Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance • Hacker News Board

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#71

Post by troupo » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 1:21 PM UTC

wkat4242 wrote: post #55

datadeft wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what timeframe? Solar panels last 20-25 years. Nuclear power plants last for 50+ years and use fraction of the space that solar. It is hard to believe that the TCO is lower. Usually people just looking at the price in the short term and comparing that. Batteries are a whole different can of worms. Super toxic and you need a high volume of those because the energy density is much lower. https://energyeducation.ca/e…

Space isn't really an issue. There's many places that are no good for building but are great for solar, like mountainsides. Besides, if the Netherlands can have solar then Italy can too. It's much less densely populated. And nuclear lasts 50+ years with constant maintenance, which is really expensive.

> no good for building but are great for solar, like mountainsides.

And what's the cost of building on a mountainside, and how much is maintenance?

> Besides, if the Netherlands can have solar then Italy can too

How much solar are they building in comparison to other sources?

> And nuclear lasts 50+ years with constant maintenance, which is really expensive.

Unlike solar panels built on mountainsides which are not suitable for other types of buildings?

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#72

Post by wkat4242 » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 1:21 PM UTC

hengheng wrote: post #54

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.

As always with nuclear there are a few taboo topics. One of them being fuel supply. For European reactors that seems to be either Mali/Niger, or Russia. Both not excellent if the goal is geopolitical independence. Solar, wind and batteries have no fuel concerns, and they are inherently decentralized.

Indeed this point is often overlooked.

I know the soviets dug up half the Czech Republic for uranium deposits though. There's still some left there, not sure how much though. I have a feeling that the reliance on Africa and Russia is more price and environmental regulation driven.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#73

Post by notTooFarGone » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 1:22 PM UTC

mik1998 wrote: post #28

jonplackett wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this a pretty much solved problem though? Just add a battery to your house? Batteries are just going to get better - especially over a 10y time span

Batteries simply raise the price of power up by 10x if not more. Not a viable solution.

Are batteries cheaper in 5-10 years?

How about large nuclear plants, what are the probabilities of cost overruns and who is insuring that?

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#74

Post by tigroferoce » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 1:22 PM UTC

ossobuco wrote: post #11

jacobp100 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar is much cheaper than nuclear. Italian new builds need to add solar panels. Nuclear isn’t a bad option too. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

Sure, but given that hypothetical new nuclear plants would become effective in a decade or more from now, and that we already have an energy crisis, one would expect Italy to first ramp up the fastest option (solar).

Italy (and others) could (and should) do both.

Only thinking in terms of cost is short vision IMO. What happens if in 20/30 years you need to dramatically ramp up the energy generation (maybe everyone will drive electric, maybe house heating will be electric, maybe someone will come up with a new tech that requires a huge amount of energy, ...) and you already covered most of the roofs? or panels and batteries are at their end of life and you need massive investments just to keep up with the status quo?

I woulnd't go in a fight with a fist tied behing my back, and global warming is one of the biggest fights we must face.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#75

Post by wkat4242 » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 1:23 PM UTC

IsTom wrote: post #67

willvarfar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear is very safe and reliable. How do we stop fukushima-like disasters?

Just don't build the plant next to Vesuvius. The biggest recorded earthquake in Europe was 7.1 magnitude, compared to 7.4 that caused tsunami that hit fukushima.

The thing is, it's not the biggest earthquake in the past we have to worry about, it's the biggest one in the future.

And climate change can have very sudden and unpredictable results too as we've seen all over the world in recent years.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#76

Post by Mashimo » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 1:23 PM UTC

bilekas wrote: post #13

Nuclear isn’t something to be afraid of, in fact it’s a natural progression. It’s quite safe when done right, it’s cheap, there is the disposal question but in relation to anything else it’s pretty manageable. If nuclear was a bigger resource we might even see better research into better methods of disposal.

Italy has solved the nuclear waste disposal problem. They ship it to Somalia or sink it in old ships. It's quite cheap as well.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#77

Post by notTooFarGone » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

bilekas wrote: post #13

Nuclear isn’t something to be afraid of, in fact it’s a natural progression. It’s quite safe when done right, it’s cheap, there is the disposal question but in relation to anything else it’s pretty manageable. If nuclear was a bigger resource we might even see better research into better methods of disposal.

> it’s cheap

yea after you build the damn thing maybe. Good luck with that. There is a reason 90% of new added capacity is renewable and it's not because of the environment.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#78

Post by bsza » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

mg wrote: post #3

Isn't the price of a KW of solar panels similar to the price of a KW of nuclear power these days? I wonder what hinders us to replace the roofs of all houses with solar panels and put batteries in all cellars? It might still be useful to build out nuclear power plants. But the solar+battery approach seems like an easier first step to increase the available power, doesn't it?

Personally, I will install batteries in my cellar when they no longer spontaneously burst into flames that are impossible to put out.

But this shouldn’t even be a requirement as long as you can feed it into the grid.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#79

Post by wkat4242 » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

jovial_cavalier wrote: post #49

willvarfar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nuclear is very safe and reliable. How do we stop fukushima-like disasters?

The death toll from that incident was one (1). You can see online, nuclear power is actually one of the safest methods of energy generation, behind solar and ahead of wind, because sometimes dudes fall from the tops of the windmills. Could you start looking at the second-order effects of the meltdown to get a higher death toll? Probably, but you could probably also look at all of the pollutants generated by solar pan…

Death toll isn't the only metric for accident severity. Environmental pollution is really important too.

And with Fukushima we were kinda lucky. It was still a double meltdown with several hydrogen explosions and could have been much worse.

Re: Italy moves to reverse anti-nuclear stance

#80

Post by ben_w » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 1:25 PM UTC

simion314 wrote: post #25

jonplackett wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this a pretty much solved problem though? Just add a battery to your house? Batteries are just going to get better - especially over a 10y time span

>Isn’t this a pretty much solved problem though? Just add a battery to your house? In winter the days are short, the sky can be covered in clouds for an entire week, the solar panels can be covered in snow also. I have solar panels but I do not have a way to export my data to show you the summer vs winter GIANT difference. So people like me with solar need the other people in the area not to all go for solar, then we…

> In winter the days are short, the sky can be covered in clouds for an entire week, the solar panels can be covered in snow also. I have solar panels but I do not have a way to export my data to show you the summer vs winter GIANT difference.

Short days, but still enough to make a lot of juice in Italy. Scotland and Scandinavia get issues, but Italy's basically OK for winter: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28sunrise%2C+Rome%2C+2...

And: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601...

> we can't store the energy from summer for winter and also resist for say 2 weeks of snow and clouds

You, personally, can't store 2 weeks of energy (though it's closer than you may expect, 1 person-week of Italian average electrical consumption is ~= 1 EV battery*). But you personally don't have to, transmission to another part of the country (or continent) has a huge impact on how much storage you need.

Basically, this problem is known, it's not all that difficult to work around — everything on the scale of "national power supply" is expensive and has pros and cons, PV isn't particularly remarkable in the scale or cost of those pros and cons even with current solutions and assuming no R&D effort can improve the trade-offs, they're just different than the pros and cons of the other options.

* https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%28%28300+terawatt-h...