I think realistically this is the only way in the turbulent times we live in. Even in the small and interconnected Europe, you have to be completely self sustainable when the need arises. We've seen more than enough broken pipes, power lines and the like in the last year alone to underline this need.
> you have to be completely self sustainable when the need arises
The last few days have also laid bare that there is no sovereignty without nuclear weapons. A civil nuclear fleet is a stepping stone to nuclear weapons stewardship.
(Even absent nuclear weapons, see the special treatment of Zaporizhzhia [1] over Ukraine’s other power infrastructure.)
Italy neither has the engineers to build a nuclear power plant, they would have to ask another nation, like Russia, Canada or France, to build it for them.
And where does the nuclear fuel come from? Russia.
> And where does the nuclear fuel come from? Russia.
Not true at all. Russia is producing 5% of the world Uranium, and they probably use quite a lot of that domestically given they produce 8% of all nuclear power in the world with their own plant.
Kazakhstan + Uzbekistan is 50% of the word production. Canada is second and will be happy to start selling to the EU. Namibia and Australia both produce twice as much as Russia.
Not to say that supply of natural Uranium is not a concern because you do depends of a small list of countries but we don't need to buy any from Russia.
You know refinement can be done anywhere? We take bauxite and ship it to the other side of the world to make aluminium because electric power is cheaper there.
> The following countries are known to operate enrichment facilities: Argentina, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, the Netherlands, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
So? Refinement doesn't have a dependency on a particular location. This is like saying nuclear energy in Germany is dependent on France and other countries. Currently it is but only because we choose to not do it locally - it doesn't have to be this way.
I would classify ITER as basic research instead of a commercial nuclear power plant.
I didn't know that Enel operates nuclear power plants, that's interesting, but they seem to come from an acquisition of Endesa and have been constructed way before that acquisition, and from designs of foreign places. So they aren't modern generation reactors that one would want to build from scratch.
As for the Slovakian nuclear power plant, it's a russian design as well.
I don't doubt that Enel could operate nuclear reactors of foreign design, where Canada, Russia and France have strong capabilities, but if the design comes from a different country, do you really achieve the independence goal?
Canada, Khazakhstan, Namibi, and so on. Russia is pretty far down the list. Australia has the largest known reserves of uranium they just haven pushed to extensively extract it.
What are those engineers doing currently, then? It takes time to actually build a technology base for somethin like nuclear, and it generally requires that you are building and running nuclear power plants.
And even after years of the war in Ukraine, Russia is still the second largest source of uranium for the EU, making up a quarter of imports
Italian companies that work on reactor design, decommissioning and technology commissioned by foreign countries, for example.
>Russia is still the second largest source of uranium for the EU, making up a quarter of imports
The vast majority of contracts are multiannual, the EU will rely much less on Russian uranium export once they expire. Italy has no reason to sign them with Russia.
Isn't the price of a KW of solar panels similar to the price of a KW of nuclear power these days?
I wonder what hinders us to replace the roofs of all houses with solar panels and put batteries in all cellars?
It might still be useful to build out nuclear power plants. But the solar+battery approach seems like an easier first step to increase the available power, doesn't it?
Everything seen so far does not suggest it will improve.
SMRs might, possibly, change that — we shall have to see. I have nothing against SMRs, but they're novel, and I've seen a lot of novel ideas that seem interesting, go nowhere.
Almost all nuclear plants in the west were built in the 70s and 80s. The number built since is miniscule so of course the costs are going to be huge, they're one off projects.
Apples to oranges. But in italy, solar with batteries may already be cheaper. Or geothermal energy. But, hey, they want to do a study and the study will find that out too.
Geothermal energy is already exploited in italy. About 1/3rd of Tuscany energy production happens thanks to geothermal, which is also used for heating purposes [1]
There are also new plants in the making [2]
Being tuscanian, I visited the museum or geothermal energy in larderello once, the area of larderello is quite uncanny, in some parts the ground is literally fuming steam. There's also a smell of rotten eggs lol
It definitely resonates a lot, especially since that area has been known for centuries for that type of geothermal activity. I don't know whether Dante visited larderello, but next time I meet a local guide I'll ask them
As always with nuclear there are a few taboo topics. One of them being fuel supply. For European reactors that seems to be either Mali/Niger, or Russia. Both not excellent if the goal is geopolitical independence.
Solar, wind and batteries have no fuel concerns, and they are inherently decentralized.
Are you joking? Renewables mean one order of magnitude more raw materials imports from China and Chinese operated mining in unstable African countries.
With some work and investment European nuclear fuel supply could be 100% free from Russia, which anyway is peanuts compared to billions spent on Russian LNG. Uranium ore can come from Canada, Kazakhstan and Australia, not only African countries.
> As always with nuclear there are a few taboo topics. One of them being fuel supply.
