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You left out proliferation of dual-use technologies. The fewer countries with advanced nuclear capabilities, the more thinly spread the expertise necessary to

You left out proliferation of dual-use technologies. The fewer countries with advanced nuclear capabilities, the more thinly spread the expertise necessary to build nuclear weapons. If Russia didn't have nukes, its imperialistic ambitious would be curtailed. The ability to shield conventional assaults behind a nuclear threat is destabilizing for the rules-based world order.

qwytw 5y ago
Is this also sarcasm? So you're saying that building this plant has increase the chance Finland will try to acquire Nuclear weapons? And Russia has nukes purely due to political and military reasons, they'd still have more than enough of them if they mostly started closing/stopped building new plants after Chernobyl.
- rectang 5y ago
  No, it's not sarcasm — I would appreciate it if you would be a little more generous when interpreting my remark. The proliferation problem is exacerbated incrementally by every additional plant in every additional country — including this one. The issue is not Finland in particular developing nuclear weapons, but any country developing nuclear weapons — especially a country governed by an autocracy. Or a country that might be governed by an autocracy in the future — the last few years have raised the urgency of the problem of democratic backsliding, which we need to figure out how to avert.
  - yakubin 5y ago
    The countries which are least trustworthy wrt nuclear weapons are the ones that aren't going to ask the public's permission. An autocracy doesn't need to power itself by nuclear plants in order to have nuclear weapons. On the other hand having a sustainable, clean source of power not tied to autocratic regimes lowers the leverage those regimes hold over democratic countries. In my particular country, a major chunk of the public budget goes towards paying fines to EU for use of coal, all while our government periodically passes bills allowing it to borrow more money from the central bank, increasing inflation. Negotiations with neighbouring autocratic countries can be pretty tough, when they can threaten us and rest of Europe, which is going to put pressure, with stopping energy transmission. Energy shortages in some parts of the country were a regular occurrence for decades, even before the current political problems. Lack of nuclear plants does nothing to prevent a nuclear war, while it harms us on many very tangible levels.
    - rectang 5y ago
      See https://whatisnuclear.com/non-proliferation.html#how-is-nuclear-power-tied-to-nuclear-non-proliferation https://whatisnuclear.com/non-proliferation.html#how-is-nucl... for one of the mechanisms whereby dual-use technology presents issues: obtaining fissile material is difficult, and while nuclear power plants are not a prerequisite, they make it easier. I agree that dependence on geopolitically and environmentally problematic fossil fuel sources is a pressing concern.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      > In my particular country... But yet [your country] is not lost?
      - yakubin 5y ago
        What do you mean by "lost"?
        CRConrad 5y ago
        Just a guess at what country you were talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland_Is_Not_Yet_Lost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland_Is_Not_Yet_Lost . OK, so not Poland, then. :-)
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    An interesting example is Japan. Japan has a large reactor grade plutonium stockpile. This was ostensibly for their fast reactor program, but that's dead now. So, the plutonium just sits there. It's not ideal for weapons (being reactor not weapons grade) but it can be made to work, so Japan has the potential capability to make thousands of warheads if they need to.
- jrockway 5y ago
  I don't think it's sarcasm. Maybe North Korea is a better example. It would probably just be "Korea" if they didn't have nukes, but you can't exactly go in and overthrow the government when they can just wipe out all human life on the peninsula in an instant. (People get upset at the implication that one country would take over another country, but the people of North Korea would probably not be worse off if that happened. Instead they suffer greatly because nobody can help them.)
  - RobertMiller 5y ago
    > It would probably just be "Korea" if they didn't have nukes Their first nuclear test was in 2006. Even their production of refined uranium and plutonium only began in the 80s, decades after the war came to a standstill.
    - jrockway 5y ago
      Kind of a case of ignoring geopolitical debt, I guess. Anybody who wants to fix the problem today has an impossible task that was once possible.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        Seems to indicate that the general rule of thumb should be to fix shit like that ASAP, so it won't over time get impossible to fix.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    > People get upset at the implication that one country would take over another country If anyone is upset that the people of the German "Democratic" Republic got to join the rest of "We, the people" in a free Federal Republic, they're cordially invited to go fuck themselves. The same would go ten times over for anyone feeling that way about the much more oppressed North Koreans.
fsflover 5y ago
https://whatisnuclear.com/non-proliferation.html https://whatisnuclear.com/non-proliferation.html
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
Russia imperialistic ambitions would be far more modest if Europe and US wouldn't fill Putin's coffers with hundreds of billions of dollars and euros in exchange for oil and gas. You know, the things they use instead of Nuclear energy.
- rectang 5y ago
  Indeed, we are left with (from my perspective) all bad choices in the short-to-medium term. In the US, we made a least-bad calculation when choosing the environmental cost of fracking over the geopolitical costs of depending on dictator oil. Now Europe gets to make similar calculations. I'd sure like it if less inherently dangerous technologies were further along. But every year they are gaining.

