4 ms·

We had nuclear power in Italy. From my house, I could see the cooling towers of the abandoned nuclear power plant in Trino [1] in the distance. There was a ref

by sph 3y ago

We had nuclear power in Italy. From my house, I could see the cooling towers of the abandoned nuclear power plant in Trino [1] in the distance. There was a referendum in November 1987 asking whether to abolish any form of nuclear power. It won with 80% of yes votes. This was a year after the Chernobyl disaster. Over the next few decades, Italy started to import electricity at a premium, mostly from its French neighbour, which has never stopped investing on nuclear and is today Europe's largest electricity exporter. No politician dared touch this hot potato ever again for the following 24 years, until the June 2011 referendum, that asked whether to revive plans for nuclear power. It failed with 94% of No votes. This was 3 months after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. I do not trust politicians, nor anti-nuclear activists, to ever do the right thing and drop their outdated stance on the matter. -- 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Fermi_Nuclear_Power_Plant_(Italy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Fermi_Nuclear_Power_Pla...

tcfhgj 3y ago
They should have built renewables and they would have cheaper energy than ever. You can't remove energy sources without replacement.
- KptMarchewa 3y ago
  Build renewables in 1987?
  - vidanay 3y ago
    A couple billion solar panels operating at ~1% efficiency sounds like the best plan ever.
- purpleflame1257 3y ago
  Apart from the base load arguments, in the 1980s and 90s, solar was a total joke efficiency and cost-wise
- jonkoops 3y ago
  In any real case they should have both built out renewable energy and maintain and even expand the existing fleet of nuclear reactors. Nuclear might be historically expensive and storage an issue, but it is carbon free, and for the moment that is the most important problem we need to solve.
- sph 3y ago
  Additionally to what the sibling commenters say, we don't have a lot of sun nor wind in the Po Valley, where most of the industries are, and please point me to any G7 country that produces most of their energy from hydroelectricity, which Northern Italy has a decent potential for. Renewables are just now starting to become economically viable, but distribution is still an unsolved problem. The wind farms in Sardinia are not gonna power Milan.
pydry 3y ago
If those voters were so very wrong on their risk assessment then we can presumably also get rid of the extremely low catastrophe liability cap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear... If it's extremely safe we can let private insurers decide whether to shoulder the financial burden of a Fukushima style event and taxpayers no longer have to be on the hook for those pesky $1 trillion clean up events. I'm all in favor of eliminating the act and adopting a wait and see approach to "will sophisticated insurers have an appetite for this risk?" but for some reason a lot of pro nuclear activists who are adamant that it is 110% safe aren't so sure about slashing this subsidy. Why do you think that is?
- tokai 3y ago
  What does US corporate welfare has to do with Italian public votes?
  - pydry 3y ago
    Every country that has a private sector building nuclear power has some kind of liability carve out.
qsort 3y ago
I agree with you on all counts, it's especially sad that we're still basically bound to an irrational emotional response to Chernobyl. Just a bit of context for non-Italians: > It failed with 94% of No votes. Referendums in Italy have weird rules. They may only be called to repeal existing laws. In this case, the then-standing Berlusconi IV cabinet had approved a new nuclear plan, and a referendum was called to abolish it. A referendum is successful if both the repeal votes are more and the turnout is more than 50%. So if you don't want to repeal the law, you just don't go to the polls at all. This is just to say that when looking at Italian referendums the important number is not the Yes/No valid votes but the turnout, which in this case was 55% or something like that IIRC. I'd agree that the public opinion is still anti-nuclear, but it's more 55-45 than 95-5.
- pydry 3y ago
  >still basically bound to an irrational emotional response to Chernobyl. It's hardly irrational. Nuclear power is effectively still uninsurable by private insurers and the taxpayer clean up bill for Fukushima is around $800 billion. It wouldn't be irrational to build more power stations if they were cheap but nuclear power is even less economic than using wind and solar power to synthesize gas for storage and burning that to generate electricity: https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-cheaper-and-greener-hinkley-point-c-nuclear-plant https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea...
  - qsort 3y ago
    > $800 billion Even taking that figure completely at face value, that's... not a lot of money? Italy's GDP is 2.1T, if a Fukushima-like disaster happens once in 30 years (which it doesn't, but for the sake of argument let's say it does), that's an amortized cost of 1% of the GDP. We're Italians, we'd waste that kind of money on some stupid shit anyway.
    - Incipient 3y ago
      You mean you waste it on corruption (and the Mafia)? My family is Italian, and I do love the country, and it could be a true financial powerhouse...but the corruption will literally kill the country one day, I have very little doubt Italy as the current entity will fail (honestly I am surprised that covid didn't bankrupt the country, so that was a positive).
gandalfian 3y ago
>Italy started to import electricity at a premium, mostly from its French neighbor Of course the French taxpayers now face decades of vast nuclear decommissioning costs. Italy doesn't. Rather as a country with lots of sun and many sparsely populated windy areas it can stock up on increasingly cheap renewables aided by possibly dirt cheap future battery prices. So you may be right, but equally maybe history will look quite favorably on Italy's energy choices. We will see.

by sph 3y ago

tcfhgj 3y ago

They should have built renewables and they would have cheaper energy than ever. You can't remove energy sources without replacement.

