4 ms·

During the previous six years, it struck me as completely bizarre that there was any pushback for bringing manufacturing or energy production back locally. It d

During the previous six years, it struck me as completely bizarre that there was any pushback for bringing manufacturing or energy production back locally. It doesn’t have to be nationalist, it’s just adding redundancy in case your trading partner realizes they have over powered leverage. No business wants to concede to a vendor that they are irreplaceable. Edit: Likewise, watching Germany dismantle its nuclear infrastructure over the last several decades for… what reason exactly? Replacing a clean, cheap, on-demand energy source for dependence on foreign energy imports? Even if you think global trade is panacea, why throw out working critical infrastructure and replace it with something beyond control?

tawaypol 5y ago
It's tempting to think that the governments of these states have been infiltrated by their enemies.
- TremendousJudge 5y ago
  Hanlon's razor applies here I think. Don't attribute to "the enemy" what can be adequately explained by incompetence.
  - mnadkvlb 5y ago
    Maybe. but existance of leaders like Gerhard Schröder displays a different story. (he is sitting on russian gas companies’ boards, after heavily going against nuclear). No shit the leaders failed the country for their own gains, seems like.
    - barrenko 5y ago
      The incompetent and the corrupt and more often than not the same person.
      - lallysingh 5y ago
        They don't know what the right answer is, but they know the answer that gets them paid.
      - chrisdhoover 5y ago
        I think you just made a statement that should be repeated often and attributed to you. Barrenko’s corallary or something. Somebody help me with the name. I want see this used and a Wikipedia entry on it
  - lallysingh 5y ago
    Be careful. Incompetence is an almost infinite sink for blame, and it's easy to misattributed to it what really belongs somewhere else.
  - anamax 5y ago
    Incompetence doesn't have a bias. Malice does. More to the point, Hanlon's Razor is usually an excuse to do nothing, which is a mistake. It's better to assume that people intend the likely outcome of their actions. If they want to claim stupidity/incompetence as a defene, that's on them.
newaccount74 5y ago
Energy politics in the public discourse was often dominated by environmental concerns, and there wasn't a singular focus on CO2 as we have now. Gas has been a popular choice, because it is a lot cleaner than coal / light oil / wood from a local pollution perspective. It burns cleanly, so switching to gas heating significantly reduces pollution in cities. Nuclear energy is NOT clean, because it has the huge unsolved problem of what to do with the radioactive waste. Nobody wants radioactive waste anywhere near them, and there just isn't any place where you can put radioactive waste where it will be safe for a few hundred years. But the biggest reason for our fear of nuclear energy is Chernobyl. It's been 37 years, and Chernobyl is still a danger.
- newbamboo 5y ago
  Well it’s hard to accept German stupidity as the official narrative but there it is. Fear of radiation Uber Alles.
- jonhohle 5y ago
  Nuclear fuel is recyclable. The safe place to put it is back in a reactor. There are political reasons that doesn’t happen, but not technical reasons. Globally, nuclear has lower deaths per kWh than even wind, and significantly lower than natural gas or oil. From a US centric perspective, nuclear energy is by far the safest by an order of magnitude[0]. Even a catastrophe like Chernobyl resulted in the deaths of fewer people than a single year of oil and gas drilling. 0 - https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/01/25/natural-gas-and-the-new-deathprint-for-energy/?sh=f3c30935e197 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/01/25/natural-g...
  - newaccount74 5y ago
    > Nuclear fuel is recyclable In theory, to some extent. But it's mostly an academic argument. The power plants that are currently in use that people are protesting against do not recycle their waste. This argument feels a lot like you are just passing the ball to the next generation. "Hey kids, we used up all the uranium for cheap power and left you with caves full of radioactive waste. But don't worry, you can recycle it!" As for the dangers of nuclear vs. gas, the big difference is where the danger is. Nuclear power plants bring the danger close to the population, and people just don't want that. And finally, another issue that noone appears to mention is that electric heating isn't very popular here. Most people heat their homes with gas furnaces, so even if we'd switch to nuclear power we would need to replace millions of furnaces and massively expand the electric grid. (This is slowly changing. Lots of new homes use good insulation and electric heat pumps for heating instead of gas, but it's not something that can be easily retrofitted in existing homes)
siscia 5y ago
Adding redundancies is bad from an economic view centered in the next few months.
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
It's difficult to keep those local industries going when international competition can undercut them and WTO membership hampers your ability to compensate for this. Joining the WTO (and several other lesser-known organizations) is simply giving away part of your sovereignty and ability to react to domestic needs in favor of access to cheap goods and services.

tawaypol 5y ago

It's tempting to think that the governments of these states have been infiltrated by their enemies.

