Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 364 posts

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#301

Post by the_gipsy »

troad wrote: post #251
the_gipsy wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA has put itself im this position by their own motivations, and has consistently profited from it.

Uh huh, sure, America profits handsomely from paying trillions of dollars to defend its deadbeat dependencies because... uh... something something capitalism? The unnecessary expense of trillions of dollars being, of course, just so famously and fabulously profitable. I assume this is the same strand of 4D-chess-level thinking that posits that landlords like keeping rental properties vacant because they somehow make…

What is 4D-chess thinking, is believing that the USA is giving handouts to the world and that you would be somehow even richer if it wouldn't.

It's an age old epic: tell the privileged that "actually, you're being exploited of your hard work and innate intelligence". It let's you sleep at night.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#302

Post by leonidasrup »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #270
mono442 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way the EU forces the electricity market to operate makes them completely unprofitable. Renewables are always given priority in the market, which results in other power plants operating at a capacity factor of 30-40%. Since nuclear power plants are mostly capital expenditure-intensive, this makes the electricity they produce absurdly expensive.

That’s just a consequence of how they bid. The marginal cost for a renewable plant is zero. It’s non-zero for nuclear power. But nuclear power don’t want to shut down since that both increases wear and tear and makes them unable to capture revenue when the prices become higher again. So they bid negative expecting to eat the losses and let more flexible plant shut down first.

Operating costs of wind power are for sure not zero. Especially repairs of offshore wind turbines are very expensive.

https://docs.wind-watch.org/offshore-availability-costs.pdf

Hydropower and solar have much lower operating costs.

All thermal power plants experience wear and tear and have to be regularly repaired and maintained. Nuclear power plants can load-follow (within technical limits), but as the operating costs (maintance, repair, staffing, fuel) are much lower then capital costs it makes economic sense to run them at full power.

https://shs.cairn.info/revue-revue-deconomie-politique-2025-...

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#303

Post by the_gipsy »

troad wrote: post #251
the_gipsy wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA has put itself im this position by their own motivations, and has consistently profited from it.

Uh huh, sure, America profits handsomely from paying trillions of dollars to defend its deadbeat dependencies because... uh... something something capitalism? The unnecessary expense of trillions of dollars being, of course, just so famously and fabulously profitable. I assume this is the same strand of 4D-chess-level thinking that posits that landlords like keeping rental properties vacant because they somehow make…

BTW the USA just got caught stealing money from NATO destined to Ukraine to refill their own stock for the Iran war.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#304

Post by gib444 »

youngtaff wrote: post #287
gib444 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If so they must have very low domestic electricity prices (according to many people who continue to claim renewables = lower prices!) Oh, wait, they don't. At all

That’s because the price is set by the highest marginal producer Most of the UKs recent renewables are on a fixed price supply basis and when the market prices goes over this the excess is eventually fed back into reducing consumer bills

Ah yes the standard "...just be patient, any day now it'll get cheaper" response we've been hearing for years

I'm NOT against renewables. I'm NOT pro fossil fuels. I'm against the dishonesty in the discussion. Stop claiming direct reduction in bills if that's not going to happen [0]

[0] https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/time...

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#305

Post by callamdelaney »

youngtaff wrote: post #286
callamdelaney wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Britain could start extracting oil from its European fields instead of just buying the same oil and gas from Denmark. Sanctions could be lifted on Russian oil. Duties could be dropped. There are levers.

There’s very little oil and gas left in the UK part of the North Sea The Tories granted over a hundred licenses for exploration in the last ten years and so far it’s led to the supply of one months gas consumption https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/28/north-sea-o...

The guardian would say that to be fair

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#306

Post by jmye »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #187
dwroberts wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ours seems to be climate collapse. It used to be nuclear war Except climate collapse is actually happening already, gradually. There were escalating tensions during the Cold War, but it wasn’t like there were actual nukes being dropped in slow motion

Collapse by definition is not gradual

Ahh, good, parsing words. I can tell you have a lot of useful and interesting things to say.