qwytw 5y ago

Is this also sarcasm? So you're saying that building this plant has increase the chance Finland will try to acquire Nuclear weapons? And Russia has nukes purely due to political and military reasons, they'd still have more than enough of them if they mostly started closing/stopped building new plants after Chernobyl.

rectang 5y ago
No, it's not sarcasm — I would appreciate it if you would be a little more generous when interpreting my remark. The proliferation problem is exacerbated incrementally by every additional plant in every additional country — including this one. The issue is not Finland in particular developing nuclear weapons, but any country developing nuclear weapons — especially a country governed by an autocracy. Or a country that might be governed by an autocracy in the future — the last few years have raised the urgency of the problem of democratic backsliding, which we need to figure out how to avert.
- yakubin 5y ago
  The countries which are least trustworthy wrt nuclear weapons are the ones that aren't going to ask the public's permission. An autocracy doesn't need to power itself by nuclear plants in order to have nuclear weapons. On the other hand having a sustainable, clean source of power not tied to autocratic regimes lowers the leverage those regimes hold over democratic countries. In my particular country, a major chunk of the public budget goes towards paying fines to EU for use of coal, all while our government periodically passes bills allowing it to borrow more money from the central bank, increasing inflation. Negotiations with neighbouring autocratic countries can be pretty tough, when they can threaten us and rest of Europe, which is going to put pressure, with stopping energy transmission. Energy shortages in some parts of the country were a regular occurrence for decades, even before the current political problems. Lack of nuclear plants does nothing to prevent a nuclear war, while it harms us on many very tangible levels.
  - rectang 5y ago
    See https://whatisnuclear.com/non-proliferation.html#how-is-nuclear-power-tied-to-nuclear-non-proliferation https://whatisnuclear.com/non-proliferation.html#how-is-nucl... for one of the mechanisms whereby dual-use technology presents issues: obtaining fissile material is difficult, and while nuclear power plants are not a prerequisite, they make it easier. I agree that dependence on geopolitically and environmentally problematic fossil fuel sources is a pressing concern.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    > In my particular country... But yet [your country] is not lost?
    - yakubin 5y ago
      What do you mean by "lost"?
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        Just a guess at what country you were talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland_Is_Not_Yet_Lost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland_Is_Not_Yet_Lost . OK, so not Poland, then. :-)
- pfdietz 5y ago
  An interesting example is Japan. Japan has a large reactor grade plutonium stockpile. This was ostensibly for their fast reactor program, but that's dead now. So, the plutonium just sits there. It's not ideal for weapons (being reactor not weapons grade) but it can be made to work, so Japan has the potential capability to make thousands of warheads if they need to.
jrockway 5y ago
I don't think it's sarcasm. Maybe North Korea is a better example. It would probably just be "Korea" if they didn't have nukes, but you can't exactly go in and overthrow the government when they can just wipe out all human life on the peninsula in an instant. (People get upset at the implication that one country would take over another country, but the people of North Korea would probably not be worse off if that happened. Instead they suffer greatly because nobody can help them.)
- RobertMiller 5y ago
  > It would probably just be "Korea" if they didn't have nukes Their first nuclear test was in 2006. Even their production of refined uranium and plutonium only began in the 80s, decades after the war came to a standstill.
  - jrockway 5y ago
    Kind of a case of ignoring geopolitical debt, I guess. Anybody who wants to fix the problem today has an impossible task that was once possible.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      Seems to indicate that the general rule of thumb should be to fix shit like that ASAP, so it won't over time get impossible to fix.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > People get upset at the implication that one country would take over another country If anyone is upset that the people of the German "Democratic" Republic got to join the rest of "We, the people" in a free Federal Republic, they're cordially invited to go fuck themselves. The same would go ten times over for anyone feeling that way about the much more oppressed North Koreans.

fsflover 5y ago

https://whatisnuclear.com/non-proliferation.html https://whatisnuclear.com/non-proliferation.html

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

Russia imperialistic ambitions would be far more modest if Europe and US wouldn't fill Putin's coffers with hundreds of billions of dollars and euros in exchange for oil and gas. You know, the things they use instead of Nuclear energy.

rectang 5y ago
Indeed, we are left with (from my perspective) all bad choices in the short-to-medium term. In the US, we made a least-bad calculation when choosing the environmental cost of fracking over the geopolitical costs of depending on dictator oil. Now Europe gets to make similar calculations. I'd sure like it if less inherently dangerous technologies were further along. But every year they are gaining.