Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built • Hacker News Board

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#561

Post by ClumsyPilot » Sun, Oct 16, 2022, 11:27 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #543

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Markets existed for six thousand years, they predate ancient egypt. It is scientists and engineers who raised our standars of living, and they appeared recently. It is absolutely perserve for proponents of markets to take credit they do not deserve. Take the invention of Penicilin, Alexander Flemming raised our standards of living while working at a public hospital. It was british and US governments who established m…

So you don’t actually know how ancient or medieval markets worked. That explains the confusion. Generally people couldn’t arbitrarily start a business without permission. Rulers would limit who could say sell salt and permission it’s self was quite valuable. Think Arrakis being handed over in Dune, only one house had the right to mine spice and that would change based on politics not just competence. And that’s just…

> England’s wealth traces back before the industrial revolution to the early dissolution of serfdom relative to most places.

So let me get this argument straight: 1. Slavery and serfdom are bad for the economy. We are talking pure economics, not morality 2. Markets have freely sold and bought slaves for thousands of years 3. Slavery predates the concept of a government, it predates writing and predates ancient egypt 4. Abolition of slavery required intervention of government and violence

5. Therefore you have just made a pro-regulation argument while arguing against government. You cannot claim that unregulated markets magically and efficiently organise economy towards it's most efficient state.

The same situation applies to child labour. The exact same situation arised with health and safety. The exact same situation arises with our markets selling precision weapons to bloody dictators that use our weapons against us.

So we have 4 spesific cases of markets delivering rettible outcome and not a single counterexample from you for marktes delivering optimal outcome.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#562

Post by DisjointedHunt » Sun, Oct 16, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

the_why_of_y wrote: post #511

DisjointedHunt wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French politicians voted in 2015 to shut off all planned new nuclear investment in favor of transitioning to “renewables” It was political incompetence that led to the French plants needing to have their lives extended MUCH BEYOND their expected lifetimes.

Perhaps the latest attempt to construct a new nuclear plant in France has something to do with it? Construction on a new reactor, Flamanville 3, began on 4 December 2007.[4] The new unit is an Areva European Pressurized Reactor type and is planned to have a nameplate capacity of 1,650 MWe. EDF estimated the cost at €3.3 billion[4] and stated it would start commercial operations in 2012, after construction lasting 54…

Respectfully, it is because of the uncertainty in project approvals and financing to a large part.

In 2015, lawmakers made it mandatory to reduce Nuclear energy to 50% of existing installed capacity. So, pretty much all changes of mind post that point mean that previously shelved projects are re planned with FROM scratch with the new market rates.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#563

Post by dane-pgp » Sun, Oct 16, 2022, 3:07 PM UTC

smarx007 wrote: post #497

ncmncm wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is, surely, fixable by constructing transmission lines massively cheaper than nukes.

Tell that to Germans https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suedlink (started planning in 2011, the construction should have taken place 2016-2022, now they are hoping it will be done by 2028, lots on NIMBY court challenges along the route of the cabling).

Tell that to the French. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan... reactor three (construction started in 2007, now they are hoping it will begin operation in mid-2023).

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#564

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Sun, Oct 16, 2022, 9:49 PM UTC

thow232329 wrote: post #541

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another factor affecting the price is that, while there's a lot of hydropower generated in northern Sweden, there's not enough capacity for transferring energy to the south where most consumption is. The investors building industry in the north that can use cheap renewable energy don't seem to mind though. :)

So how are they able to transfer electricity to Finland, Poland, Germany etc but not from north to south sweden? Completely unnecessary rules were put in place to create submarkets for north and south sweden, and it's these rules that disallow the transfer of the electricity. It's more profitable to limit production to keep prices high in sweden, then export and sell in other countries. Hydro in sweden was overflowin…

> So how are they able to transfer electricity to Finland, Poland, Germany etc but not from north to south sweden?

