6 ms·

Hope this will be a wake up call for the countries to double down on green/nuclear energy instead of sucking Russian/Middle Eastern tit.

Scarblac 7mo ago
Nuclear takes like 15 years to build, it's being worked on but it won't be much more relevant soon. Green energy isn't very useful for heating in winter.
- AdamN 7mo ago
  Green energy is super useful for heating in winter. At this point heat pumps are better than gas in almost every way unless the temperature is well below freezing. So it's just a matter of electricity which Italy and Belgium can get from the current mix of green energy (wind and even solar) and other forms (nuclear, coal, etc...)
- Schmerika 7mo ago
  > Green energy isn't very useful for heating in winter. Solar energy isn't the only 'green' energy. The wind, tides, geothermal vents, rivers etc all continue to work as well or better in winter. Plus there's a lot of room for improvement elsewhere, like insulation.
- troupo 7mo ago
  > Nuclear takes like 15 years to build 6-7 years. France built 40 its nuclear reactors in a decade, at 6-7 years per reactor. Right now China is building reactors at 6-7 years per reactor. --- start quote --- Nearly every Chinese nuclear project that has entered service since 2010 has achieved construction in 7 years or less. Every single conventional commercial-scale reactor project in Chinese history has achieved completion in under a decade Since the start of 2022, China has completed an additional five domestic reactor builds, with their completion times ranging from just under five years to just over 7 years. This continues the consistent completion record of Chinese projects even despite potential disruptions from the intervening COVID-19 pandemic. China successfully constructed six nuclear reactors in Pakistan in around 5.5-6 years each https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/chinas-impressive-rate-of-nuclear-construction https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/chinas-impressive-... --- end quote ---
  - mschild 7mo ago
    > Right now China is building reactors at 6-7 years per reactor. Thats China. In Europe, this building speed isnt going to happen anytime soon. The knowledge to build nuclear at that scale isn't in the coutry/continent anymore. You'd have to reteach an entire generation of engineers. Besides that, part of the point of switching away from oil and gas is at least some independence. Europe isnt known for its nuclear fuel supply so now you're reliant on another country again. Yes, most solar is produced in China but its about as low maintence as it gets and there is still enough knowledge to produce in Europe.
    - troupo 7mo ago
      > Thats China. In Europe, this building speed isnt going to happen anytime soon. It wasn't going to happen in China either. China also disn't have the knowledge. And yet...
    - mcphage 7mo ago
      > The knowledge to build nuclear at that scale isn't in the coutry/continent anymore. You'd have to reteach an entire generation of engineers. Well you better get on that, then. It’s going to a lot worse in 5 years.
  - roysting 7mo ago
    You are right to point out the astonishing developments in Chinese nuclear reactors technology most people are totally oblivious of. It has been standardized, is seemingly safe and far more efficient due to Chinese technological advancements; however you may be overlooking that the ability, the capacity to do that, to do what France did by installing 56 nuclear reactors due to the last oil shock, takes an industrial capacity that does not seem to really exist anymore in Europe to the same degree. I won’t even get into why that is, because it would simply turn into a book, but suffice to say, it’s a euphemistic, polite “challenge”, so to say. But people also forget that it still takes nuclear fuel to do any of that, which France/Europe has now also largely lost access to, due to the Niger situation along with cutting itself off from Russia/BRICS. That will at some point become an issue for France/Europe, which the “remilitarizing” EU may even make one of its first contrived America-style military adventures to “protect democracy” or some other manipulative, emotive, contrived lie by the lying Epstein, Mandelson, Brunel Class. It sure does look like Niger really could use some democracy, don’t you? Their women can’t even show off their orifices for money on Onlyfans! Oh, they happen to have rich uranium ore, well isn’t that just an odd coincidence of doing good by sharing Our Democracy©, as decreed by the unelected EU Commission. Fun fact: Germany blew up its nuclear energy capacity with voted approval by the current EU Commission President von der Leyen, while she was in the German government ruling coalition … she has described that her own action as a “strategic mistake”. That is who is basically the dictator of Europe, someone who makes self-described “strategic mistakes” of the highest order, multi-generational, rippling, echoing, de facto permanently consequential mistakes.
- usrnm 7mo ago
  Google "Messmer Plan". France built 65 reactors in 15 years as a reaction to the 70s oil crisis, and now the majority of electricity in France comes from nuclear without any significant dependency on fossil fuels. The only thing that we're lacking is political will to change things.
  - phil21 7mo ago
    Yep. Once people experience true hardship like having to keep their house just above freezing in the winter due to the cost of energy - all of a sudden impossible things become quite possible. The only potential issue here would be if the west had collectively hollowed out its manufacturing base so much as to make surging capacity and capability a generational thing vs. immediate. Coasting on past success eventually brings stagnation and pain. Hopefully the pain isn’t too horrible for normal folks this time around.
  - ViewTrick1002 7mo ago
    And now Flamanville 3 is 7x over budget and 14 years late. Online but not commercially operational. Their EPR2 fleet are getting an enormously large subsidy at 11 cents kWh CFD for 40 years and interest free loans. Sum freely. With the first reactor online in 2038 of everything goes to plan. How many trillions in subsidies should we handout to new built nuclear power to ”try for real”? Or we can just build renewables and storage which is the cheapest energy source in human history.
  - fsh 7mo ago
