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This place started to think in memes I feel. Every issue comes with the automated arguments, the same ones every time. If the topic is energy someone must write

by mrtksn 4y ago

This place started to think in memes I feel. Every issue comes with the automated arguments, the same ones every time. If the topic is energy someone must write the "they shouldn't have closed those Nuclear power plants, silly environmentalist". Anyway, France is full blown nuclear state and they are having energy issues too, because as it turns out nuclear power plants require long regular maintenance periods. Maybe there's no simple answer for energy issues and countries don't simply build or close down power plants over single issue? Maybe it wasn't done just to please some tree huggers? Maybe someone in Germany could have had crunched the numbers too and see the risks? Maybe some politicians were too close to fossil fuel money? Maybe it was considered as a way to keep the relationship with Russia profitable for Russia and encourage Russia to build good relationships with their primary customer? Maybe EU wanted to have Russia as a reliable petrostate as an alternative to the USA so they can do their thing without USA? Maybe they wanted to reduce their footing in Africa by not relying for them in Uranium production? Maybe it make more economical sense to use the non-nuclear solutions? Just maybe it wasn't a single issue decision even if it didn't play out as hoped? Europe is acutely aware of its tight energy situation, that's why they have been regulating the efficiency since decades, it's not coincidence that in Europe everything is very energy efficient. They squeezed it to the point where faster water heaters and more powerful vacuums were presented as Brexit benefits. Oh, I'm so fed up by this culture war.

