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Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

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Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#191

Post by koonsolo »

pjc50 wrote: post #168
trhway wrote: post #126

Earlier 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…

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.

Just to illustrate how expensive: UK spends 2.3% of their GDP on their military. 1% is allocated to maintaining those nukes!

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#192

Post by hoseja »

snailmailstare wrote: post #118
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…

Apologies to Mr Kurzweil, but I think the reality on the ground is that the cost of research into keeping an aging population alive is a raised risk of Armageddon. The political tendencies in older age demographics is bad, the politicians surviving so many decades after a first to leadership position is bad, the billionaires living long enough to find whacky ideas or even directly manipulate politics instead of gifti…

Gifting money to charities is way more catastrophic.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#193

Post by Bayart »

lqet wrote: post #158
jsiepkes wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 should…

> 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. This discussion is already looming in Germany, especially now that Elon Musk openly wants the US to leave NATO. There is a standing offer by Macron for Germany to go under French nuclear protection. The UK also appears to be more than willing…

I don't see proliferation in Europe as realistic politically. Europeanising the French program is what makes the most sense in that regard.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#195

Post by dalyons »

tigroferoce wrote: post #74
ossobuco wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but given that hypothetical new nuclear plants would become effective in a decade or more from now, and that we already have an energy crisis, one would expect Italy to first ramp up the fastest option (solar).

Italy (and others) could (and should) do both. Only thinking in terms of cost is short vision IMO. What happens if in 20/30 years you need to dramatically ramp up the energy generation (maybe everyone will drive electric, maybe house heating will be electric, maybe someone will come up with a new tech that requires a huge amount of energy, ...) and you already covered most of the roofs? or panels and batteries are at…

I agree in spirit, but given the massive cost premium of nuke power and the impossibility of insurance, the only way new nukes are going to get built in the west is via state guarantees /subsidies. That means higher taxes, or forcing citizens to pay much higher power rates for ~50 years. Both will be very unpopular, especially as green power continues to get cheaper and cheaper

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#196

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

hoseja wrote: post #182
snowwrestler wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Has the US ever honored their word when it mattered? You do business with them because otherwise they roll up with warships.

No - it's because they roll-up with cutting you off from the US banking system - which is a prerequisite for basically all international trade.

This happens probably 100x more than rolling up with warships.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#197

Post by bsza »

bmelton wrote: post #98
bsza wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I will install batteries in my cellar when they no longer spontaneously burst into flames that are impossible to put out. But this shouldn’t even be a requirement as long as you can feed it into the grid.

LiCoO2 / NMC aren't the popular chemistries any more. LiFePo4 is a remarkably stable chemistry, with extremely low risks of fire. In the unlikely event that they do catch fire, they are extinguishable with water. Nothing has zero risk, but there are much more stable chemistries available than those that formed this (rational) opinion.

That's reassuring to know, thank you for pointing that out. I didn't get the impression this was already solved since you still keep hearing about battery fires, but hopefully this means that will be a thing of the past soon.

I would still skip this step and let it be the power company's problem though, simply because at ~400 USD / kWh they don't seem very cost efficient for off-peak storage (at least in my country).

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#198

Post by arlort »

mandmandam wrote: post #177
littlestymaar wrote: post #90

Last time Italy decided to re-open the topic of nuclear energy, we ended up with the Fukushima disaster. The last time before that was Chernobyl. A nuclear accident in the US due to deregulation would be fitting with the current mood, but I'd rather not to, please.

Do you know how many people die because of coal plants every year? It's far, far more than nuclear per unit [0]. Nuclear power is nearly a thousand times less murderous. 0 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...

The comment you're replying to is pretty clearly making a joke

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#199

Post by littlestymaar »

mandmandam wrote: post #177
littlestymaar wrote: post #90

Last time Italy decided to re-open the topic of nuclear energy, we ended up with the Fukushima disaster. The last time before that was Chernobyl. A nuclear accident in the US due to deregulation would be fitting with the current mood, but I'd rather not to, please.

Do you know how many people die because of coal plants every year? It's far, far more than nuclear per unit [0]. Nuclear power is nearly a thousand times less murderous. 0 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...

First of all, this is obviously a joke, but in all seriousness there's more to nuclear accident than just the immediate danger it poses to people (which is, as you point out, very low).

My wife is a nuclear engineer (in France), and I'd have been the same hadn't Fukushima killed the job prospects in the field for almost a decade, so personally I would rather not have the “nuclear is too dangerous, let's kill this industry” once again.

Also, even if nuclear energy is very far from deadly in its day to day operations, nuclear accident have a lasting impact on the region near the plant, with people having to leave their houses and so on, so I'm not wishing that for anyone. (Living 8 km away from an nuclear plant makes me quite sensitive to this aspect, obviously).

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#200

Post by dalyons »

scrlk wrote: post #142
datadeft wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

95% renewables would be incredible, I’ll take it :)
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