    The French energy sector is more than 50% fossil [1]. If France decarbonizes over the next decades, it will be due to renewables, not nuclear. While the government and population have been extremely pro-nuclear for a long time, the economics just don't work out. The current plan is to barely build enough reactors to replace old ones going off-line over the next decades. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France
    - usrnm 7mo ago
      That's why I used the word electricity and not energy. It isn't perfect, but still much better than the majority if the world and even Europe. The fact that even the French themselves cannot replicate it anymore speaks volumes about the weakness of the current political system. As a counter example, the Chinese can and do.
- Hikikomori 7mo ago
  Heat pumps are very common in the Nordics and can be used for almost the entire year.
- piva00 7mo ago
  > Green energy isn't very useful for heating in winter. We do manage quite well to use green energy for heating during winter in Sweden.
  - mongol 7mo ago
    Do we? I see plenty of complaints about high electricity prices and criticism of shutdown of nuclear reactors
    - piva00 7mo ago
      We do, it's not our fault that the electricity market in the EU is such that the spot price is based on the most expensive kWh produced in the zone we supply to. It sucks that we have to pay high energy prices because Germany fucked up their energy policies, or because Poland is still mostly coal-based. Nuclear reactors are running, Forsmark, Oskarshamn, and Ringhals are still there and producing 25% of our electricity right at this moment. So we do, and we are getting ratfucked by the common electricity market in the EU that pushes our prices much higher than what it costs to produce.
      - mongol 7mo ago
        Discussing whose fault it is does not change the fact that a statement such as "we do manage quite well to use green energy for heating during winter in Sweden" is quite questionable. The electricity prices ARE high and they would be significantly lower if we had not decommissioned half of our nuclear reactors
        piva00 7mo ago
        > The electricity prices ARE high and they would be significantly lower if we had not decommissioned half of our nuclear reactors Where is the source for this statement? The prices are not set by our producing costs, do you know how electricity is priced in the EU electricity market? We do manage quite well, if you understood the pricing mechanism you'd know what I meant instead of knee-jerking into the umbrella "but more nuclear!".
- 4ndrewl 7mo ago
  >Green energy isn't very useful for heating in winter. Citation very much needed, or "yes it is"
- _aavaa_ 7mo ago
  > Green energy isn’t very useful for heating in winter. Why? Your usefulness is driven by economics. As prices have continued to fall or becomes easier to overbuild, sizing solar panels for winter needs.
- senectus1 7mo ago
  no one ever talks about how nuclear presents glaring massive military targets. a few missiles and your vaunted "green" plants are now spreading death, mutation and radiation for hundreds or thousands of years. even when they operate "clean" their waste storage is also growing military target. Its not a green solution, its a kick the can down the road solution.
throw310822 7mo ago
[flagged]
- woodruffw 7mo ago
  > starting from the US arrogance that led to the war in Ukraine What arrogance would this be?
  - throw310822 7mo ago
    The arrogance of ignoring repeated Russian requests to stop NATO expansion and Ukraine integration into NATO, and of not stopping (well documented) US political meddling in Ukraine. This went on for many years- Mearsheimer was able to predict the war ten years in advance. The US and Europe ignored all this- the US maybe because it really stood to gain from a war, Europe because it thought it was beneath itself to seriously engage with Russia.
    - woodruffw 7mo ago
      On its face, this suggests that only Russia and the US have any autonomy vis a vis who gets to be in NATO. What about what Ukraine wants?
      - throw310822 7mo ago
        NATO is a military alliance, the only ones who get a say about who is in it and who isn't are its current members. That said, of course choices have consequences, and some choices are more advisable/ appropriate than others.
        wiseowise 7mo ago
        > NATO is a military alliance, the only ones who get a say about who is in it and who isn't are its current members. And they repeatedly rejected Ukraine and are still doing it? What's your point?
        7mo ago
Joeri 7mo ago
The majority of Belgium’s electricity comes from nuclear, wind and solar. They have been greatly expanding wind parks in the north sea, and they’re in the early stages of deploying SMRs. But the reality is that Belgium still needs a lot of natural gas for electricity production and its large chemical industry, and that all of this gas has to be imported. Long term there is the European hydrogen strategy which aims to convert a lot of the current natural gas storage and transportation grid to hydrogen and use that in places that currently use LNG, but this requires inventing new technologies so is not a quick fix.
- _aavaa_ 7mo ago
  The long term European hydrogen strategy aims to waste a while bunch of time and money on a dead end technology.
  - ath92 7mo ago
    This is not necessarily true for all situations. Northern Europe is planning to produce a lot of electricity with offshore wind, but laying deep sea high voltage electricity cables isn’t cheap. There’s already a lot of gas pipelines that can be retrofitted for hydrogen transport at a much lower price. At a certain point it becomes viable to just use electrolysis and transport hydrogen using excess wind power instead of transporting the electricity to land and storing it in batteries. There are also industries like steel production that are just not going to transition to electricity. Hydrogen has a place there too.
    - _aavaa_ 7mo ago
      > At a certain point it becomes viable to just use electrolysis and transport hydrogen using excess wind power instead of transporting the electricity to land and storing it in batteries. If you are talking about excess energy, that implies there is non-excess energy that’s being transported across cables. So you are already transporting it to land and connecting it to the grid. Storage from there is trivial compared to a hydrogen transmission and distribution network. As for repurposing the LNG pipes for hydrogen, that’s a pipe dream to convert a standard asset into a story you can sell.
thefz 7mo ago
Can't heat a home with solar