That's a strawman. There is energy transfer to all these places, but the capacity is limited in each case.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#565

Post by Retric » Sun, Oct 16, 2022, 10:53 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #561

Retric wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you don’t actually know how ancient or medieval markets worked. That explains the confusion. Generally people couldn’t arbitrarily start a business without permission. Rulers would limit who could say sell salt and permission it’s self was quite valuable. Think Arrakis being handed over in Dune, only one house had the right to mine spice and that would change based on politics not just competence. And that’s just…

> England’s wealth traces back before the industrial revolution to the early dissolution of serfdom relative to most places. So let me get this argument straight: 1. Slavery and serfdom are bad for the economy. We are talking pure economics, not morality 2. Markets have freely sold and bought slaves for thousands of years 3. Slavery predates the concept of a government, it predates writing and predates ancient egypt…

Abolishment of serfdom as a general practice in a England didn’t require government intervention it was actually outcompeted as strange as it sounds. By the time the law changed relatively few people where directly impacted.

This is part of a long term global trend which relates to the overhead of slavery and then serfdom. Serfdom outcompeted slavery in Europe because it was simply more efficient, and Serfdom in turn failed for the same reason.

Child labor was more an outgrowth of the industrial revolution which initially reduced the need for complex skills or physical strength. Kids going back thousands of years would help with harvesting etc, but it was also common practice to pay tradesmen to take on apprentices because child labor was effectively worth nothing when averaged across a year.

It was only when jobs got ultra specialized that child labor became valued. Though eventually flipped back where collage students are talking unpaid internships because Google etc has no use for their services. Obviously collage students can do some forms productive labor, but ignoring the law what can 10 year olds do? Acting and here it’s surprise surprise perfectly legal in western countries for 10 year olds to actually work. Suggesting it’s more a question of economics than morality.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#566

Post by DynamicStatic » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 1:24 AM UTC

legulere wrote: post #546

AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about the average load factor, but the minimum output of the installations. This varies from region to region. At e.g. https://www.smard.de you can easily see the range for wind in Germany. The recent data shows such a minimum at the Oct 12 mark. Anything above that needs to be accounted for. You can also very easily see how gas power stations kick in during lulls. Because that is how it is currently…

How is that different from nuclear? Half of France's power plants are offline. That's not reliable at all. Building new nuclear power plants also takes too long. We're talking about Sweden that has high amounts of hydro power available for storage.

France didn't maintain their nuclear plants during COVID-19 and as a result suffer the consequences now (or rather all of Europe). Furthermore the heat has only made for less than half percent of lost production.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#567

Post by DynamicStatic » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 1:25 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #378

tpmx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The previous anti-nuclear social-democratic government together with the demonstrably insane "green" party installed a board in the state owned power company Vattenfall that after a while managed to sort of claim that it wasn't economically feasible to run the nuclear plants, with the new heavy taxes the social democrats had put in place on nuclear power production. Yay? Anyway, all of that insanity is thankfully his…

Would you please keep flamewar rhetoric off HN? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. We've had to ask you this repeatedly. That's not cool. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I agree with you however the guy he replied to us speaking half truths and most likely knows it.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#568

Post by DynamicStatic » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 1:28 AM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #425

zppln wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why weren't they viable? Sounds strange that other countries would be able to operate nuclear reactors profitably but not Sweden.

Because they are not viable to operate in many other countries either?

They were not viable because of taxes added to make them not viable.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#569

Post by mbrochh » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 2:44 AM UTC

f_allwein wrote: post #72

NKosmatos wrote: post #55

The only green solution to our current energy problem is more nuclear power plants. We have to stop relying on coal, wood, oil, gas and the rest of the “dirty” materials.

Except nuclear is expensive and takes decades to build, runs on non renewable materials (a good percentage of which come from Russia), leaves waste that is deadly for 100.000s of years, and promising new technologies will need decades to reach maturity. Now why is it so great compared to, say, solar or geothermal?

The "runs on non-renewable" is not a good argument, because the amount of uranium we have would last hundreds of thousands of years.

The fact that it is not evenly distributed is a real concern, though.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#570

Post by dang » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 5:19 AM UTC

DynamicStatic wrote: post #567

dang wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you please keep flamewar rhetoric off HN? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. We've had to ask you this repeatedly. That's not cool. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I agree with you however the guy he replied to us speaking half truths and most likely knows it.

You really can't make an assessment like "speaking half truths and most likely knows it" about someone's intent from their internet comments. The vast majority of commenters are just posting their opinions straightforwardly. They may be wrong, or half wrong, but that's not the same thing as deliberately being misleading.