Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

Similarly, if they were willing to say "fuckit, this may end up being extremely expensive in 10 years but we need it now or we freeze to death", they could start building (potentially) unsafe reactors in unapproved locations with inadequate documentation of their material supply chains and have that ready by February. Yes, there are long lead times for things like approved reactor pressure vessels. But if you're willing to go back to Hanford, Washington [0] safety standards that all goes out the window, and the math on deaths almost certainly still works out.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site

The Russian speaking areas do not want to be part of Ukraine after the 2014 coup. The one that was full of Western intelligence and US politicians, including the wife of Iraq war proponent Robert Kagan who is currently serving under Biden.

Many of these areas were part of Russia up until the Soviet Union, most particularly Crimea which was part of Russia from the 1700s until 1954. The people there are Russian. And, there wasn't really an issue until the coup which outset a democratically elected president. After that Russia took Crimea back (with a vote by the locals for whatever that is worth). The other breakaway republics were indiscriminately shelled for over 8 years. Over 14,000 people were killed which is nearly 3 times the amount of civilian casualties Russia has inflicted to date.

Also, Russia has been invaded along this (open) route a few times over the past couple of hundred years. Hitler and Napoleon. Millions died. Putins older brother in fact died as an infant during the Nazi siege.

So when Ukraine starts talking about getting nukes, joining NATO, have literal Nazi brigades attacking the breakaway republics and amassing hundreds of thousands of troops in the East to attack the breakaway republics and "get Crimea back" the Russians will just sit there? No, they will not. Now, again, their other aim is to get exclusive control of the Black Sea and take the oil and agricultural rich areas of the east, as well as increase their population. And we handed them a figleaf like dummies. They have a lot of legal ground. Putin is actually a lawyer (a fact lots of people don't know).

Let the people chose their destiny. Like we did in Kosovo when we wanted to put an airbase there. But no, that doesn't apply in this case. So it has heated up to this. I hope it settles down but the longer it goes on the worse for Ukraine. We should be urging peaceful settlement, not adding fuel to the fire.

Construction costs money and time. Metallurgy costs money and time. And on and on and on.

I doubt we could build a reactor for less than USD5 Billion even with no regulations at all. This stuff takes time, and if you don't get it right, the damn things don't work. It's not like they work with less efficiency, they just don't work at all if any one of a thousand critical things is done incorrectly. Then that has to be fixed, and you try again. And so on.

And keep in mind, that's for designs we are familiar with and understand. Just imagine trying to build and scale out the new designs. When it comes to the new designs, what is it that we don't know that we don't know? How much time and money will those mistakes cost?

It's about a lot more than environmentalism.

Put in layman's terms: "This stuff is just hard."

Getting rid of regulations helps some. Getting rid of the need to actually make any kind of money by making the government shoulder the costs helps even more. But in the end, you're still left with constructing a nuclear plant. Which is an extremely hard problem that is enormously expensive to solve.

So put yourself in the place of an energy investor, what's s/he going to do? Raise USD5 Billion to spend on the hopes that we can actually construct one of these correctly and under budget in under 10 years? Or just keep slapping up wind farms and start pulling in his/her generation fee in less than a month?

I would advise against compounded the many many bad moves that have been made so far but it's free world.

What I stated is historical and geopolitical fact. Without (near as I can tell) much bias. It's not propaganda, it's the truth. Yes, Russia has traditionally been an expansionist power. Yes, they are looking for advantage.

But a whole lot of ethnic hatred and stupidity and Western involvement has made this even easier for them.