It's not taboo, the answer is just extremely simple: mining needs people willing to work in a dangerous and exhausting field, so when practical, rich countries tend to prefer outsourcing this (capitalism does not tend to reward ethics). It's very practical for uranium because nuclear reactors need a tiny volume which is trivial to ship and to store. Most countries with a nuclear program keep a stockpile of multiple years.
Mining uranium in other places is very feasible, as are other more expensive options like extracting it out of the ocean. After all, with nuclear the cost of the fuel is a tiny amount of the actual cost of power generation. This is not happening because there's really no need to. In the past, there have been uranium mines in pretty much every european country, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_by_country#Euro...
(Refining/processing is a different story. But that's more obviously a "money/care" problem - there's no possible physical constraint for refining/processing as there could be for mining.)
I know the soviets dug up half the Czech Republic for uranium deposits though. There's still some left there, not sure how much though. I have a feeling that the reliance on Africa and Russia is more price and environmental regulation driven.
Accidents happen, you cannot eliminate completely the risk, but that is fine as long as you minimize the risk. People died because of wind power [1] but since the event is quite rare we don't ask ourselves "how do we stop wind-power-related disasters".
In the case of Fukishima, only one person died directly because of it. About 2000 more deaths can be related to the nuclear accident, for example because they were displaced and living in worse conditions [2]. Since this is the kind of event that every few decades (we have to go back to Chernobyl for something similar) I would say that it is not a reason for worrying.
For comparison, that is 1/10 of people that died in Japan because of the Tsunami that caused it, and it is less than the number of people that die every year for traffic accidents in Italy, so if I was Italian (wait, I am!) I would be more worried about the road traffic than a nuclear accident.
As one of the worst Nuclear accidents in history (caused by one of the largest earthquakes to hit Japan along with a tsunami), an awfully small amount of people died.
If anything, Fukushima shows how safe Nuclear actually is.
Nuclear power is extremely cost effective, even with the current plants.
The individual plants are currently expensive, because they are large and produce huge amounts of power. Since that means you only have a fairly small number of plants, that means the risk is higher than preferable.
However, even with existing designs, building a common design multiple times and overlapping the build times brings down risk, build-time and costs tremendously.
The German Konvois were built for DM 5.8 billion in less than 6 years, and we were just getting started.
China is currently building their version of the passively safe Westinghouse AP-1000, the CAP-1400, in 5 years for $ 3.5 billion.
Nuclear is being vastly outcompeted globally for new installations of power capacity by renewables. It's not even close. The only inference that can be drawn from this is that renewables beat nuclear in the market, that nuclear is the loser technology economically.
Even in China, two orders of magnitude more PV comes online each year compared to nuclear (nameplate power, adjust by a factor of maybe 4 for levelized power).
Nuclear advocates defending the fantasy you are espousing here have to resort to universal conspiracy theories to explain away this unpleasant reality. But how are supposedly omnipotent greens and public fear supposed to be hindering nuclear's rollout in China?
Nuclear may benefit from experience, but that means that as rollouts are scaled back, experience decays away and nuclear gets more expensive. Below a certain (and probably pretty large) rate of installs, nuclear just regresses. It's not clear even China can avoid this at the current install rate.
You can't. The problem with nuclear is that it needs to be properly maintained forever. If you get an irresponsible government or power company that cheaps out in 30 years, oopsies, you're going to irradiate the local area.
It's a lot like trusting your private data to a company. Sure, Google in 2007 is pretty great, but maybe you have some doubts about their integrity in 2025. Too late, they have what they have, forever.
Sure, but this is HN, and we get a lot of The Case For Nuclear Power articles coming through, and startups building micro reactors that everyone thinks are very cool- me too, honestly- but I think that the case against gets given short shrift, or can turned into a strawman.
The consequences of a nuclear incident are very high, and can be more or less permanent for an area. It's a lot to ask for a technology to be absolutely resilient to mismanagement or even sabotage.
> The consequences of a nuclear incident are very high, and can be more or less permanent for an area. It's a lot to ask for a technology to be absolutely resilient to mismanagement or even sabotage.
You can build systems to fail safe, so that lack of proper maintenance leads to the plant becoming safely inoperable, and only grossly-improper maintenance would cause a fallout incident.
Is this guaranteed to work? The Chernobyl disaster was caused by grossly-improper maintenance, so… :shrug:. No matter how many physical safety mechanisms you have, a determined mechanic could remove them – but at that point, it becomes deliberate sabotage, which is rare, detectable, and not unique to nuclear power plants. (You could probably kill more people by destroying the right dam in the middle of the night.)
... and with every other energy source. The only difference is that some spread the damage out enough to the point where people stop caring vs. (somewhat) larger but incredibly rare incidents that make headlines.
And that's before you take into account second order risks like people dying because they can't afford to heat properly during winter.
The damage from Fukushima has been so small that it wouldn't make it past regional headlines if it didn't involve the scary word "nuclear".
