Should the decarbonized economy be nuclear-powered?

[kravietz]

@trythis

Now I am ardently not a fan of Putin (…), but the guy will not live forever and a unnecessarily (and a good bit IS necessary) and ineffective confrontational attitude is not going to pave a path to a happy geopolitical end to this.

Putin, or to be more precise, the kleptocracy he created, doesn’t really need nor care about fans in Europe. Putinversteher is the attitude that is perfectly sufficient for their tactical goals.

How do you precisely distinguish “unnecesary” from “necessary”? You just had a Russian with FSB-issued fake passport assassinate a German citizen in Berlin. In 2006 you had Kovtun and Lugovoy leave radioactive polonium traces in half of Germany, as they traveled to London to kill Litvinenko. In 2016 you had Russian foreign minister and German-language propaganda stations incite social unrest based on entirely false story of Lisa F.

Yet none of these caused slightest diplomatic action from German government, which apparently thinks that would be “unnecessarily confrontational”. Russian TV is making fun of Angela Merkel, I’ve seen it myself!

I happen to know Russia pretty well as I’ve been going there frequently for the last 20 years and it’s a great country that is unfortunately ruled by people of criminal background, literally. These people consider lack of reaction not as kindness but as a weakness, and will only escalate hostile actions, simply because they can. Do you remember when Turkey shot down Russian Su-24 over Turkish territory after Russian army violated their airspace for months? Do you think that was “unnecessarily confrontational”? Well, what happened next must have been truly surprising for any German leader: Russians stopped violating Turkish airspace! And shortly after became the best pals with Erdogan, because this is how you earn respect with gangsters.

@trythis

Don’t believe me? Type in “Kyshtym” in your search box. That one alone is 66+200 casualties (to date).

Kyshtym was a military plutonium production site. In such case your FUD is missing Hiroshima and Bikini.

And still, 66 is less than 171’000 killed in China dam disaster. And also less than 200+ killed in Brazil dam disaster in 2019.

Also this year: At least 10 killed in explosion at gas factory in central China.

@trythis

And then turn around and turn around and say that Russia is being mean for using its goddamn oil and gas as it chooses to see fit (for example SUPPLYING IT ALL THROUGH THE COLD WAR to the West).

I’m not saying Russia is “being mean” for building nuclear reactors, quite the opposite - I respect their nuclear industry quite a lot. I said it’s German Energiewende that is stupid as it shuts down German reactors, switches to Russian gas and kind of pretends that it has just heroically saved the world from nuclear holocaust, while a dozen of new reactors are being built in Russia. This is just like outsourcing all industrial production to Asia and saying “look, we emit no CO2 in Europe now!”.

Also as you mention Cold War oil and gas supplies, this may come as a surprise but they did not supply these for free. You should probably also read about the famous rope metaphor frequently employed by Soviet leaders.

@trythis

Let me add that I in no way want to diminish Poland’s precarious situation in this context.

Poland’s precarious situation is 100% responsibility of its populist government and, sorry to say that, conservative and under-educated population. Germany is scared to death of “radiation” (except for FSB polonium, that is) and prefers “safe and clean gas”, Poland is both scared and unwilling to spend money to invest into nuclear, wind or solar because “our grandfathers used coal” attitude.

That’s precisely why I’m living in the UK now.

[trythis]

@kravietz

In such case your FUD is missing

a) “The Kyshtym disaster was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on 29 September 1957 at Mayak, a plutonium production site in Russia for nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel reprocessing plant of the Soviet Union.”

First sentence, but eh. Better start moving goalposts, and do some more whataboutery, and “ha-just-joking”.

b) So what. The plant wasn’t supposed to be used as a bomb (or ruin Soviet territory).
“The Mayak plant was built in haste between 1945 and 1948. Gaps in physicists’ knowledge about nuclear physics at the time made it difficult to judge the safety of many decisions.”

^This is a textbook example of the problems I have desperately tried to point out to you in my previous answers.
But who cares, right? Why bother with accountability and detail when a grand future awaits if you only let them do their thing?
I happen to be an engineer who understands a thing or two around this, and I am telling you I get more upset the more I am looking at this stuff, and the more I listen to “advocates” showing your wantonly negligent attitude.

Sorry, there’s a lot to be said for the merits of nuclear, but not like this.

[trythis]

@kravietz

Poland’s precarious situation is 100% responsibility of its populist government

That is also bullshit. I really don’t like them, but there is a thing called history and geopolitics, neither of which you get to vote on very much.
I am not going to blurt out other bullshit such as “people get the government they deserve”, but in times of peace, prosperity, and democracy - the population very much is partially responsible for such things.

You can influence the above e.g by leading as a good example, or talking before thinking and not needlessly driving moderates away from you and what you claim to stand for.

[kravietz]

@trythis

This is a textbook example of the problems I have desperately tried to point out to you in my previous answers.

It’s a very poor example. You’re trying to prevent usage of the technology in Europe in 2019 using an example from 50’s Soviet Union, a country best known for it absolute disrespect for human life and environment and absolute dominance of industrial-military complex over anything else. Also, the technology might have been indeed poorly understood as it was stolen from the West, yet Stalin has put absolute priority on getting it into work at any cost. Which is precisely what happened - from the very article you linked:

Once production started up, Soviet engineers quickly ran out of underground space for storage of high level radioactive waste. Rather than cease production of plutonium until new underground waste storage tanks could be built, between 1949 and 1951 Soviet managers dumped 7.8 cubic yards of toxic chemicals including 3.2 million curies of high-level radioactive waste into the Techa River

Any “gaps in knowledge” here? Sorry, but literally everything in the history of the Mayak plant demonstrates negligence in dealing with very-well known technologies like cooling or waste recycling caused by political pressure rather than some nuanced nuclear-related issues, logically leading to the 1957 disaster:

In 1957 the cooling system in one of the tanks containing about 70–80 tons of liquid radioactive waste failed and was not repaired

You had precisely the same culture of negligence cause anthrax leak from Sverdlovsk bioweapon facility in 1979, and hundreds of less-known industrial disasters in USSR.