So tired of people trying to pass off pseudointellectual pedanticism as useful or additive insight.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#307

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

leonidasrup wrote: post #302
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just a consequence of how they bid. The marginal cost for a renewable plant is zero. It’s non-zero for nuclear power. But nuclear power don’t want to shut down since that both increases wear and tear and makes them unable to capture revenue when the prices become higher again. So they bid negative expecting to eat the losses and let more flexible plant shut down first.

Operating costs of wind power are for sure not zero. Especially repairs of offshore wind turbines are very expensive. https://docs.wind-watch.org/offshore-availability-costs.pdf Hydropower and solar have much lower operating costs. All thermal power plants experience wear and tear and have to be regularly repaired and maintained. Nuclear power plants can load-follow (within technical limits), but as the operating cos…

You have to distinguish between fixed O&M and the extra cost that comes from an extra hour of running.

I’ve been googling and using LLMs and there’s no literature on the subject, but the companies owning them effectively treats it as zero.

In government models they seem to have landed at €1 per MWh.

The best estimates both Claude and ChatGPT came up with was both ”low single digit € per MWh”.

This report was linked, and ARUP the author did not get any replies when they asked the offshore wind companies this question.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6966a5c7e8c04...

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#308

Post by oblio »

troad wrote: post #229
oblio wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that Russia is and will continue being an enemy of the US, right? Even now it's providing Iran with intel to kill US soldiers. Russia is primarily a threat to Europe, but not only. And what do you imagine will happen if Russia gets the gang back together? Ukraine, Belarus, Baltics, most of Eastern Europe. Do you think Soviet Union 2.0, now with more fascism, will be friendlier to the US? I know America…

All of this is framed in the way Europeans like to talk about power, which is as though it's a question of attitudes and feelings. It's much cheaper to pretend that beautiful laws against war can stop bullies, than it is to actually fund any kind of defense. Europe is in love with trying to substitute metaphysical sorcery for actual power, which Europe lacks and seems structurally incapable of building. Do I expect R…

> The Chinese don't live in fear of whether Benelux is 'friendly' to them or not, and if the Beneluxers went insane and started trying to invade their neighbours, I'm sure China would treat it much the same way as Europe treats every war in Africa or Asia. Much 'concern', many pleas to follow international law.

This is absurdly reductionist. Population matters (140 million vs 30 million). Location matters. Size matters. Industrial-military base matters. Legacy matters (there is a reason teams with a winning pedigree tend to win in tight spots). Nukes matter.

The US can't handle Iran. It couldn't handle Iraq. Afghanistan. Vietnam.

All of a sudden Russia is a total pushover handled through "prowess".

This kind of hubris is exactly why the American empire will end sometime this century.

And before you say it doesn't matter, look up what happens to global reserve currencies when they're no longer global reserve currencies. Go look up what happens with debt repayments in that case.

The American lifestyle will suffer some harsh adjustments at all levels, probably in a few decades, at most.

And FYI, Europe has already tripled its defense spending. I hope none of it gets spent on US tech of any kind.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#309

Post by surgical_fire »

dotancohen wrote: post #259
megous wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It did not. Dimona city got hit. https://t.me/QudsNen/215116 Plant is far away from there.

Why is Iran hitting civilian targets?

I dunno man. Why were civilian targets in Iran hit?

I guess you might feel justified to hit civilian infrastructure once your enemies are vile enough to hit yours.

Re: Slovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing

#310

Post by singleshot_ »

phs318u wrote: post #171
singleshot_ wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a pretty amazing definition of upstream. I imagine you probably understand that plastics, pharmaceuticals, and fertilizers are made out of petroleum derivatives, right? Since you seem pretty smart: are there petroleum based cooking oils?

The machinery to make them, the fertilisers to grow them, the plastic to package them, the transport to deliver them. It ain’t just cooking oils that will be massively impacted. The entire food chain in the western world is reliant on petrochemicals. The only question is the lag between now and when those impacts start being felt and this translates into bumped prices and/or shortages. EDIT: corrected an autocorrecti…

Ok so just checking: no cooking oil is made of petroleum then?
Post reply on HN