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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

#321

Post by ben_w »

Paradigma11 wrote: post #306
ben_w wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What kind of battery backup are we talking about? Enough for a long cold winter night in northern Europe? Enough for a longer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute ?

Yes.

From your link:

"Events that last more than two days over most of Europe happen about once every five years."

I belive that for the EU as a whole, enough for two days works out as about 32 kWh per person. More or less for specific nations.

So, think in terms of what you'd repurpose used EV batteries for prior to fully recycling them.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#322

Post by lukan »

troupo wrote: post #314
lukan wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maintaining solar panels will be always way, way, waaay cheaper, than maintaining a nuclear reactor and disposing safely the waste. Batteries would need to be cheaper, that is all that is needed for italy. In the south, they have sun all year around.

See how you decided to completely ignore my question. But I like that on top of that, batteries are not cheap either

See how I am still free to ignore any question you asked and answer just what I want?

Which would be: there is not really a need for stationary batteries to be expensive.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#323

Post by throwaway48476 »

ben_w wrote: post #320
throwaway48476 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other issue is that nuclear research has been underfunded for decades. We could have had new safe effective and cost efficient designs.

That is why I say "might, possibly", rather than being firmly yes or no. R&D is high-variance.

Research is, engineering less so.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#324

Post by pfdietz »

mpweiher wrote: post #298
pfdietz wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Death toll so far . Projections of cancer deaths from Fukushima go up into the hundreds.

That's not true. The WHO says there will be no detectable health effects.

That's because the deaths would be lost in a sea of ordinary cancers. Hundreds of additional cancers would not be detectable; that would be below the statistical noise floor. Not being detectable does not mean they won't occur.

Anyway, let me steelman what you're aiming at here. I think you want to argue not that hundreds of deaths won't occur, but that hundreds of deaths don't matter that much. These are statistical deaths, so it's appropriate to treat them using the "statistical value of a human life". This is the value of a life to be used for policy purposes (like deciding if a safety measure is needed, if spending on a medical treatment is appropriate, etc.) In the US, it's around $12M per life. So, 200 (say) deaths would have a value of $2.4B. This is not enormous compared to overall cost of the accident, even to the utility. It could be reasonable to treat radiation releases as at Fukushima by fining the polluter by an amount related to this value.

Under this sort of regulatory regime, the purpose of regulations is not to avoid all releases, but to keep the releases small enough that the utilities would have the resources to pay the fines. So, no 100,000 death accidents. Nuclear power plants designed to this concept could allow some small radiation release in accidents.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#325

Post by tored »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #156
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…

Here's a list of countries with a nuclear industry but no nuclear weapons program. Taiwan South Korea Japan Germany Sweden Italy UK (not counting trident) Ukraine

Sweden had nuclear weapons program and was only six months away from completing a working bomb in 1965. Program was abandoned in 1966.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_nuclear_weapons_prog...

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#326

Post by speed_spread »

pavlov wrote: post #218
throwaway48476 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Was DOGE able to affect the Pentagon or three-lettered security agencies yet? I would assume anything defense-related is kept separate from civilian government structures and may not be as collapsible. Some may even have internal plans to defend against a take over from the top.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#327

Post by Mawr »

kome wrote: post #121
MortyWaves wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 second referendum had been planned long before, and then the Fukushima disaster happened, just a couple of weeks before the vote. A stark reminder that nuclear energy is not safe. By the way, Italy had several nuclear reactors, but they were shut down after the first referendum.

A bunch of aviation accidents have happened in the last few months. Is flying unsafe?

See, your definition of safety seems to actually be "what feels safe to me". As such, it happens to be exactly opposite to what the data tells us.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#328

Post by [deleted] »

Mawr wrote: post #327
kome wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second referendum had been planned long before, and then the Fukushima disaster happened, just a couple of weeks before the vote. A stark reminder that nuclear energy is not safe. By the way, Italy had several nuclear reactors, but they were shut down after the first referendum.

A bunch of aviation accidents have happened in the last few months. Is flying unsafe? See, your definition of safety seems to actually be "what feels safe to me". As such, it happens to be exactly opposite to what the data tells us.

[deleted]

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#329

Post by sph »

kome wrote: post #128
sph wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who's brilliantly dumb idea was it to have the only two referendums ever also immediately after a disaster? Well-timed populists.

> Well-timed populists. not really. The referendum was planned long before Fukushima, but then Fukushima happened at just the right time, reminding voters just in time to vote against nuclear.

I stand corrected. They indeed started collecting signatures for the second referendum in spring 2010.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#330

Post by throwaway48476 »

tored wrote: post #325
throwaway48476 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a list of countries with a nuclear industry but no nuclear weapons program. Taiwan South Korea Japan Germany Sweden Italy UK (not counting trident) Ukraine

Sweden had nuclear weapons program and was only six months away from completing a working bomb in 1965. Program was abandoned in 1966. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_nuclear_weapons_prog...

Sweden was far closer than that and only gave up its plutonium in 1990.
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