Scarblac 7mo ago

Nuclear takes like 15 years to build, it's being worked on but it won't be much more relevant soon. Green energy isn't very useful for heating in winter.

AdamN 7mo ago
Green energy is super useful for heating in winter. At this point heat pumps are better than gas in almost every way unless the temperature is well below freezing. So it's just a matter of electricity which Italy and Belgium can get from the current mix of green energy (wind and even solar) and other forms (nuclear, coal, etc...)
Schmerika 7mo ago
> Green energy isn't very useful for heating in winter. Solar energy isn't the only 'green' energy. The wind, tides, geothermal vents, rivers etc all continue to work as well or better in winter. Plus there's a lot of room for improvement elsewhere, like insulation.
troupo 7mo ago
> Nuclear takes like 15 years to build 6-7 years. France built 40 its nuclear reactors in a decade, at 6-7 years per reactor. Right now China is building reactors at 6-7 years per reactor. --- start quote --- Nearly every Chinese nuclear project that has entered service since 2010 has achieved construction in 7 years or less. Every single conventional commercial-scale reactor project in Chinese history has achieved completion in under a decade Since the start of 2022, China has completed an additional five domestic reactor builds, with their completion times ranging from just under five years to just over 7 years. This continues the consistent completion record of Chinese projects even despite potential disruptions from the intervening COVID-19 pandemic. China successfully constructed six nuclear reactors in Pakistan in around 5.5-6 years each https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/chinas-impressive-rate-of-nuclear-construction https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/chinas-impressive-... --- end quote ---
- mschild 7mo ago
  > Right now China is building reactors at 6-7 years per reactor. Thats China. In Europe, this building speed isnt going to happen anytime soon. The knowledge to build nuclear at that scale isn't in the coutry/continent anymore. You'd have to reteach an entire generation of engineers. Besides that, part of the point of switching away from oil and gas is at least some independence. Europe isnt known for its nuclear fuel supply so now you're reliant on another country again. Yes, most solar is produced in China but its about as low maintence as it gets and there is still enough knowledge to produce in Europe.
  - troupo 7mo ago
    > Thats China. In Europe, this building speed isnt going to happen anytime soon. It wasn't going to happen in China either. China also disn't have the knowledge. And yet...
  - mcphage 7mo ago
    > The knowledge to build nuclear at that scale isn't in the coutry/continent anymore. You'd have to reteach an entire generation of engineers. Well you better get on that, then. It’s going to a lot worse in 5 years.
- roysting 7mo ago
  You are right to point out the astonishing developments in Chinese nuclear reactors technology most people are totally oblivious of. It has been standardized, is seemingly safe and far more efficient due to Chinese technological advancements; however you may be overlooking that the ability, the capacity to do that, to do what France did by installing 56 nuclear reactors due to the last oil shock, takes an industrial capacity that does not seem to really exist anymore in Europe to the same degree. I won’t even get into why that is, because it would simply turn into a book, but suffice to say, it’s a euphemistic, polite “challenge”, so to say. But people also forget that it still takes nuclear fuel to do any of that, which France/Europe has now also largely lost access to, due to the Niger situation along with cutting itself off from Russia/BRICS. That will at some point become an issue for France/Europe, which the “remilitarizing” EU may even make one of its first contrived America-style military adventures to “protect democracy” or some other manipulative, emotive, contrived lie by the lying Epstein, Mandelson, Brunel Class. It sure does look like Niger really could use some democracy, don’t you? Their women can’t even show off their orifices for money on Onlyfans! Oh, they happen to have rich uranium ore, well isn’t that just an odd coincidence of doing good by sharing Our Democracy©, as decreed by the unelected EU Commission. Fun fact: Germany blew up its nuclear energy capacity with voted approval by the current EU Commission President von der Leyen, while she was in the German government ruling coalition … she has described that her own action as a “strategic mistake”. That is who is basically the dictator of Europe, someone who makes self-described “strategic mistakes” of the highest order, multi-generational, rippling, echoing, de facto permanently consequential mistakes.