mensetmanusman 4y ago
Culture is preference. Democracy is voting preference. Authoritarians get fed up with competing preferences and squash other preferences/opinions but risk making the wrong decisions.
mjthrowaway1 4y ago
While the arguments are repetitive this isn’t a culture war. The EU made its bed (or more likely, imported it) and now has to sleep in it. Deindustrialization has been ongoing.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  In California, I get physical mail pamphlets that help me prepare for power outages and what I should do to reduce quality of life. It’s not from PG&E, but our city.
  - landemva 4y ago
    German government published a cookbook to teach people how to cook without electricity. "Kochen ohne Strom" https://www.bbk.bund.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2021/09/pm-27-kochen-ohne-strom.html https://www.bbk.bund.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/202... It would have been useful to keep coal powered electric plants in use and stocked with a mountain of coal.
    - cinntaile 4y ago
      They will likely keep some coal plants online longer than was originally planned, so that is definitely a thing. They even restarted some plants to reduce their current dependency on Russian gas.
      - landemva 4y ago
        There have been logistics issues getting coal to the plants. It feels like energy production followed the manufacturing motto of "just in time" instead of stockpiling the input coal. This lack of resilience was unnecessary.
        cinntaile 4y ago
        It is an ad hoc solution to the current situation so I'm not surprised it's not exactly smooth sailing. It doesn't help that they recently shut down some of their reactors, they could have at least kept them open until the situation stabilized.
        hef19898 4y ago
        I am not aware cial, usually shipped in bulk and very easily stored, was ever delivered JIT. But whatever, JIT was already the reason why the chip supply from Asia to overseas car factories was disrupted, at least according to certain people without the slightest clue of how JIT works. Or supply chains in general...
throw827474737 4y ago
Yeah 100%, given we need to keep our nuclears now on to mainly support France's rotten ones and neglecting the lobbying and corruption that happened and didn't get us much further away from fossil+nuclear (we are shedding wind and bio gas right now again) is the actual depressing thing..
xienze 4y ago
> Maybe there's no simple answer for energy issues and countries don't simply build or close down power plants over single issue? Well, two things. One, pretty sure the push to shut down Germany’s nuclear plants was a response to a single issue, Fukushima. Two, one simple answer to this particular situation is to assess your energy independence before sanctioning the country you rely on for natural gas. Germany is getting raked over the coals with the same talking points precisely because they walked into a situation they weren’t well-equipped to handle.
- mrtksn 4y ago
  Nuclear power plant construction is flat since Chernobyl and seen slight decline after Fukushima: https://dropover.cloud/ec077b#c8239728-7d32-49ab-98c7-865fb0b2644e https://dropover.cloud/ec077b#c8239728-7d32-49ab-98c7-865fb0... Safety concerns are definitely an issue that can nudge you to prefer alternative sources but this doesn't make it single issue. It's simply one of the things you consider. As you can see, despite NPP construction stalling in late 1980s, world energy consumption continued to increase: https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption This simply means, considering the risks and cost of all energy sources, nuclear power fell unfavourably. Doesn't mean single issue.
  - godelski 4y ago
    I think this is mostly due to the fact that the advantage of nuclear is long term and humans -- and especially politicians and bureaucrats -- aren't good at long term planning. Globally we basically rolled out a bunch of nuclear plants and went "welp, that'll hold us off for the next 50-60 years." It's like exercising and eating right for a year and expecting this to keep you healthy for decades as you eat poorly with little to no exercise. Maintenance and continual production is key to cost reduction and advancement but this is something nuclear never got. I really do think nuclear's biggest flaw is its lifespan. Just allows people to get lazy.
- landemva 4y ago
  > assess your energy independence before sanctioning the country you rely on for natural gas. Trump blurted that to the Germans around 2019. The press brushed it off as "highly misleading". https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/trump-is-exaggerating-germanys-reliance-on-russia-for-energy.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/trump-is-exaggerating-german...
scifibestfi 4y ago
The people are fed up with dangerously incompetent leadership, who literally laughed when warned to not be dependent on Russia for energy. It's not a meaningless culture war. The loss of energy means lower standard of living at best and mass death and famine at worst.
- mrtksn 4y ago
  The solution is not obvious, it's obvious only to zealots. It's kind of obvious that the solution is in PHV and wind energy but you can fight it to death with people who would claim that it's obvious that the solution is Nuclear energy. This is not a good discussion, this is fanatics fighting. Anytime someone suggest simple solution to a big problem %99.9 of the time they don't actually have a simple and obvious solution.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    > The solution is not obvious, The problem of relying on Russia for energy was obvious. There isn't a singular "the solution" because there were many possible solutions, nuclear energy being just one. In addition to investing in wind/solar, there are other solutions besides nuclear. Particularly, fracing and coal mining. Both of these are unpopular for obvious reasons (which is the reason everybody talks about nuclear instead), but I think both are better than the political autonomy of an entire subcontinent being threatened by a belligerent foe.
    - neodypsis 4y ago
      > The problem of relying on Russia for energy was obvious. Indeed. Always found it strange that Germany didn't see a problem with relying on Russia for their main energy source.
      - megous 4y ago
        Germans would have happily helped train Russian military if 2014 did not happen. Money's good.
sascha_sl 4y ago
> as it turns out nuclear power plants require long regular maintenance periods. That's because everyone has been operating their PWRs/BWRs way beyond the design lifespan, which would be fine if we didn't just stop building new ones in the past 20-40 years (depending on country) to prevent too many of them needing regular maintenance at once.
- godelski 4y ago
  This is something I never understand about the anti-nuclear crowd. There are plenty of good arguments against nuclear but most often the ones used are not that great.[0] I mean we could talk about the expense of them and that they require long-term investments, making them not attractive to bureaucrats and political leaders, which led to the situation of extending lifetimes, losing knowledge, and increasing maintenance periods. Which let's be real, that's a critical flaw if it requires humans to act in ways that aren't what humans typically do. But maybe that's why we always fight. I mean the pro nuclear camp isn't that much better as there are plenty of people arguing for it that don't know the difference between a beta+ and beta- particle. Then again, the parent says all these things and goes to the culture war. Feels a bit all over the place to me. Though it does seem that a lot of these issues are all caused by us trying to act more intelligent than we are and social signaling. But I don't think that's what the parent was saying. [0] You could also easily make the argument that we wouldn't be in this mess if Germany didn't shut down their nuclear plants early because doing so increased their dependence on France and Russia for power. But this also isn't that great of an argument.
  - adventured 4y ago