Nuclear power plants don't need to be built at scale. I reckon we could get away with a few thousand in the entire world. And by "grossly improper", I mean things that are more expensive than correct maintenance, and make the power plant work less well: I can't rule out that anyone would want to do that, but you'd need a bona fide conspiracy (or some kind of purge of all available experts) to even attempt it.
There should be international agreements for nuclear energy where neighboring countries can come and inspect each others power plants, or one org on the continent level.
Just don't build the plant next to Vesuvius. The biggest recorded earthquake in Europe was 7.1 magnitude, compared to 7.4 that caused tsunami that hit fukushima.
> MSRs eliminate the nuclear meltdown scenario present in water-cooled reactors because the fuel mixture is kept in a molten state. The fuel mixture is designed to drain without pumping from the core to a containment vessel in emergency scenarios, where the fuel solidifies, quenching the reaction.
There was no nuclear disaster at Fukushima. There was a tsunami and there was a destruction of a nuclear power plant. There were a couple cancers and an undetectable release of tritiated water into the Pacific Freaking Ocean.
You can see online, nuclear power is actually one of the safest methods of energy generation, behind solar and ahead of wind, because sometimes dudes fall from the tops of the windmills.
Could you start looking at the second-order effects of the meltdown to get a higher death toll? Probably, but you could probably also look at all of the pollutants generated by solar panels, and the fact that they get shipped to Africa and crushed up and thrown in the ground to make solar's death toll look higher too.
I think I already addressed this point. You also need to think about second-order effects, but like I said, there are second order effects to all of these solutions. Just because nuclear's side effects are more easy to dramatize doesn't mean that it is necessarily more deadly / harmful to the environment.
That's because the deaths would be lost in a sea of ordinary cancers. Hundreds of additional cancers would not be detectable; that would be below the statistical noise floor. Not being detectable does not mean they won't occur.
Anyway, let me steelman what you're aiming at here. I think you want to argue not that hundreds of deaths won't occur, but that hundreds of deaths don't matter that much. These are statistical deaths, so it's appropriate to treat them using the "statistical value of a human life". This is the value of a life to be used for policy purposes (like deciding if a safety measure is needed, if spending on a medical treatment is appropriate, etc.) In the US, it's around $12M per life. So, 200 (say) deaths would have a value of $2.4B. This is not enormous compared to overall cost of the accident, even to the utility. It could be reasonable to treat radiation releases as at Fukushima by fining the polluter by an amount related to this value.
Under this sort of regulatory regime, the purpose of regulations is not to avoid all releases, but to keep the releases small enough that the utilities would have the resources to pay the fines. So, no 100,000 death accidents. Nuclear power plants designed to this concept could allow some small radiation release in accidents.
Different products -- nuclear provides grid stability, power quality and dedicated baseload power. Rooftop solar provides some residential power but not helpful for the grid at large -- requires upgrades to the local infrastructure and decreases reliability. All manageable but people constantly think of power in terms of how much is $/kwh - there is soo many more important qualities to powering the grid than strictly cost.
Well, solar and wind are only usable when it is sunny or windy. The only way to make solar or wind power sustainable is to have ways to store the energy, like hydroplants or hydro pump stations. Right now, they are sabotaging the economy to build sustainable sources.
If you add storage to the network you can store the surplus renewable generation for later dispatch, Europe's largest just went online: https://archive.is/p9qsS
To my understanding the use of nuclear would be to reduce the ammount of spread out battery stations that'd have to cover the base load when cloudy / at night.
There'd also be less overbuilding of solar as you have to build for winter weather and day length instead of summer if solar is supposed to cover everything
That's reassuring to know, thank you for pointing that out. I didn't get the impression this was already solved since you still keep hearing about battery fires, but hopefully this means that will be a thing of the past soon.
I would still skip this step and let it be the power company's problem though, simply because at ~400 USD / kWh they don't seem very cost efficient for off-peak storage (at least in my country).
To be sure, they're a cost -- but at least in America, LiFePo4 batteries are practically being given away right now -- 100Ah@12V for ~$100 US. I suspect these are the "let's make hay before the tariffs hit" prices, but there are a lot of unpronounceable brands making surprisingly high quality products in the space.
As for off-peak storage, these would allow you to replace a Tesla powerwall for ~$600-750 US. I don't know your country, or its peaks (or valleys) but on my sailboat, off-peak is night time or cloudy days, and in sunny climes, 600ah gets me nigh infinite power. Without clear skies, I'm limited to ~4-5 days of normal consumption.
(Not trying to nudge you off your position at all, just sort of reflecting/remarking at how practicable this all is at the moment.)
Never mind the cost, it has taken the UK over a decade from initial decision to not yet completing Hinkley Point C. Nuclear is really slow to build. You can get a solid decade of carbon-free electricity out of solar panels in that time.
Panels today. Batteries as available. Nuclear eventually - maybe.