usrnm 7mo ago
Google "Messmer Plan". France built 65 reactors in 15 years as a reaction to the 70s oil crisis, and now the majority of electricity in France comes from nuclear without any significant dependency on fossil fuels. The only thing that we're lacking is political will to change things.
- phil21 7mo ago
  Yep. Once people experience true hardship like having to keep their house just above freezing in the winter due to the cost of energy - all of a sudden impossible things become quite possible. The only potential issue here would be if the west had collectively hollowed out its manufacturing base so much as to make surging capacity and capability a generational thing vs. immediate. Coasting on past success eventually brings stagnation and pain. Hopefully the pain isn’t too horrible for normal folks this time around.
- ViewTrick1002 7mo ago
  And now Flamanville 3 is 7x over budget and 14 years late. Online but not commercially operational. Their EPR2 fleet are getting an enormously large subsidy at 11 cents kWh CFD for 40 years and interest free loans. Sum freely. With the first reactor online in 2038 of everything goes to plan. How many trillions in subsidies should we handout to new built nuclear power to ”try for real”? Or we can just build renewables and storage which is the cheapest energy source in human history.
- fsh 7mo ago
  The French energy sector is more than 50% fossil [1]. If France decarbonizes over the next decades, it will be due to renewables, not nuclear. While the government and population have been extremely pro-nuclear for a long time, the economics just don't work out. The current plan is to barely build enough reactors to replace old ones going off-line over the next decades. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France
  - usrnm 7mo ago
    That's why I used the word electricity and not energy. It isn't perfect, but still much better than the majority if the world and even Europe. The fact that even the French themselves cannot replicate it anymore speaks volumes about the weakness of the current political system. As a counter example, the Chinese can and do.
Hikikomori 7mo ago
Heat pumps are very common in the Nordics and can be used for almost the entire year.
piva00 7mo ago
> Green energy isn't very useful for heating in winter. We do manage quite well to use green energy for heating during winter in Sweden.
- mongol 7mo ago
  Do we? I see plenty of complaints about high electricity prices and criticism of shutdown of nuclear reactors
  - piva00 7mo ago
    We do, it's not our fault that the electricity market in the EU is such that the spot price is based on the most expensive kWh produced in the zone we supply to. It sucks that we have to pay high energy prices because Germany fucked up their energy policies, or because Poland is still mostly coal-based. Nuclear reactors are running, Forsmark, Oskarshamn, and Ringhals are still there and producing 25% of our electricity right at this moment. So we do, and we are getting ratfucked by the common electricity market in the EU that pushes our prices much higher than what it costs to produce.
    - mongol 7mo ago
      Discussing whose fault it is does not change the fact that a statement such as "we do manage quite well to use green energy for heating during winter in Sweden" is quite questionable. The electricity prices ARE high and they would be significantly lower if we had not decommissioned half of our nuclear reactors
      - piva00 7mo ago
        > The electricity prices ARE high and they would be significantly lower if we had not decommissioned half of our nuclear reactors Where is the source for this statement? The prices are not set by our producing costs, do you know how electricity is priced in the EU electricity market? We do manage quite well, if you understood the pricing mechanism you'd know what I meant instead of knee-jerking into the umbrella "but more nuclear!".
4ndrewl 7mo ago
>Green energy isn't very useful for heating in winter. Citation very much needed, or "yes it is"
_aavaa_ 7mo ago
> Green energy isn’t very useful for heating in winter. Why? Your usefulness is driven by economics. As prices have continued to fall or becomes easier to overbuild, sizing solar panels for winter needs.
senectus1 7mo ago
no one ever talks about how nuclear presents glaring massive military targets. a few missiles and your vaunted "green" plants are now spreading death, mutation and radiation for hundreds or thousands of years. even when they operate "clean" their waste storage is also growing military target. Its not a green solution, its a kick the can down the road solution.