    Expense is also not a good argument. Nuclear power should be subsidized as necessary for the exact same reason healthcare is: energy security is a critical matter. A nation like Germany for example could easily afford to have many more nuclear power plants and be pushing that much more energy over the borders to the rest of the EU in exports. They could do a lot to further the EU's energy security, given their fiscal and engineering capabilities. Their main reason for not doing it (fear) is heavy in emotionalism, irrationality.
anovikov 4y ago
Thank you! Agree with all of it except >Maybe EU wanted to have Russia as a reliable petrostate as an alternative to the USA so they can do their thing without USA? The decision to rely on Russia was made when USA was a net energy importer, with some dependence on natural gas from Canada, and terrible dependence on oil from whoever could offer any. To add to that, nuclear was phased out to a large degree because it gets in the way of renewables, as it's impossible to regulate. Nuclear reactor is pretty much an on/off thing and can't safely operate on power levels much under 100% continuously, and if it's off, it can only be restarted in a day, or even a few days. It makes balancing the grid including a lot of intermittent renewables, a huge headache. Renewables already provide more electricity in EU than nuclear ever did, and they cost a lot less to build, and almost all of them were built in less time than it takes to build a single nuclear reactor. Speaking of the future, all of this discussion is meaningless again, because of time. If we start today, electricity will be 100% solved by renewables everywhere in EU before any new nuclear can be commissioned.
- champtar 4y ago
  French nuclear reactor can vary their power +-80% in 30min (article in french https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suivi_de_charge https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suivi_de_charge)
sbf501 4y ago
You provide such a wonderful list of factors that may/may-not have contributed to a this crisis that I went cross-eyed and drooled a little at the depth of the complexity. But isn't it a little ironic that you end by blaming the culture war? We're literally a part of it, and it is an enormous obstacle to enacting policies in a rational way. It's not something we can bail-out on, like people fleeing to Canada when they don't get their way in US politics, instead it is something that has to be embraced and worked within as a medium, for better or for worse. I'm reading a book about early humanists in 15th century Italy and the issues are exactly the same. Culture wars are wars of rhetoric and polemic, and will always be with us. Best to master them, no?
- mrtksn 4y ago
  I'm not anti-nuclear and I don't have a problem discussing it as an option. I have a problem with repetitive arguments that push an agenda though. The "Only if they hadn't closed those few plants everything would have been perfect" argument is not only false but is pushing an agenda that is part of the culture war. Notice the OP doesn't even mention the environmentalists etc. but the comment is instantly recognisable. It's the same talking point that needs to be repeated every single time.
rglover 4y ago
https://youtu.be/mTHchH9VRh0?t=34 https://youtu.be/mTHchH9VRh0?t=34
Jon_Lowtek 4y ago
> Anyway, France is full blown nuclear state ... ... with a fuel cycle that goes through a breeder in Seversk, Russia ... with no long term plan for low radioactive waste and contaminated equipment ... with almost no uranium deposits worth exploiting left as is true for all of europa
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  No, what is sent to Seversk is not just the spent fuel, but also radioactive material that was used during the treatment of the spent fuel. No, the fuel cycle doesn't depend on Seversk, the contract from EDF was signed in 2018 (and EDF says that nothing was sent yet) No, this is not even the fuel cycle, Orano signed a contract with Rosatom so that they could send spent URT and Rosatom uses it for their own reactors. Literally selling spent fuel (instead of burying it) No, you are lying, there are plans both for long term storage (Cigeo) and for low radioactive waste which the Andra handles. (https://www.irsn.fr/FR/connaissances/Installations_nucleaires/dechets-radioactifs/gestion-stockage-dechets-radioactifs/Pages/1-dechets-radioactifs-differents-types.aspx#.YzX3CaS-jqt https://www.irsn.fr/FR/connaissances/Installations_nucleaire...) No, you are lying once again. The uranium deposits are not worth exploiting because it is currently cheaper to get mines in say, Niger, but Europe still has large potential mining sites, and extracting it from lignite is easy. So, no, your sources are Greenpeace and are lying.
  - Jon_Lowtek 4y ago
    >> No, the fuel cycle doesn't depend on Seversk + "Literally selling spent fuel" (instead of burying it) well, if you put it that way, then the fuel cycle doesn't even exist at all, france just imports fresh uranium from Russia, Nigeria, Kazhakstan and Australia and sells spent fuel to Russia. > and EDF says that nothing was sent yet under that new contract maybe, here is an article from 2009 in which EDF "told news agency AFP that it is only “recyclable uranium from fuel processing at EDF nuclear power stations that is transported to Russia to be enriched.” - rfi.fr/actuen/articles/118/article_5481.asp > No, you are lying once again. The uranium deposits are not worth exploiting that is literally what i said. They are not worth exploiting > So, no, your sources are Greenpeace and are lying. that is just low effort insults, here have an IAEA uranium deposit database: https://infcis.iaea.org/UDEPO/ https://infcis.iaea.org/UDEPO/ France largest "reserves" are the trace amounts in the rocks around a mine they closed 21 years ago. Even if the price rises to a point where exploitation of those trace amounts becomes worthwhile again, there are no large reserves in europa, we are talking a demand in the thousands of tons per year. The nuclear industry in europa depends on imports, stop peddling some makebelieve about large untapped reserves with which europa could theoretically become energy independent if they would just use them. It is nonsensical
avgcorrection 4y ago
HN doesn’t think in memes more than before. It’s just you who percieve commenters to be NPCs because the same things keep getting upvoted. > Maybe EU wanted to have Russia as a reliable petrostate as an alternative to the USA so they can do their thing without USA? Considering the EU’s actions since the war started we can safely discard this theory.
- hef19898 4y ago
  Yeah, because the war Ukraine was no valid reason to revise whatever plan you had before...
  - avgcorrection 4y ago
    Hmm? Could you be more coy and less direct in your replies, please? Did Russia transform from a cosmopolitan, Western European-loving, tolerant nation with fantastic relations to the EU overnight into a savage brute in Feb 2022? Or was it always at least a little bit backwards, clearly not democratic, sphere of influence-envious, and had already arguably been at indirect war with Ukraine since 2014? To claim that Germany/EU wanted closer relations with the Russian Empire contra the American Empire is clearly asinine if you look at the actions of Germany/EU.
    - hef19898 4y ago
      Since Europe has not enough natural resources to be self reliant, and the US only has enough oil gas due to fracking, there is no alternative other than dealing with oppressive, human rights ignoring regimes. Iran is under sanctions, the UAE and Saudi are by no means better the Putin at his worst days (we in the West just don't give a damn about the war in Sudan and Yemen). And yes, closer relationships to Russia are, well have been, a good thing. Russia decided to throw all that away in a failed bid to keep NATO away from their borders. Or rather Putin did.
      - avgcorrection 4y ago
        That’s better. Thanks.
finikytou 4y ago
france nuclear was fine until macron five years ago pushed for decommissioning 15 reactors (the 15 he wants to open after 5 years...) and obviously by sending the signal that it was not the industry for the future of france investments into its future stopped just liked the CEO of EDF said "we didnt hire people to build reactor or even maintain those we focused on hiring people to decomission reactors" and guess what they arent many people in this field. its not IT. people who know are either retired or dead.

