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Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

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Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#211

Post by hoseja »

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?

There was no nuclear disaster at Fukushima. There was a tsunami and there was a destruction of a nuclear power plant. There were a couple cancers and an undetectable release of tritiated water into the Pacific Freaking Ocean.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#212

Post by Idesmi »

torginus wrote: post #32
aw4y wrote: post #22

The problem with nuclear in Italy is just one: how many time have you read about a public bridge fallen because of bad construction? Same for roads, houses and so on. Most of the time the reason is the company building those, trying to spend less in materials and avoiding regulations - something unfortunately not so unusual in Italy. So imagine what could happen with a nuclear plant... (nuclear is safe, building in I…

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.

I am Italian and currently live in Italy, and don't trust my government with building nuclear plants.

As long as the people in power are famous for lying and twisting reality, we should not touch nuclear.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#213

Post by account42 »

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?

A minor concern compared to pollution from other energy sources, including "renewable" ones once you include all materials needed.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#214

Post by actionfromafar »

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.

Sure there's a lot of truth to that, but you used to be able to know what mattered to the US. It wasn't erratic. The magnetic poles of the US just flipped.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#215

Post by mpweiher »

jsiepkes wrote: post #149
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 should…

These are not "on loan". They are stationed in the Netherlands. They are fully under US operational control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#216

Post by flanked-evergl »

pavlov wrote: post #206
flanked-evergl wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no binding commitment that the US broke. You may not like that fact, but it is a fact.

What's binding between sovereign nations anyway? Ultimately it comes down to trust. And the current US administration is doing its best to destroy trust built up over the last 80 years.

You are right that most international agreements are essentially unenforceable, especially with a world hegemony like the USA.

That being said, the US still has not broken any agreement, binding or non-binding. So your point is somewhat beside the point.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#217

Post by snowwrestler »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #175
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?

There is no binding commitment that the US broke. You may not like that fact, but it is a fact.

The U.S. declined to provide a security "guarantee" because that would have amounted to a backdoor accession to NATO, and the U.S. could not grant that unilaterally. (An example of the U.S. honoring a prior commitment, by the way.) A "guarantee" would have required the U.S. to commit its military forces to the battlefield if Ukraine was invaded.

The U.S. instead provided a security "assurance" which was understood to mean a level of support short of U.S. troops on the ground. And in fact that is what the U.S. has been providing: intelligence and material, but no U.S. forces.

In other words, the level of support has been commensurate with the agreement signed. Until today, apparently.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#218

Post by pavlov »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #159
lifeinthevoid wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the Netherlands able to control these devices? I would be very surprised if that were the case.

Codes are not given and are only in America.

Since DOGE has wrecked any semblance of data security in the US government, we can assume the codes are also in Moscow by now.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#219

Post by Salgat »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #173
rob74 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The Budapest Memorandum had no security guarantees. > Another key point was that U.S. State Department lawyers made a distinction between "security guarantee" and "security assurance", referring to the security guarantees that were desired by Ukraine in exchange for non-proliferation. "Security guarantee" would have implied the use of military force in assisting its non-nuclear parties attacked by an aggressor (such…

To clarify, the upholding of the security assurance is still left up to the discretion of nations in the agreement, based on how important non-proliferation of nuclear weapons is to them. It seems that recently, nuclear proliferation is no longer a concern for the US, hence they no longer enforce this agreement, which is their right, for better or worse.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#220

Post by mrighele »

lovegrenoble wrote: post #131
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…

Can We Please Stop Comparing Russia’s Economy to Italy’s? Who's comparing Russia's economy to Italy's? Apparently Lindsay Graham did in 2014. CNN in 2022. I like this article because it made me think about Russia and it's economy in a way that I didn't fully appreciate before. The article calls out an argument that compares Russia's economy to Italy's economy, using nominal GDP as a measurement. This is supposed to b…

> Taken together, the PPP and Russia's domestic production capability

What does exactly Russia produces ? Most of GDP of Russia comes from export of natural resources [1]. This is by design: raw material extraction can be managed even by corrupt friends of the government even with a lot of "inefficiencies"; meanwhile higher level production is left to languish on purpose since it would be a potential vector for others to gain wealth and power (most of the oil infrastructure in Russia is serviced by western tools, for example).

Up to a few years ago I would have added weapons to the list, but it seems to me that they can't produce quality weapons anymore, there are very few moderns Russian weapons in use in Ukraine, for example.

[1] https://www.tradeimex.in/blogs/russia-top-10-exports

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