throw310822 7mo ago

[flagged]

woodruffw 7mo ago
> starting from the US arrogance that led to the war in Ukraine What arrogance would this be?
- throw310822 7mo ago
  The arrogance of ignoring repeated Russian requests to stop NATO expansion and Ukraine integration into NATO, and of not stopping (well documented) US political meddling in Ukraine. This went on for many years- Mearsheimer was able to predict the war ten years in advance. The US and Europe ignored all this- the US maybe because it really stood to gain from a war, Europe because it thought it was beneath itself to seriously engage with Russia.
  - woodruffw 7mo ago
    On its face, this suggests that only Russia and the US have any autonomy vis a vis who gets to be in NATO. What about what Ukraine wants?
    - throw310822 7mo ago
      NATO is a military alliance, the only ones who get a say about who is in it and who isn't are its current members. That said, of course choices have consequences, and some choices are more advisable/ appropriate than others.
      - wiseowise 7mo ago
        > NATO is a military alliance, the only ones who get a say about who is in it and who isn't are its current members. And they repeatedly rejected Ukraine and are still doing it? What's your point?
      - 7mo ago

Joeri 7mo ago

The majority of Belgium’s electricity comes from nuclear, wind and solar. They have been greatly expanding wind parks in the north sea, and they’re in the early stages of deploying SMRs. But the reality is that Belgium still needs a lot of natural gas for electricity production and its large chemical industry, and that all of this gas has to be imported. Long term there is the European hydrogen strategy which aims to convert a lot of the current natural gas storage and transportation grid to hydrogen and use that in places that currently use LNG, but this requires inventing new technologies so is not a quick fix.

_aavaa_ 7mo ago
The long term European hydrogen strategy aims to waste a while bunch of time and money on a dead end technology.
- ath92 7mo ago
  This is not necessarily true for all situations. Northern Europe is planning to produce a lot of electricity with offshore wind, but laying deep sea high voltage electricity cables isn’t cheap. There’s already a lot of gas pipelines that can be retrofitted for hydrogen transport at a much lower price. At a certain point it becomes viable to just use electrolysis and transport hydrogen using excess wind power instead of transporting the electricity to land and storing it in batteries. There are also industries like steel production that are just not going to transition to electricity. Hydrogen has a place there too.
  - _aavaa_ 7mo ago
    > At a certain point it becomes viable to just use electrolysis and transport hydrogen using excess wind power instead of transporting the electricity to land and storing it in batteries. If you are talking about excess energy, that implies there is non-excess energy that’s being transported across cables. So you are already transporting it to land and connecting it to the grid. Storage from there is trivial compared to a hydrogen transmission and distribution network. As for repurposing the LNG pipes for hydrogen, that’s a pipe dream to convert a standard asset into a story you can sell.

thefz 7mo ago

Can't heat a home with solar