by mrtksn 4y ago

mensetmanusman 4y ago

Culture is preference. Democracy is voting preference. Authoritarians get fed up with competing preferences and squash other preferences/opinions but risk making the wrong decisions.

mjthrowaway1 4y ago

While the arguments are repetitive this isn’t a culture war. The EU made its bed (or more likely, imported it) and now has to sleep in it. Deindustrialization has been ongoing.

systemvoltage 4y ago
In California, I get physical mail pamphlets that help me prepare for power outages and what I should do to reduce quality of life. It’s not from PG&E, but our city.
- landemva 4y ago
  German government published a cookbook to teach people how to cook without electricity. "Kochen ohne Strom" https://www.bbk.bund.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2021/09/pm-27-kochen-ohne-strom.html https://www.bbk.bund.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/202... It would have been useful to keep coal powered electric plants in use and stocked with a mountain of coal.
  - cinntaile 4y ago
    They will likely keep some coal plants online longer than was originally planned, so that is definitely a thing. They even restarted some plants to reduce their current dependency on Russian gas.
    - landemva 4y ago
      There have been logistics issues getting coal to the plants. It feels like energy production followed the manufacturing motto of "just in time" instead of stockpiling the input coal. This lack of resilience was unnecessary.
      - cinntaile 4y ago
        It is an ad hoc solution to the current situation so I'm not surprised it's not exactly smooth sailing. It doesn't help that they recently shut down some of their reactors, they could have at least kept them open until the situation stabilized.
      - hef19898 4y ago
        I am not aware cial, usually shipped in bulk and very easily stored, was ever delivered JIT. But whatever, JIT was already the reason why the chip supply from Asia to overseas car factories was disrupted, at least according to certain people without the slightest clue of how JIT works. Or supply chains in general...