(people will respond with "what about SMRs", to which I will ask "what's the shortest time from decision to online that a SMR project has achieved?")
Most people do not understand this and think that we can reall talk about nuclear vs solar when we really need to talk about an energy mix where you pick one point (for example you pick nuclear or solar) and the rest depends on this choice.
Energy mix is key: the cost of 100% dependency on intermittent renewables is extremely high.
Going for 95% dependency on intermittent renewables with the remainder being filled in by low-cost dispatchable generation halves system costs (see table 6, pg. 21).
These nuclear cost arguments always gloss over the fact that nuclear has no insurance or cleanup costs. Developers will only build plants if the government assumes both of those costs.
Add to that the uncertainty over fuel and the disposal of used fuel, and there's literally no valid cost argument for nuclear.
I'm not anti-nuclear, but the fiscal realities seem insurmountable.
>Isn’t this a pretty much solved problem though? Just add a battery to your house?
In winter the days are short, the sky can be covered in clouds for an entire week, the solar panels can be covered in snow also.
I have solar panels but I do not have a way to export my data to show you the summer vs winter GIANT difference.
So people like me with solar need the other people in the area not to all go for solar, then we will need to find a way to burn the excess. Is the same with a country, we can't store the energy from summer for winter and also resist for say 2 weeks of snow and clouds. The EU market might be so in demand that the rich countries will bid for the energy and the poor will have to burn their things to survive.
I am wondering if it would happen that with so many solar roofs we will either have to pay for people to use my energy or I will need to actually throw the excess in the ground safely somehow.
> In winter the days are short, the sky can be covered in clouds for an entire week, the solar panels can be covered in snow also. I have solar panels but I do not have a way to export my data to show you the summer vs winter GIANT difference.
> we can't store the energy from summer for winter and also resist for say 2 weeks of snow and clouds
You, personally, can't store 2 weeks of energy (though it's closer than you may expect, 1 person-week of Italian average electrical consumption is ~= 1 EV battery*). But you personally don't have to, transmission to another part of the country (or continent) has a huge impact on how much storage you need.
Basically, this problem is known, it's not all that difficult to work around — everything on the scale of "national power supply" is expensive and has pros and cons, PV isn't particularly remarkable in the scale or cost of those pros and cons even with current solutions and assuming no R&D effort can improve the trade-offs, they're just different than the pros and cons of the other options.
The major point here is that nuclear is controllable energy type while solar is not. So comparing only the price is apples to oranges comparison. Most human energy consumers need energy with a fixed rate and all physical metrics withing a tight margin. To prouduce that with only solar energy is impossible.
This means you have to build other energy sources into the grid like gas turbines to be able to control the grid. So if you really want to compare energy prices than you have to look into the TCO.
Solar panels last 20-25 years. Nuclear power plants last for 50+ years and use fraction of the space that solar. It is hard to believe that the TCO is lower. Usually people just looking at the price in the short term and comparing that. Batteries are a whole different can of worms. Super toxic and you need a high volume of those because the energy density is much lower.
In the timeframe of the duration of the installation. (Total cost for the whole project + total costs for fuels & maintainance) / (kW generated * lifetime of the project)
Sure, but given that hypothetical new nuclear plants would become effective in a decade or more from now, and that we already have an energy crisis, one would expect Italy to first ramp up the fastest option (solar).
Only thinking in terms of cost is short vision IMO. What happens if in 20/30 years you need to dramatically ramp up the energy generation (maybe everyone will drive electric, maybe house heating will be electric, maybe someone will come up with a new tech that requires a huge amount of energy, ...) and you already covered most of the roofs? or panels and batteries are at their end of life and you need massive investments just to keep up with the status quo?
I woulnd't go in a fight with a fist tied behing my back, and global warming is one of the biggest fights we must face.
I didn't say we shouldn't do both, just that since we are already in an energy crisis, ramping up solar very quickly should be a priority, compared to nuclear plants. Nuclear plants will improve the lives of our children, solar will improve our own lives. The problem is that I'm not hearing anything about solar investments from the Italian government.
Another great move would be to stop the warmongering and to start buying gas from Russia, while we work on solar and nuclear.
I agree in spirit, but given the massive cost premium of nuke power and the impossibility of insurance, the only way new nukes are going to get built in the west is via state guarantees
/subsidies. That means higher taxes, or forcing citizens to pay much higher power rates for ~50 years. Both will be very unpopular, especially as green power continues to get cheaper and cheaper
> Isn't the price of a KW of solar panels similar to the price of a KW of nuclear power these days?
Solar panels are down to something like $0.20/W, a factor of 50 cheaper than a nuclear power plant. Solar panels are only a fraction of the cost of a solar installation though. Utility-scale solar is around $1/W, a factor of 10 below nuclear. Adjusting for capacity factor, solar is still several times cheaper than nuclear (and has lower operating cost).
