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I hope you noticed the news about Gazprom possibly intentionally keeping gas reserves in Germany low for months before the Russian invasion in preparation of sa

by jhgb 4y ago

I hope you noticed the news about Gazprom possibly intentionally keeping gas reserves in Germany low for months before the Russian invasion in preparation of said invasion. You can't make a strategic stockpile if your potential enemy is your supplier and preventively doesn't allow you make those stockpiles in the first place so that you didn't have this way out.

trashtester 4y ago
You could turn that on its head. Had Germany created uranium stockpiles in 2014, enough to last, say, 5 years, they would not be vulnerable to this tactic in the first place.
- Tretioh 4y ago
  And now we replay an earlier argument on if Germany would have continued with the renewable transition, we wouldn't need any stockpile oof gas or uran from Russia.
- jhgb 4y ago
  Considering that you can't use raw uranium but need fuel assemblies, you'd need a replacement manufacturer of fuel assemblies, not just a uranium stockpile. But of course Germany was scheduled to shut down its nuclear power plants in 2022-ish anyway so a stockpile would have been largely meaningless.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    Pretty sure you can have your stockpiles pre-assebled, or close enough that the final step is trivial. Anyway, my argument i built on the premise that Germany should never have shut down their nuclear power plants (except when they truely are "spent") and instead built a large number of new ones. If their nuclear capacity was about the same as the French, it would make a lot of sense to have a strategic stockpile of ready-to-use fuel, both in case supply is restricted for political reasons and because it would serve as a hedge against price fluctuations.
    - jhgb 4y ago
      Or, they could just shut down their nuclear plants and the problem with nuclear fuel stockpile goes away as well. And in fact, this is vastly easier to accomplish, and exactly the thing they're already doing.
      - trashtester 4y ago
        If you scroll up the thread a bit, the context was that someone claimed that Germany would be less dependent on Germany if they had kept more of their nuclear power plants. That is something they might have figured out in 2014. Going as heavy on natural gas as they have over the last generation, more or less ensures that they are in Russia's pocket. Shutting down nuclear plants does not make that better. In fact, I argue, it makes it worse.
        jhgb 4y ago
        > the context was that someone claimed that Germany would be less dependent on Germany if they had kept more of their nuclear power plants Except I'd already refuted that claim, so it didn't make sense to labor under this misconception any further to begin with.
        trashtester 4y ago
        It seems to me that your argument is circular. Your refutation of the possibility of to use Nuclear power to gain independence of Russian energy seems to depend on German inability to achieve indepencende of Russian fuel by setting up a stockpile(1). Which in turn is justified by claiming that the stockpile would not be needed, since they would shut down their nuclear plants(2). Which is justified by (1), which is justified by (2) and so on. My argument is that, had Germany decided in 2014 to increase, rather than decrease their use of nuclear power, with the aim to reduce dependence on Russia, it could be done. But given that, they would have to start looking for (possibly in cooperation with their allies) other sources of fuel to really become independent, in other words, set up agreements to buy fuel from countries like Australia and Canada, on top of whatever fuel was being bought from Russia before 2022. Basically, my argument requires BOTH of these steps to be taken: - Decide to keep or increase energy production from nuclear - Decide to work towards independence of Russia by funding alternative sources + by putting any extra fuel they purchase into a strategic stockpile. (Edit: formatting.) These are clearly decisions that were available to Germany (as a country, provided the public had been primed to support them). I don't find the spot in your argument that refutes any of them, without already assuming that the other is impossible. Also, I don't find where in your argument, in what way these decisions, if taken together, would NOT ensure that Germany would have more energy production capacity in 2022 than they have now.
roenxi 4y ago
You're misjudging the differences between uranium and gas. Transporting and building a uranium reserve would be relatively easy; maintaining a 10 year stockpile and importing from Canada, Australia or Kazakhstan via a circuitous route are all feasible. This doesn't work with natural gas because they needed a lot of it and moving it around is capital intensive. The situations are completely different. The energy densities here are wildly dissimilar, and that matters a lot for the economic of building a stockpile.
- jhgb 4y ago
  > You're misjudging the differences between uranium and gas. So do you. > Transporting and building a uranium reserve would be relatively easy; maintaining a 10 year stockpile and importing from Canada, Australia or Kazakhstan via a circuitous route are all feasible. See, that's the problem. One of the differences between natural gas and uranium is that (outside of CANDU reactors) you can't use the uranium "as is". To use uranium for pretty much anything useful, you need certain high-tech facilities. By production capacity, almost half of those facilities (according to [1], it's 46 percent) is in Russia. The way things are, you can't build a stockpile if the expected value of uranium fuel production outside of Russia is lower than the expected value of uranium fuel consumption outside of Russia, which I believe is currently the case. As long as this remains to be a case, any stockpile will dwindle, not grow. [1] https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/research/commentary/reducing-russian-involvement-western-nuclear-power-markets https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/research/commentary/re...

by jhgb 4y ago

trashtester 4y ago

You could turn that on its head. Had Germany created uranium stockpiles in 2014, enough to last, say, 5 years, they would not be vulnerable to this tactic in the first place.