throw827474737 4y ago

Yeah 100%, given we need to keep our nuclears now on to mainly support France's rotten ones and neglecting the lobbying and corruption that happened and didn't get us much further away from fossil+nuclear (we are shedding wind and bio gas right now again) is the actual depressing thing..

xienze 4y ago

> Maybe there's no simple answer for energy issues and countries don't simply build or close down power plants over single issue? Well, two things. One, pretty sure the push to shut down Germany’s nuclear plants was a response to a single issue, Fukushima. Two, one simple answer to this particular situation is to assess your energy independence before sanctioning the country you rely on for natural gas. Germany is getting raked over the coals with the same talking points precisely because they walked into a situation they weren’t well-equipped to handle.

mrtksn 4y ago
Nuclear power plant construction is flat since Chernobyl and seen slight decline after Fukushima: https://dropover.cloud/ec077b#c8239728-7d32-49ab-98c7-865fb0b2644e https://dropover.cloud/ec077b#c8239728-7d32-49ab-98c7-865fb0... Safety concerns are definitely an issue that can nudge you to prefer alternative sources but this doesn't make it single issue. It's simply one of the things you consider. As you can see, despite NPP construction stalling in late 1980s, world energy consumption continued to increase: https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption This simply means, considering the risks and cost of all energy sources, nuclear power fell unfavourably. Doesn't mean single issue.
- godelski 4y ago
  I think this is mostly due to the fact that the advantage of nuclear is long term and humans -- and especially politicians and bureaucrats -- aren't good at long term planning. Globally we basically rolled out a bunch of nuclear plants and went "welp, that'll hold us off for the next 50-60 years." It's like exercising and eating right for a year and expecting this to keep you healthy for decades as you eat poorly with little to no exercise. Maintenance and continual production is key to cost reduction and advancement but this is something nuclear never got. I really do think nuclear's biggest flaw is its lifespan. Just allows people to get lazy.
landemva 4y ago
> assess your energy independence before sanctioning the country you rely on for natural gas. Trump blurted that to the Germans around 2019. The press brushed it off as "highly misleading". https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/trump-is-exaggerating-germanys-reliance-on-russia-for-energy.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/trump-is-exaggerating-german...

scifibestfi 4y ago

The people are fed up with dangerously incompetent leadership, who literally laughed when warned to not be dependent on Russia for energy. It's not a meaningless culture war. The loss of energy means lower standard of living at best and mass death and famine at worst.

mrtksn 4y ago
The solution is not obvious, it's obvious only to zealots. It's kind of obvious that the solution is in PHV and wind energy but you can fight it to death with people who would claim that it's obvious that the solution is Nuclear energy. This is not a good discussion, this is fanatics fighting. Anytime someone suggest simple solution to a big problem %99.9 of the time they don't actually have a simple and obvious solution.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  > The solution is not obvious, The problem of relying on Russia for energy was obvious. There isn't a singular "the solution" because there were many possible solutions, nuclear energy being just one. In addition to investing in wind/solar, there are other solutions besides nuclear. Particularly, fracing and coal mining. Both of these are unpopular for obvious reasons (which is the reason everybody talks about nuclear instead), but I think both are better than the political autonomy of an entire subcontinent being threatened by a belligerent foe.
  - neodypsis 4y ago
    > The problem of relying on Russia for energy was obvious. Indeed. Always found it strange that Germany didn't see a problem with relying on Russia for their main energy source.
    - megous 4y ago
      Germans would have happily helped train Russian military if 2014 did not happen. Money's good.

sascha_sl 4y ago

> as it turns out nuclear power plants require long regular maintenance periods. That's because everyone has been operating their PWRs/BWRs way beyond the design lifespan, which would be fine if we didn't just stop building new ones in the past 20-40 years (depending on country) to prevent too many of them needing regular maintenance at once.