Government can centralize the cost of nuclear. All goes to 1 contractor who builds it. With solar, every house is a different size so each house will have a different cost. Pretty hard political sell to tell your voters you are going to give more to the rich because they have bigger houses. Totally makes sense from a "well they use and pay for more power" perspective but a really hard sell politically. Plus renters get nothing.
Indeed rooftop solar is something that rich people benefit from the most: it's a fun gimmick that people who own houses can use to dodge taxes and network fees. The most cost effective solar deployments are larger industrial setups due to the economics of scale. From a national economy point of view, rooftop solar makes less sense. Someone still needs to pay for the network after all, it just gets onto someone else's shoulders.
The direction where market must go on that is clear. Higher standing charges for grid connection, more variable market rates. And maybe also more variable transfer rates. Meaning that roof top solar will get less economical as true costs will shift to times when energy is pulled from the grid. Home batteries will shift some of this, but if you want power after they are dark and everyone else want it too it will be expensive.
As an Italian abroad, this came out of the blue and I was not expecting this change of mind, at all. There have been two referendums on nuclear energy in Italy: one just after the disaster of Chernobyl. They tried again decades later, in 2011; just after the disaster of Fukushima. The result was of course overwhelmingly negative both times.
This is great news, and will hopefully lower the cost of electricity that we mostly import from France.
Who's brilliantly dumb idea was it to have the only two referendums ever also immediately after a disaster? That is what you'd do if you want an overwhelmingly biased referendum playing off people's rash and short term panic based decision making.
The green energy lobby has everything to gain, and it's been working extra to make it a reality. For example, Greenpeace has been fighting nuclear power all over the world.
not really. The referendum was planned long before Fukushima, but then Fukushima happened at just the right time, reminding voters just in time to vote against nuclear.
The second referendum had been planned long before, and then the Fukushima disaster happened, just a couple of weeks before the vote. A stark reminder that nuclear energy is not safe.
By the way, Italy had several nuclear reactors, but they were shut down after the first referendum.
This says that up to 25% of electricity is imported during peak times, and as of 2016, Italy was the third-largest net importer of electricity after US and Brazil.
Quite the contrary: it literally says that imports are not always proportional to demand. During the day, imports are around 10%, while at night, they rise to 25%... probably because it's much cheaper and more convenient.
Oh, I hoped it's about nuclear weapons. Pitty, it's not. Now, as US is slowly leaving NATO, European countries should urgently work on increasing their nuclear capabilities, developing strategic and tactical nuclear weapons and means of delivery (rockets, bombers, submarines).
Depends on what you mean by "effectively". Yes, you can absolutely have nuclear weapons without nuclear power infrastructure, North Korea and Israel both have nuclear weapons, but no nuclear power programs.
Having a civilian program makes things a little easier, or at least easier to hide. Italy does have a tiny uranium reserve, which it never mined, but I'd guess that they'd need to buy the uranium they'd need for a nuclear weapon. That's a bit easier to do, if you can disguise it as nuclear fuel.
I don't know how effective are NK nuclear weapons, but Israel would definitely count. But according to WP[1], Israel has "research reactors" which might or might not have military use.
> Oh, I hoped it's about nuclear weapons. Pitty, it's not.
If you were going to resume work on nuclear weapons, would you announce it immediately? ... Or would you say that you're developing your nuclear power capabilities.
There are well established historical lines here to be read between.
Nuclear isn’t something to be afraid of, in fact it’s a natural progression. It’s quite safe when done right, it’s cheap, there is the disposal question but in relation to anything else it’s pretty manageable. If nuclear was a bigger resource we might even see better research into better methods of disposal.
THe green narrative fromt the 70s is still strong today. Many of my friends still believe that nuclear is the most dangerous source of energy even though the per TWh metrics are pretty clear.
How much nuclear? The nuclear lobby "recommends" 10-15% of the mix, but when a country has that (Spain 20%) they keep asking for more.
Also... nuclear cheap? Come on, it's the most expensive energy source of the mix, except maybe peak gas.
Nuclear is big in France, has always been big and favoured. Still no "better research" and no magic disposal, after decades of investment. We are asked for religious levels of faith but they don't deliver.
yea after you build the damn thing maybe. Good luck with that. There is a reason 90% of new added capacity is renewable and it's not because of the environment.
I am not knowledgeable about nuclear energy, however, I would not be surprised if this reversing could have to do with having a nuclear pipeline - or at least a nuclear knowledge - already available in the country, in case things go south and there's need to develop own nukes
They should focus on their modern renewables buildout, they've got half compared with Spain and Portugal (20% Vs 40%). With some existing geothermal and hydro in their mix they should be further along.
If you want to be cynical than this latest move could just be the same as Australia's right wing party's pretence about nuclear.
At least in Australia it's local fossil fuels they'd be burning not imported gas.