If you want to go into the details on how Soviet industry operated and why disasters like Kyshtym or Chernobyl happened, I’m happy to discuss that in detail as I have studied Soviet command economy extensively. For start, I can recommend the 1988 book by Victor Kravchenko who was a director of a number of Soviet plants and had first-hand experience with the mess caused by central planning. Second recommended reading is an article from 1988 by Nikolai Shmelyev, a Soviet economist who described the state of Soviet economy in 80’s pointing out the same deficiencies.

Also, you’re using an example from 50’s, around a decade after the nuclear technology was even introduced for the first time, and initially for the military purposes. As you are highlighting that Mayak also served as “nuclear fuel reprocessing plant”, I would encourage you to first look up how many civilian, grid-connected power-generating reactors Soviet Union had in 1957…

[kravietz]

@trythis

That is also bullshit. I really don’t like them, but there is a thing called history and geopolitics, neither of which you get to vote on very much.

I’m certainly not a fan of any form of historical determinism, be it Marxian historical materialism or MacKinder/Ratzel/Dugin-style geopolitics, both of which I consider pseudo-scientific.

Poland made plenty of choices during the course of 20th and 21st century, some of them were good, some of them were poor. As I spent 35 years living in Poland and was actively involved in politics, I can go into great detail about how some extremely poor strategic choices were made not by the power of some “laws of history” but simply by stupidity and limited world-view of very specific people with very vested interests. At the same time Poland’s situation is not really as “precarious” as some would like to think - the country is benefiting from freedom of movement (in both directions), the economy is thriving and competitive, which is perhaps best portrayed by comparison to Ukraine (which in turn only started recovery recently):

The problems Poland has are strategic - demographics and pensions, rule of law, environment and security. All of these can be resolved, but none of Polish governments was ever really good at any strategic planning, they usually only react rather than preempt. In terms of society, Poland has exactly the same problem as Russia - the society is extremely divided, with around 30% being extremely conservative, tribal, anti-progressive, pseudo-religious (that is, attached to Christian rituals rather than ethics) and living in a constant state of being offended by someone else’s past actions, be it next-street neighbour, or a neighbouring state, focused on retribution rather than building future.

PiS is the first mainstream party that took all these sentiments and reinforced them, telling people it’s OK to be xenophobic and that it’s indeed the fault of Jews, Germans, Ukrainians, Russians, pro-European Poles and everyone else that their salaries are being delayed and public services like healthcare or law enforcement are crap. Then it started to re-shape to country’s structure to very much resemble Putin’s “power vertical”, with state-controlled judiciary and state media.

There’s the other 30% of the society that is progressive, pro-social and pro-environmental, but their voice is suppressed by the conseravives and - most importantly - the remaining 40% that is completely depoliticized and just want the state and everyone else to leave them alone.

[kravietz]

Just for the record, regarding Greens and burning forests:

Which is obviously nonsense if you take into account Syberian forests that take hundred of years to grow that are being cut and transported over 7000 km exclusively to satisfy EU minimum biomass quota.

[JasonCole]

Looks like Estonia is looking at smaller, next-gen reactors - GE Hitachi, Fermi Energia sign small modular reactor MoU : New Nuclear - World Nuclear News

They look like they solve a lot of the problems (except waste disposal) of the older ones. Build them in big pieces in a factory, ship to site fully loaded, run for a few decades and then reprocess. Hell, we could even print them.

[kravietz]

Now, European Greens and Germany find themselves on the same side of the IPCC debate as climate deniers - and quite deservedly. An open letter by James F. Hansen and others:

Progress is being blocked by several countries, including Germany, which claim nuclear should be excluded because of their concerns about nuclear waste. This is in spite of clear evidence that nuclear waste does not and will not cause harm to sustainability objectives. Nuclear energy displaces fossil fuel use, with significant air pollution and climate benefits. Without nuclear, there will be 500m tonnes of extra CO2 emissions every year in Europe, which is more than the emissions of UK or France alone. Without nuclear, our action on climate will be more difficult, more expensive, and more likely to fail. The real harm done will be to Europe’s ambition to achieve net zero by 2050.

[kravietz]

At the same time, South Korea literally replaces forest with solar panels:

More than 2 million trees have been cut down in South Korea over the last three years to make space for solar panels, according to opposition lawmakers who argue that the government’s renewable push should not be a replacement of nuclear energy. Since the government strongly pushed for solar power business in 2017, 4,407 hectares of forest have been damaged, 15 times the space of the Yeouido area of Seoul, according to Rep.

[kravietz]

COP25: EU officials say biomass burning policy to come under critical review

When asked if the EU would close the loophole, he said: “The issue of biofuels needs to be looked at very carefully. We have to make sure that what we do with biofuels is sustainable and does not do more harm than that it does good.” A second EU official expressed a similar view. The issue won’t likely be reviewed until after 2020.
This is perhaps the first acknowledgement by a top developed world official that the biomass loophole is a potential problem. The loophole encourages power plants that burn coal (whose carbon emissions are counted) to be converted to biomass — the burning of wood pellets (whose carbon emissions are counted as carbon neutral).