godelski 4y ago
This is something I never understand about the anti-nuclear crowd. There are plenty of good arguments against nuclear but most often the ones used are not that great.[0] I mean we could talk about the expense of them and that they require long-term investments, making them not attractive to bureaucrats and political leaders, which led to the situation of extending lifetimes, losing knowledge, and increasing maintenance periods. Which let's be real, that's a critical flaw if it requires humans to act in ways that aren't what humans typically do. But maybe that's why we always fight. I mean the pro nuclear camp isn't that much better as there are plenty of people arguing for it that don't know the difference between a beta+ and beta- particle. Then again, the parent says all these things and goes to the culture war. Feels a bit all over the place to me. Though it does seem that a lot of these issues are all caused by us trying to act more intelligent than we are and social signaling. But I don't think that's what the parent was saying. [0] You could also easily make the argument that we wouldn't be in this mess if Germany didn't shut down their nuclear plants early because doing so increased their dependence on France and Russia for power. But this also isn't that great of an argument.
- adventured 4y ago
  Expense is also not a good argument. Nuclear power should be subsidized as necessary for the exact same reason healthcare is: energy security is a critical matter. A nation like Germany for example could easily afford to have many more nuclear power plants and be pushing that much more energy over the borders to the rest of the EU in exports. They could do a lot to further the EU's energy security, given their fiscal and engineering capabilities. Their main reason for not doing it (fear) is heavy in emotionalism, irrationality.

anovikov 4y ago

Thank you! Agree with all of it except >Maybe EU wanted to have Russia as a reliable petrostate as an alternative to the USA so they can do their thing without USA? The decision to rely on Russia was made when USA was a net energy importer, with some dependence on natural gas from Canada, and terrible dependence on oil from whoever could offer any. To add to that, nuclear was phased out to a large degree because it gets in the way of renewables, as it's impossible to regulate. Nuclear reactor is pretty much an on/off thing and can't safely operate on power levels much under 100% continuously, and if it's off, it can only be restarted in a day, or even a few days. It makes balancing the grid including a lot of intermittent renewables, a huge headache. Renewables already provide more electricity in EU than nuclear ever did, and they cost a lot less to build, and almost all of them were built in less time than it takes to build a single nuclear reactor. Speaking of the future, all of this discussion is meaningless again, because of time. If we start today, electricity will be 100% solved by renewables everywhere in EU before any new nuclear can be commissioned.

champtar 4y ago
French nuclear reactor can vary their power +-80% in 30min (article in french https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suivi_de_charge https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suivi_de_charge)

sbf501 4y ago

You provide such a wonderful list of factors that may/may-not have contributed to a this crisis that I went cross-eyed and drooled a little at the depth of the complexity. But isn't it a little ironic that you end by blaming the culture war? We're literally a part of it, and it is an enormous obstacle to enacting policies in a rational way. It's not something we can bail-out on, like people fleeing to Canada when they don't get their way in US politics, instead it is something that has to be embraced and worked within as a medium, for better or for worse. I'm reading a book about early humanists in 15th century Italy and the issues are exactly the same. Culture wars are wars of rhetoric and polemic, and will always be with us. Best to master them, no?

mrtksn 4y ago
I'm not anti-nuclear and I don't have a problem discussing it as an option. I have a problem with repetitive arguments that push an agenda though. The "Only if they hadn't closed those few plants everything would have been perfect" argument is not only false but is pushing an agenda that is part of the culture war. Notice the OP doesn't even mention the environmentalists etc. but the comment is instantly recognisable. It's the same talking point that needs to be repeated every single time.