The current US Administration does not understand the basic mechanics of American hegemony. I think Trump truly believes that we are getting ripped off and stand to gain nothing from our current position with the EU and other allies. But if you take away the incentives and guarantees they'll just turn their back on you and seek their own protection—it has to be symbiotic.
I fully agree that the US benefits from its hegemony and that Trump's statements that the US is getting ripped off are completely false.
But what game is currently being played by the Trump administration? He told the EU to be self-sufficient in defense spending, insults them and Ukraine to awaken their pride. He (temporarily) cuts off public ties with Zelensky. The press conference with the row at the end actually ended with Trump winking at the audience and Zelensky putting his thumb up. That part is cut out of many videos.
EU leaders scramble to put up the type of peace plans that they know will be refused. What if all is prearranged and Trump just wants to dump Biden's conflict on the EU, at least temporarily until everyone has rearmed?
Trump has said a lot, including lifting sanctions on Russia. But he extended the sanctions. He did halt arms shipments to Ukraine either to pressure Ukraine or the EU.
The EU should negotiate with Russia without the US, get a viable peace plan and drop sanctions. Then we'll see if Trump's behavior is more than theater.
Maybe not well known, but during the 20th century a number of nations started a nuclear weapons program, but then were convinced to halt the work by security guarantees by the U.S.
You better believe that every single one of those nations is now revisiting that decision.
For those wondering if Italy can afford to build nuclear: their economy is larger than Russia’s. As is Brazil’s, another nation that put nuclear weapons on hold per U.S. request.
The Budapest Memorandum had no security guarantees.
> Another key point was that U.S. State Department lawyers made a distinction between "security guarantee" and "security assurance", referring to the security guarantees that were desired by Ukraine in exchange for non-proliferation. "Security guarantee" would have implied the use of military force in assisting its non-nuclear parties attacked by an aggressor (such as Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty for NATO members) while "security assurance" would simply specify the non-violation of these parties' territorial integrity. In the end, a statement was read into the negotiation record that the (according to the U.S. lawyers) lesser sense of the English word "assurance" would be the sole implied translation for all appearances of both terms in all three language versions of the statement.[17] In the Ukrainian version of the document, the wording "security guarantees" was used though.[19]
To clarify, the upholding of the security assurance is still left up to the discretion of nations in the agreement, based on how important non-proliferation of nuclear weapons is to them. It seems that recently, nuclear proliferation is no longer a concern for the US, hence they no longer enforce this agreement, which is their right, for better or worse.
I'm not sure any of these things are really enforceable short of someone taking military action? I think Russia has broken loads of agreements re Ukraine and nothing very much usually happens.
Even NATO article 5, I'd expect if Russia rolls into Lithuania Trump would ignore it.
The two main enforcement mechanisms are economic sanctions and military aid, which even the EU has been involved with. Economic sanctions haven't had much impact but coupled with military aid has stopped Russian progress in the invasion. The problem is, with the US pulling out, EU big shoes to fill with military aid.
The agreement has no explicit terms for whether or not nations must enforce it, that's left up to the nations to decide on their own. It was intentionally written this way, otherwise Russia would have never agreed to it.
You keep misunderstanding. As I have already stated, the agreement lacks formal enforcement mechanisms, how it is upheld is up to the agreeing nations to figure out. In 2014 that was economic sanctions. In 2022 that was military aid. This is how political agreements work.
I never said they are breaking the word of any agreement. I just told you what they are are all thinking. And there is nothing you can do to stop it now.
Thats kind of lawyer speak, not much different when insurance company don't wanna cover you because of some tiny font paragraph or different interpretation in the contract.
USA could before this war started (because they publicly on camera warned about invasion days before) tell Putin that in case of invasion they believe they cannot fullfill contract commitment so in this situation the contract would be void and they would have to return few old nukes to Ukraine. This would be enough deterrent and fair to justify.
There is no part of the agreement that US didn't uphold. That is not lawyer speak, that is reality. If you think I am wrong cite the part they are not upholding.
By the lawyer speak I mean for the same reason insurance put some misleading wording that other party don't understand so that you can interpret it differently. I think the intent should more important.
U.S. support of Ukraine fulfills a commitment we signed, and which Russia broke.
The U.S. president doesn’t seem to care about international commitments, though. How does that work out in the long run? Would you do business with someone who tells you up front that they might break any promise they make?
The U.S. declined to provide a security "guarantee" because that would have amounted to a backdoor accession to NATO, and the U.S. could not grant that unilaterally. (An example of the U.S. honoring a prior commitment, by the way.) A "guarantee" would have required the U.S. to commit its military forces to the battlefield if Ukraine was invaded.
The U.S. instead provided a security "assurance" which was understood to mean a level of support short of U.S. troops on the ground. And in fact that is what the U.S. has been providing: intelligence and material, but no U.S. forces.
In other words, the level of support has been commensurate with the agreement signed. Until today, apparently.