KptMarchewa 3y ago
Build renewables in 1987?
- vidanay 3y ago
  A couple billion solar panels operating at ~1% efficiency sounds like the best plan ever.
purpleflame1257 3y ago
Apart from the base load arguments, in the 1980s and 90s, solar was a total joke efficiency and cost-wise
jonkoops 3y ago
In any real case they should have both built out renewable energy and maintain and even expand the existing fleet of nuclear reactors. Nuclear might be historically expensive and storage an issue, but it is carbon free, and for the moment that is the most important problem we need to solve.
sph 3y ago
Additionally to what the sibling commenters say, we don't have a lot of sun nor wind in the Po Valley, where most of the industries are, and please point me to any G7 country that produces most of their energy from hydroelectricity, which Northern Italy has a decent potential for. Renewables are just now starting to become economically viable, but distribution is still an unsolved problem. The wind farms in Sardinia are not gonna power Milan.

pydry 3y ago

If those voters were so very wrong on their risk assessment then we can presumably also get rid of the extremely low catastrophe liability cap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear... If it's extremely safe we can let private insurers decide whether to shoulder the financial burden of a Fukushima style event and taxpayers no longer have to be on the hook for those pesky $1 trillion clean up events. I'm all in favor of eliminating the act and adopting a wait and see approach to "will sophisticated insurers have an appetite for this risk?" but for some reason a lot of pro nuclear activists who are adamant that it is 110% safe aren't so sure about slashing this subsidy. Why do you think that is?

tokai 3y ago
What does US corporate welfare has to do with Italian public votes?
- pydry 3y ago
  Every country that has a private sector building nuclear power has some kind of liability carve out.

qsort 3y ago

I agree with you on all counts, it's especially sad that we're still basically bound to an irrational emotional response to Chernobyl. Just a bit of context for non-Italians: > It failed with 94% of No votes. Referendums in Italy have weird rules. They may only be called to repeal existing laws. In this case, the then-standing Berlusconi IV cabinet had approved a new nuclear plan, and a referendum was called to abolish it. A referendum is successful if both the repeal votes are more and the turnout is more than 50%. So if you don't want to repeal the law, you just don't go to the polls at all. This is just to say that when looking at Italian referendums the important number is not the Yes/No valid votes but the turnout, which in this case was 55% or something like that IIRC. I'd agree that the public opinion is still anti-nuclear, but it's more 55-45 than 95-5.

pydry 3y ago
>still basically bound to an irrational emotional response to Chernobyl. It's hardly irrational. Nuclear power is effectively still uninsurable by private insurers and the taxpayer clean up bill for Fukushima is around $800 billion. It wouldn't be irrational to build more power stations if they were cheap but nuclear power is even less economic than using wind and solar power to synthesize gas for storage and burning that to generate electricity: https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-cheaper-and-greener-hinkley-point-c-nuclear-plant https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea...
- qsort 3y ago
  > $800 billion Even taking that figure completely at face value, that's... not a lot of money? Italy's GDP is 2.1T, if a Fukushima-like disaster happens once in 30 years (which it doesn't, but for the sake of argument let's say it does), that's an amortized cost of 1% of the GDP. We're Italians, we'd waste that kind of money on some stupid shit anyway.
  - Incipient 3y ago
    You mean you waste it on corruption (and the Mafia)? My family is Italian, and I do love the country, and it could be a true financial powerhouse...but the corruption will literally kill the country one day, I have very little doubt Italy as the current entity will fail (honestly I am surprised that covid didn't bankrupt the country, so that was a positive).

gandalfian 3y ago

>Italy started to import electricity at a premium, mostly from its French neighbor Of course the French taxpayers now face decades of vast nuclear decommissioning costs. Italy doesn't. Rather as a country with lots of sun and many sparsely populated windy areas it can stock up on increasingly cheap renewables aided by possibly dirt cheap future battery prices. So you may be right, but equally maybe history will look quite favorably on Italy's energy choices. We will see.