsourcing this (capitalism does not tend to reward ethics). It's very practical for uranium because nuclear reactors need a tiny volume which is trivial to ship and to store. Most countries with a nuclear program keep a stockpile of multiple years.

Mining uranium in other places is very feasible, as are other more expensive options like extracting it out of the ocean. After all, with nuclear the cost of the fuel is a tiny amount of the actual cost of power generation. This is not happening because there's really no need to. In the past, there have been uranium mines in pretty much every european country, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_by_country#Euro...

(Refining/processing is a different story. But that's more obviously a "money/care" problem - there's no possible physical constraint for refining/processing as there could be for mining.)

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#146

Post by surgical_fire »

willvarfar wrote: post #39
surgical_fire wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter. As far as I am concerned, self sufficiency comes before price concerns. Nuclear is very safe and reliable. By all means, EU countries should keep investing in Solar, Wind, Geotermal, etc. but that should be done alongside Nuclear.

> Nuclear is very safe and reliable. How do we stop fukushima-like disasters?

How many people died at the Fukushima disaster?

As one of the worst Nuclear accidents in history (caused by one of the largest earthquakes to hit Japan along with a tsunami), an awfully small amount of people died.

If anything, Fukushima shows how safe Nuclear actually is.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#147

Post by philipov »

klooney wrote: post #50
willvarfar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear is very safe and reliable. How do we stop fukushima-like disasters?

You can't. The problem with nuclear is that it needs to be properly maintained forever. If you get an irresponsible government or power company that cheaps out in 30 years, oopsies, you're going to irradiate the local area. It's a lot like trusting your private data to a company. Sure, Google in 2007 is pretty great, but maybe you have some doubts about their integrity in 2025. Too late, they have what they have, for…

Water-cooled reactors are the ones that are vulnerable to meltdown, but they're not the only way to do Nuclear.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#148

Post by klooney »

mrighele wrote: post #112
klooney wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't. The problem with nuclear is that it needs to be properly maintained forever. If you get an irresponsible government or power company that cheaps out in 30 years, oopsies, you're going to irradiate the local area. It's a lot like trusting your private data to a company. Sure, Google in 2007 is pretty great, but maybe you have some doubts about their integrity in 2025. Too late, they have what they have, for…

> If you get an irresponsible government or power company that cheaps out in 30 years, oopsies, you're going to irradiate the local area. How many times did this happen in 80 years? according to [1] not many times. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nuclear_disasters_and... And this is including very early technology and government (e.g. the Russian one) that I wouldn't trust with anything.

Sure, but this is HN, and we get a lot of The Case For Nuclear Power articles coming through, and startups building micro reactors that everyone thinks are very cool- me too, honestly- but I think that the case against gets given short shrift, or can turned into a strawman.

The consequences of a nuclear incident are very high, and can be more or less permanent for an area. It's a lot to ask for a technology to be absolutely resilient to mismanagement or even sabotage.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#149

Post by jsiepkes »

snowwrestler wrote: post #99

Maybe not well known, but during the 20th century a number of nations started a nuclear weapons program, but then were convinced to halt the work by security guarantees by the U.S. You better believe that every single one of those nations is now revisiting that decision. For those wondering if Italy can afford to build nuclear: their economy is larger than Russia’s. As is Brazil’s, another nation that put nuclear wea…

the Netherlands has nukes in loan from the US. They are at Volkel Airbase. Officially it's a secret, but it's common knowledge and was also confirmed by a former prime-minister. In exchange for these loaned nuclear weapons the Netherlands promised not to develop nuclear weapons of their own.

With the US now showing they are not afraid of doing a "rug pull" on agreements, one starts to wonder if the Netherlands shouldn't start development of nuclear weapons again.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkel_Air_Base

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#150

Post by libertine »

trhway wrote: post #126
snowwrestler wrote: post #99

Maybe not well known, but during the 20th century a number of nations started a nuclear weapons program, but then were convinced to halt the work by security guarantees by the U.S. You better believe that every single one of those nations is now revisiting that decision. For those wondering if Italy can afford to build nuclear: their economy is larger than Russia’s. As is Brazil’s, another nation that put nuclear wea…

The world is lucky that Zelensky is the President of Ukraine and not somebody like me - given that Ukraine does have plutonium from its power plants, i'd be already making the warheads (technological difficulties? they were solved 80 years ago and with the modern tech the 3 years is more than enough to produce something working). That is also notable in the context of Trump yelling at Zelensky that Zelensky is suppos…

Hopefully this is already underway, and Ukraine has also the know how to build stuff that can deliver these payloads.

They need to develop bunker busters though.

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