> Clinton and Yeltsin did promise Ukraine “full guarantees of security, as a sign of friendship and good neighborliness.” The two leaders also reaffirmed “the obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” including Ukraine.
Also, that was not any form of an agreement, it was just words in a meeting. Nobody signed, it was not ratified with US congress as a treaty.
If you take that as binding then all the verbal commitments made to Russia that NATO won't expand eastwards should also have been binding, and they were broken first. I know you will get angry that I mention it, but it's a fact.
Well, I did say not legally binding. But you can see how someone might interpret "Russia and the U.S. will give full guarantees of security" to mean "Russia and the U.S. will give full guarantees of security" if they weren't really paying attention?
It was not even an agreement at all, nevermind binding. It was words said by the Russian president. Not a contract, not a memorandum, just words in a meeting. If Ukraine took one sentence said by the Russian president in a meeting as security guarantees from US (emphasis on the word guarantees) then they are the problem.
Security guarantees would at minimum require a treaty ratified by congress in US, something which I don't think is on the table any more at all.
In normal business the US is usually pretty good. A lot of the reason people trade with US dollars is the system normally works.
Also in matters of security they did a good job between 1945 and 2014 of keeping peace in Europe and stopping Russia running amok which was not that easy in Stalin's day.
I think the mess we have right now is because of many bad choices by US and allies since WW2:
1) They could reduce and rate limit lend lease to Soviet similar like they rate limited to Ukraine so buy themself more time until nuke is ready and then drop one on Dresden or Berlin (Berlin capitulated in May and they had first nuke in July so just few months later). After that probably didn't had nuke Japan. Also Poland and other eastern countries maybe wouldn't be a puppet state because Stalin lied to them and they would be under influence of US and Soviet Union would be weaker.
2) If they didn't have russian spy in their manhattan project then maybe russia wouldn't have nukes or had much much later.
3) If their didn't listen to british and US didn't overturn Mossadegh (instead of negotiating oil deal) then they wouldn't have maybe such a big mess in Iran and middle east now.
4) If the put some leash on Wall Street and their corporations then maybe they wouldn't let China to outcompete them so easily and now wouldn't have to worry about their own economical dominance.
5) If they would upfront told russian they will return nuke to Ukraine in case invasion because of broken contract commitment then they wouldn't have to worry about current mess in Europe.
6) Not much familiar with the whole history of Afganistan but still wondering what and how badly they US screwed that Afghans that were fighting with Soviet Union with aid of US turned agains them.
Sure there's a lot of truth to that, but you used to be able to know what mattered to the US. It wasn't erratic. The magnetic poles of the US just flipped.
Trump is slapping 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico because the USMCA agreement "is a scam" and he was the one to negotiate and sign it. After ripping up NAFTA. The USA's word is worthless now.
Very technically speaking Ukraine didn't have a nuclear weapons program the way we speak of China or India having one.
What they had was nuclear weapons left over when the Soviet Union collapsed.
The US nuclear umbrella was not charity, contrary what some in the US appear to believe. It was and is a pure power play.
Another little tidbit that is not generally well-known is that the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) actually requires the current nuclear powers to get rid of their nuclear weapons...eventually.
Charity ≠ one side of a quid-pro-quo was worthless.
The US gave/gives something that is fairly easy for it to provide, and valuable to the other side.
In return the US receives something that is of great value to it and fairly easy for the other side to provide (as long as the US keeps its side of the bargain).
If US security guarantees turn out to be worthless, you will see a lot more nuclear powers as well as a drastic increase in conventional capabilities.
The US will then be one power among many, rather than a mostly unchallenged superpower.
the Netherlands has nukes in loan from the US. They are at Volkel Airbase. Officially it's a secret, but it's common knowledge and was also confirmed by a former prime-minister. In exchange for these loaned nuclear weapons the Netherlands promised not to develop nuclear weapons of their own.
With the US now showing they are not afraid of doing a "rug pull" on agreements, one starts to wonder if the Netherlands shouldn't start development of nuclear weapons again.
> With the US now showing they are not afraid of doing a "rug pull" on agreements, one starts to wonder if the Netherlands shouldn't start development of nuclear weapons again.
This discussion is already looming in Germany, especially now that Elon Musk openly wants the US to leave NATO. There is a standing offer by Macron for Germany to go under French nuclear protection. The UK also appears to be more than willing to fill in the nuclear vacuum left by the US. If things continue the path of the last 2-3 weeks, I am sure that at some point there will be a discussion about whether Germany should prepare to be able to at least build nuclear weapons quickly.
I have a feeling that Canada has similar thoughts. I wonder what would happen if they started developing nuclear weapons. The US president already announced he would make Canada the 51st state, and around 25% of Canadians saw the US as an enemy country 2 weeks ago [0]
Strategically, it does not make any sense to me. I am pretty sure that the Russians are just as confused. I wonder if there is a historic precedent of a country giving up a functioning empire voluntarily, without any internal or external pressure to do so.
