91–100 of 105 posts
The 1970s: When you have cheap coal and gas it would be financially stupid to invest in nuclear. Which is why most countries never did. Today: when a single nuclear powerplant is estimated at 20 billion you calculate how many windmills you can build for that money. Ironically wind power is now the proven technology.
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Russia is encircling themselves with NATO by bullying everyone around them.
This is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation; 1 - Nato was formed as a defence block against the "second Russian Empire" i.e. the Soviet Union and is still around to counter the budding "third Russian Empire". 2 - even since being conquered by the Mongol Empire Russia has been paranoid about the possibility of some conquering entity crossing its long border to rush into its vast territory. They want mountain ranges,…
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Russia has five thousand nuclear warheads. If they want to turn Ukraine into a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland they can do so today. A nuclear plant getting bombed would result in some nuclear contamination but not _that_ much, and accidental bombing of a nuclear power plant won't result in a mushroom cloud. Taking a nuclear plant out of commission with bombs is easy, re-creating Chernobyl is very hard even if you…
>Russia has five thousand nuclear warheads Nuclear weapons are barely relevant to the conversation other than that they also use fissile material. >accidental bombing of a nuclear power plant won't result in a mushroom cloud Yes... as I stated. >Nuclear plants are not weapons of war and they serve no military purpose That's incorrect. Once again, the Zaporizhzhia NPP has played quite a large role in the war in that r…
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Russia has five thousand nuclear warheads. If they want to turn Ukraine into a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland they can do so today. A nuclear plant getting bombed would result in some nuclear contamination but not _that_ much, and accidental bombing of a nuclear power plant won't result in a mushroom cloud. Taking a nuclear plant out of commission with bombs is easy, re-creating Chernobyl is very hard even if you…
>Russia has five thousand nuclear warheads Nuclear weapons are barely relevant to the conversation other than that they also use fissile material. >accidental bombing of a nuclear power plant won't result in a mushroom cloud Yes... as I stated. >Nuclear plants are not weapons of war and they serve no military purpose That's incorrect. Once again, the Zaporizhzhia NPP has played quite a large role in the war in that r…
Ukraine's military response is limited because the power plant is extremely valuable (monetarily as well as energy it produces) and they don't want to break it. But that's not what you argued.
I get the impression your argument changed from radiation risk to risk of electricity shortage. But if that is your concern you presumably would be fine with a country having many small nuclear reactors instead of a handful of large ones. But I suspect you'll change your argument again to make the case that small nuclear reactors are somehow bad, too.
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Making your plans around existential crises happening to your nation is foolish. There isn't going to just be "a war" in Germany - there never was. A war in germany is a war with NATO, which is a nuclear war, and thus "what if the nuclear powerplant is hit" is rather mundane compared to "our cities and citizens have been incinerated".
Just look at the explosion of the north stream pipelines. Whether this were government actors, terrorists, or a rogue military interest group independent of government decisions is unknown. But the very same can happen with nuclear plants. Yes they are protected against terrorist attacks (to some extend), but once you factor in military grade capability, the security assumptions crumble. No need for a full-blown nucl…
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And this has absolutely nothing to do with having to maintain a nuclear stockpile, because France unlike other nations in the European Union doesn't have nuclear weapons. /s
Come on man, everybody knows France has their own nuclear weapons, have had for many decades.
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Just look at the explosion of the north stream pipelines. Whether this were government actors, terrorists, or a rogue military interest group independent of government decisions is unknown. But the very same can happen with nuclear plants. Yes they are protected against terrorist attacks (to some extend), but once you factor in military grade capability, the security assumptions crumble. No need for a full-blown nucl…
That argument is exclusively used for nuclear. Hydroelectric is far more vulnerable to bombing, but we don't pearl clutch about that risk. And yes, a capable military can -- if they so choose -- turn a nuclear plant into a dirty bomb with sufficient explosives. But why go through that trouble when you can just drop a dirty bomb directly on top of a city center? That's a far more effective way of spreading nuclear rad…
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Wealth distribution is important, because very rich people disproportionately buy up limited-supply assets in order to earn passive income on them. In densely populated places, that includes assets like homes, which pushes up housing costs. Housing costs often aren't included in popular measures of inflation. If you do use an inflation measure that includes housing and all other everyday expenditure, then I think it'…
Unless someone buys up so many properties they can start unilaterally increasing prices, the problem with housing going up isn't rich people buying them and renting them at a market rate. It's the amount of demand vs supply that does it. And you're right - this is possibly the single biggest issue that's a downgrade for people vs their parents/grandparents, and it's a huge one. But the problem needs to be attributed…
Seems to be mostly an American problem, like many others.
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Wealth distribution is important, because very rich people disproportionately buy up limited-supply assets in order to earn passive income on them. In densely populated places, that includes assets like homes, which pushes up housing costs. Housing costs often aren't included in popular measures of inflation. If you do use an inflation measure that includes housing and all other everyday expenditure, then I think it'…
Unless someone buys up so many properties they can start unilaterally increasing prices, the problem with housing going up isn't rich people buying them and renting them at a market rate. It's the amount of demand vs supply that does it. And you're right - this is possibly the single biggest issue that's a downgrade for people vs their parents/grandparents, and it's a huge one. But the problem needs to be attributed…
I agree it doesn't necessarily mean rents rises. You might actually expect higher price to earnings ratio with more wealthy people competing to buy assets (see also stocks).
But it will lead to the shrinking of the home-owning middle class.
That's not to say there isn't also a problem with lack of supply.
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I wonder if it would make sense to house these reactors in underground facilities to the extent possible to harden them against at least accidental threats?
how do you cool them if they are underground?
(I'm sure there are 500 reasons why that’s a bad idea)