Tretioh 4y ago
And now we replay an earlier argument on if Germany would have continued with the renewable transition, we wouldn't need any stockpile oof gas or uran from Russia.
jhgb 4y ago
Considering that you can't use raw uranium but need fuel assemblies, you'd need a replacement manufacturer of fuel assemblies, not just a uranium stockpile. But of course Germany was scheduled to shut down its nuclear power plants in 2022-ish anyway so a stockpile would have been largely meaningless.
- trashtester 4y ago
  Pretty sure you can have your stockpiles pre-assebled, or close enough that the final step is trivial. Anyway, my argument i built on the premise that Germany should never have shut down their nuclear power plants (except when they truely are "spent") and instead built a large number of new ones. If their nuclear capacity was about the same as the French, it would make a lot of sense to have a strategic stockpile of ready-to-use fuel, both in case supply is restricted for political reasons and because it would serve as a hedge against price fluctuations.
  - jhgb 4y ago
    Or, they could just shut down their nuclear plants and the problem with nuclear fuel stockpile goes away as well. And in fact, this is vastly easier to accomplish, and exactly the thing they're already doing.
    - trashtester 4y ago
      If you scroll up the thread a bit, the context was that someone claimed that Germany would be less dependent on Germany if they had kept more of their nuclear power plants. That is something they might have figured out in 2014. Going as heavy on natural gas as they have over the last generation, more or less ensures that they are in Russia's pocket. Shutting down nuclear plants does not make that better. In fact, I argue, it makes it worse.
      - jhgb 4y ago
        > the context was that someone claimed that Germany would be less dependent on Germany if they had kept more of their nuclear power plants Except I'd already refuted that claim, so it didn't make sense to labor under this misconception any further to begin with.
        trashtester 4y ago
        It seems to me that your argument is circular. Your refutation of the possibility of to use Nuclear power to gain independence of Russian energy seems to depend on German inability to achieve indepencende of Russian fuel by setting up a stockpile(1). Which in turn is justified by claiming that the stockpile would not be needed, since they would shut down their nuclear plants(2). Which is justified by (1), which is justified by (2) and so on. My argument is that, had Germany decided in 2014 to increase, rather than decrease their use of nuclear power, with the aim to reduce dependence on Russia, it could be done. But given that, they would have to start looking for (possibly in cooperation with their allies) other sources of fuel to really become independent, in other words, set up agreements to buy fuel from countries like Australia and Canada, on top of whatever fuel was being bought from Russia before 2022. Basically, my argument requires BOTH of these steps to be taken: - Decide to keep or increase energy production from nuclear - Decide to work towards independence of Russia by funding alternative sources + by putting any extra fuel they purchase into a strategic stockpile. (Edit: formatting.) These are clearly decisions that were available to Germany (as a country, provided the public had been primed to support them). I don't find the spot in your argument that refutes any of them, without already assuming that the other is impossible. Also, I don't find where in your argument, in what way these decisions, if taken together, would NOT ensure that Germany would have more energy production capacity in 2022 than they have now.

roenxi 4y ago

You're misjudging the differences between uranium and gas. Transporting and building a uranium reserve would be relatively easy; maintaining a 10 year stockpile and importing from Canada, Australia or Kazakhstan via a circuitous route are all feasible. This doesn't work with natural gas because they needed a lot of it and moving it around is capital intensive. The situations are completely different. The energy densities here are wildly dissimilar, and that matters a lot for the economic of building a stockpile.

jhgb 4y ago
> You're misjudging the differences between uranium and gas. So do you. > Transporting and building a uranium reserve would be relatively easy; maintaining a 10 year stockpile and importing from Canada, Australia or Kazakhstan via a circuitous route are all feasible. See, that's the problem. One of the differences between natural gas and uranium is that (outside of CANDU reactors) you can't use the uranium "as is". To use uranium for pretty much anything useful, you need certain high-tech facilities. By production capacity, almost half of those facilities (according to [1], it's 46 percent) is in Russia. The way things are, you can't build a stockpile if the expected value of uranium fuel production outside of Russia is lower than the expected value of uranium fuel consumption outside of Russia, which I believe is currently the case. As long as this remains to be a case, any stockpile will dwindle, not grow. [1] https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/research/commentary/reducing-russian-involvement-western-nuclear-power-markets https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/research/commentary/re...