The current US Administration does not understand the basic mechanics of American hegemony. I think Trump truly believes that we are getting ripped off and stand to gain nothing from our current position with the EU and other allies. But if you take away the incentives and guarantees they'll just turn their back on you and seek their own protection—it has to be symbiotic.
Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance
161–170 of 396 posts
Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance
#162Earlier 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…
There should be international agreements for nuclear energy where neighboring countries can come and inspect each others power plants, or one org on the continent level.
You're describing the IAEA, founded in 1957 and in activity since: https://www.iaea.org/topics/verification-and-other-safeguard...
Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think the MAD would be enough. Russia has such a vast space (not possible to effectively cover with air defense), even if just European part, with so many legitimate targets without any need for bunker busters/etc., that just a test underground explosion showing that Ukraine got it would be enough for Russia to hit the brakes screeching.
Btw, according to the Russian nuclear doctrine nukes can be used when the country is invaded even with just conventional weapons if the invasion presents severe threat to the country. Thus according to the Russian nuclear doctrine Ukraine is allowed to use nukes.
Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance
#164They should focus on their modern renewables buildout, they've got half compared with Spain and Portugal (20% Vs 40%). With some existing geothermal and hydro in their mix they should be further along.
If you want to be cynical than this latest move could just be the same as Australia's right wing party's pretence about nuclear.
At least in Australia it's local fossil fuels they'd be burning not imported gas.
Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
National stereotypes... Italy's the 3rd largest economy in the EU, and 8th in the world, with an advanced technology sector to boot. And if they somehow cannot figure it out, their French neighbors most assuredly can.
As Portuguese, and regarding how things work there, regardless of whatever achievements get acomplished, the ways how to do business and handle bureaucracy walls aren't very far from stereotypes, even if it was improved during the last decades. I assume same applies in Italy, given that we share some of those stereotypes.
I'm portuguese and I completely disagree with this. Stereotypes are just stereotypes, generalizing 10M people into a dumbed down pseudo reality doesn't make sense.
Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance
#166Maybe 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…
BTW, Ukraine already had nuclear weapons, but agreed to give them up for security guarantees by the US, the UK, France and Russia (!) in 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
U.S. support of Ukraine fulfills a commitment we signed, and which Russia broke.
The U.S. president doesn’t seem to care about international commitments, though. How does that work out in the long run? Would you do business with someone who tells you up front that they might break any promise they make?
Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
France has never had a major nuclear accident. The biggest issue is of course, earthquakes in Italy.
They had luck, depending how hot this summer gets some nuclear facilities have to shut down again because the water gets to warm or they don't have enough water in the cooling water source.
The low river issue 2 or 3 summers ago was overblown. When there is not enough water, the production can be slowed down to use less water.
Regarding what happened during that heatwave, there are, rightfully so, regulations on how hot the water can be to be dumped into regular rivers. These regulations ensure the protection of the marine life and ecosystem of these rivers. During the that summer, the rivers' natural temperature was almost as hot as the threshold set by these regulations, so they could not dump any hot water into the rivers. But there are add-ons solutions to this in the future, such as cooling ponds where they would let water temperature dissipate before dumping it into the rivers.
Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance
#168Maybe 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…
It's very, very expensive and (until last week) it was critical to keep the US on side, which would be jeopardized by breaking the nonproliferation treaty.
The MAD argument still applies: Ukraine can't threaten to nuke Moscow without Russia obviously threatening to retaliate with nukes.
Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance
#169Isn't the price of a KW of solar panels similar to the price of a KW of nuclear power these days? I wonder what hinders us to replace the roofs of all houses with solar panels and put batteries in all cellars? It might still be useful to build out nuclear power plants. But the solar+battery approach seems like an easier first step to increase the available power, doesn't it?
> Isn't the price of a KW of solar panels similar to the price of a KW of nuclear power these days? Solar with battery backup is about that, globally, on average. But: the averages have sufficiently broad variance that there's places where one wins, and places where the other wins. PV+battery is between 75-140 USD/MWh; whereas new nuclear is, depending on who I ask, any of 81-82, 65, or 141–221 USD/MWh.
There's no reason to believe nuear couldn't benefit from economies of scale.
Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance
#170Maybe 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…
BTW, Ukraine already had nuclear weapons, but agreed to give them up for security guarantees by the US, the UK, France and Russia (!) in 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
Very technically speaking Ukraine didn't have a nuclear weapons program the way we speak of China or India having one.
What they had was nuclear weapons left over when the Soviet Union collapsed.