TremendousJudge 5y ago
Hanlon's razor applies here I think. Don't attribute to "the enemy" what can be adequately explained by incompetence.
- mnadkvlb 5y ago
  Maybe. but existance of leaders like Gerhard Schröder displays a different story. (he is sitting on russian gas companies’ boards, after heavily going against nuclear). No shit the leaders failed the country for their own gains, seems like.
  - barrenko 5y ago
    The incompetent and the corrupt and more often than not the same person.
    - lallysingh 5y ago
      They don't know what the right answer is, but they know the answer that gets them paid.
    - chrisdhoover 5y ago
      I think you just made a statement that should be repeated often and attributed to you. Barrenko’s corallary or something. Somebody help me with the name. I want see this used and a Wikipedia entry on it
- lallysingh 5y ago
  Be careful. Incompetence is an almost infinite sink for blame, and it's easy to misattributed to it what really belongs somewhere else.
- anamax 5y ago
  Incompetence doesn't have a bias. Malice does. More to the point, Hanlon's Razor is usually an excuse to do nothing, which is a mistake. It's better to assume that people intend the likely outcome of their actions. If they want to claim stupidity/incompetence as a defene, that's on them.

newaccount74 5y ago

Energy politics in the public discourse was often dominated by environmental concerns, and there wasn't a singular focus on CO2 as we have now. Gas has been a popular choice, because it is a lot cleaner than coal / light oil / wood from a local pollution perspective. It burns cleanly, so switching to gas heating significantly reduces pollution in cities. Nuclear energy is NOT clean, because it has the huge unsolved problem of what to do with the radioactive waste. Nobody wants radioactive waste anywhere near them, and there just isn't any place where you can put radioactive waste where it will be safe for a few hundred years. But the biggest reason for our fear of nuclear energy is Chernobyl. It's been 37 years, and Chernobyl is still a danger.

newbamboo 5y ago
Well it’s hard to accept German stupidity as the official narrative but there it is. Fear of radiation Uber Alles.
jonhohle 5y ago
Nuclear fuel is recyclable. The safe place to put it is back in a reactor. There are political reasons that doesn’t happen, but not technical reasons. Globally, nuclear has lower deaths per kWh than even wind, and significantly lower than natural gas or oil. From a US centric perspective, nuclear energy is by far the safest by an order of magnitude[0]. Even a catastrophe like Chernobyl resulted in the deaths of fewer people than a single year of oil and gas drilling. 0 - https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/01/25/natural-gas-and-the-new-deathprint-for-energy/?sh=f3c30935e197 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/01/25/natural-g...
- newaccount74 5y ago
  > Nuclear fuel is recyclable In theory, to some extent. But it's mostly an academic argument. The power plants that are currently in use that people are protesting against do not recycle their waste. This argument feels a lot like you are just passing the ball to the next generation. "Hey kids, we used up all the uranium for cheap power and left you with caves full of radioactive waste. But don't worry, you can recycle it!" As for the dangers of nuclear vs. gas, the big difference is where the danger is. Nuclear power plants bring the danger close to the population, and people just don't want that. And finally, another issue that noone appears to mention is that electric heating isn't very popular here. Most people heat their homes with gas furnaces, so even if we'd switch to nuclear power we would need to replace millions of furnaces and massively expand the electric grid. (This is slowly changing. Lots of new homes use good insulation and electric heat pumps for heating instead of gas, but it's not something that can be easily retrofitted in existing homes)

siscia 5y ago

Adding redundancies is bad from an economic view centered in the next few months.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

It's difficult to keep those local industries going when international competition can undercut them and WTO membership hampers your ability to compensate for this. Joining the WTO (and several other lesser-known organizations) is simply giving away part of your sovereignty and ability to react to domestic needs in favor of access to cheap goods and services.