rglover 4y ago

https://youtu.be/mTHchH9VRh0?t=34 https://youtu.be/mTHchH9VRh0?t=34

Jon_Lowtek 4y ago

> Anyway, France is full blown nuclear state ... ... with a fuel cycle that goes through a breeder in Seversk, Russia ... with no long term plan for low radioactive waste and contaminated equipment ... with almost no uranium deposits worth exploiting left as is true for all of europa

ohgodplsno 4y ago
No, what is sent to Seversk is not just the spent fuel, but also radioactive material that was used during the treatment of the spent fuel. No, the fuel cycle doesn't depend on Seversk, the contract from EDF was signed in 2018 (and EDF says that nothing was sent yet) No, this is not even the fuel cycle, Orano signed a contract with Rosatom so that they could send spent URT and Rosatom uses it for their own reactors. Literally selling spent fuel (instead of burying it) No, you are lying, there are plans both for long term storage (Cigeo) and for low radioactive waste which the Andra handles. (https://www.irsn.fr/FR/connaissances/Installations_nucleaires/dechets-radioactifs/gestion-stockage-dechets-radioactifs/Pages/1-dechets-radioactifs-differents-types.aspx#.YzX3CaS-jqt https://www.irsn.fr/FR/connaissances/Installations_nucleaire...) No, you are lying once again. The uranium deposits are not worth exploiting because it is currently cheaper to get mines in say, Niger, but Europe still has large potential mining sites, and extracting it from lignite is easy. So, no, your sources are Greenpeace and are lying.
- Jon_Lowtek 4y ago
  >> No, the fuel cycle doesn't depend on Seversk + "Literally selling spent fuel" (instead of burying it) well, if you put it that way, then the fuel cycle doesn't even exist at all, france just imports fresh uranium from Russia, Nigeria, Kazhakstan and Australia and sells spent fuel to Russia. > and EDF says that nothing was sent yet under that new contract maybe, here is an article from 2009 in which EDF "told news agency AFP that it is only “recyclable uranium from fuel processing at EDF nuclear power stations that is transported to Russia to be enriched.” - rfi.fr/actuen/articles/118/article_5481.asp > No, you are lying once again. The uranium deposits are not worth exploiting that is literally what i said. They are not worth exploiting > So, no, your sources are Greenpeace and are lying. that is just low effort insults, here have an IAEA uranium deposit database: https://infcis.iaea.org/UDEPO/ https://infcis.iaea.org/UDEPO/ France largest "reserves" are the trace amounts in the rocks around a mine they closed 21 years ago. Even if the price rises to a point where exploitation of those trace amounts becomes worthwhile again, there are no large reserves in europa, we are talking a demand in the thousands of tons per year. The nuclear industry in europa depends on imports, stop peddling some makebelieve about large untapped reserves with which europa could theoretically become energy independent if they would just use them. It is nonsensical

avgcorrection 4y ago

HN doesn’t think in memes more than before. It’s just you who percieve commenters to be NPCs because the same things keep getting upvoted. > Maybe EU wanted to have Russia as a reliable petrostate as an alternative to the USA so they can do their thing without USA? Considering the EU’s actions since the war started we can safely discard this theory.

hef19898 4y ago
Yeah, because the war Ukraine was no valid reason to revise whatever plan you had before...
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  Hmm? Could you be more coy and less direct in your replies, please? Did Russia transform from a cosmopolitan, Western European-loving, tolerant nation with fantastic relations to the EU overnight into a savage brute in Feb 2022? Or was it always at least a little bit backwards, clearly not democratic, sphere of influence-envious, and had already arguably been at indirect war with Ukraine since 2014? To claim that Germany/EU wanted closer relations with the Russian Empire contra the American Empire is clearly asinine if you look at the actions of Germany/EU.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Since Europe has not enough natural resources to be self reliant, and the US only has enough oil gas due to fracking, there is no alternative other than dealing with oppressive, human rights ignoring regimes. Iran is under sanctions, the UAE and Saudi are by no means better the Putin at his worst days (we in the West just don't give a damn about the war in Sudan and Yemen). And yes, closer relationships to Russia are, well have been, a good thing. Russia decided to throw all that away in a failed bid to keep NATO away from their borders. Or rather Putin did.
    - avgcorrection 4y ago
      That’s better. Thanks.

finikytou 4y ago

france nuclear was fine until macron five years ago pushed for decommissioning 15 reactors (the 15 he wants to open after 5 years...) and obviously by sending the signal that it was not the industry for the future of france investments into its future stopped just liked the CEO of EDF said "we didnt hire people to build reactor or even maintain those we focused on hiring people to decomission reactors" and guess what they arent many people in this field. its not IT. people who know are either retired or dead.