There is a lot of planning going on now in Europe, both on international (EU, UK) and national level, that would've been politically impossible just a few months ago.
Canada has been refused nuclear submarines by the US which are an absolute necessity to patrol the Canadian arctic. But the US also decided Australia should get American nuclear subs and cancel their order of French nuclear subs. I believe the French would be more than happy to build a few subs for their Western NATO friends for a reasonable price.
Was DOGE able to affect the Pentagon or three-lettered security agencies yet? I would assume anything defense-related is kept separate from civilian government structures and may not be as collapsible. Some may even have internal plans to defend against a take over from the top.
Belgium is the same, and I don't know about you, but F16's and F35's are the only ones that can carry those bombs. That's why Belgium ordered a bunch of them and not some European planes.
It's too late to cancel now, but I guess in the future we will have to reconsider the true value of these bombs and airplanes. Once we really need them, US might "force us into peace".
Brazil simply does not have any leverage in the matter. The country almost conducted the first test in Serra do Cachimbo, but the hole where the nuke was to be detoneted was closed by the former president. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serra_do_Cachimbo
They are not operating anymore. Last 3 were shutdown last(?) year. They are now being dismantled. Though, there is research done, but mainly fusion, and some Fusion-reactors. Doesn't help with weapons, but might be your map is not specific enough about this?
Can We Please Stop Comparing Russia’s Economy to Italy’s?
Who's comparing Russia's economy to Italy's? Apparently Lindsay Graham did in 2014. CNN in 2022.
I like this article because it made me think about Russia and it's economy in a way that I didn't fully appreciate before. The article calls out an argument that compares Russia's economy to Italy's economy, using nominal GDP as a measurement. This is supposed to be a Western attempt to brush off Russia as a small(er) player than it really is, but that is a skewed perspective. The use of nominal GDP, especially in times of conflict (and war), does not fully encompass all of the resources that a country is capable of summoning and utilizing. Russia's oil and gas resources, as well as production in wheat, corn, and other earth metals provides it with "substantial leverage" on international markets. Furthermore, when the measurement used to compare the GDP is purchasing power parity (PPP), Russia's economy is more like that of Germany, than Italy. Taken together, the PPP and Russia's domestic production capability, and it seems to make sense why Russia's economy has not completely faltered in the face of sanctions imposed by the West. Could we say the same for Italy? Or even Germany?So all though, CNN is not wrong to make the claim that Russia's economy is equivalent to Italy's in nominal GDP, that comparison fails to take into account the economics of reality. And that's the very definition of propaganda.
> Taken together, the PPP and Russia's domestic production capability
What does exactly Russia produces ? Most of GDP of Russia comes from export of natural resources [1]. This is by design: raw material extraction can be managed even by corrupt friends of the government even with a lot of "inefficiencies"; meanwhile higher level production is left to languish on purpose since it would be a potential vector for others to gain wealth and power (most of the oil infrastructure in Russia is serviced by western tools, for example).
Up to a few years ago I would have added weapons to the list, but it seems to me that they can't produce quality weapons anymore, there are very few moderns Russian weapons in use in Ukraine, for example.
You seem to downplay the strength of Italy's status in the EU and its non-sanctioned access to international trading partners as part of its economic strength. Italy, just like Russia, has its own economic advantages.
If I didn't know how incompetent and delusional our "leaders" are, there would probably be a sense of betrayal. But now it's just... void. Well, at least I got to grow up during the best time this world has ever seen, so I'm thankful for that.
Putin, Trump, Russians, Americans... are just doing their thing. Can't really be mad about that. I always thought there will never be another war in Europe, because (1) nobody's dumb enough to die for a bunch of crooks and (2) cannon fodder is not a great use of people anyway. Oh well, turns out propaganda is one hell of a drug (on both ends of the political spectrum).
Meanwhile... my hotel room in Shenzhen could change window tint with a voice command and automatically detect the language. My Indian colleague's 12yo kid wants to be an astronaut and has a better investment portfolio than me. It is so over.. people have no idea. Like, not tomorrow, not in five years, but certainly by the end of the century. Vivek Ramaswamy tried to give MAGA a hint, but got cancelled for it. (Cancel culture was supposed to be a left-wing postmodern thing btw. Oopsie! Let's pretend we're surprised, ok?)
Yep - Trump's actions are going to weaken the US's position on the world stage by pushing everyone else to provide for themselves what they had previously got from the US (security, advanced compute, etc).
Trump appears to only think in short term transactional way - no long term strategy.
Yes, potentially a very bad thing if it accelerates isolationist policies and further erodes US/world relations.
The sentiment I’ve seen increasingly that goes something like “but they’re freeloading” completely misses the nuance of decades of foreign policy and why the interdependence between allies and enemies alike has maintained relative peace.
If you’re worried about world wars, you should worry about the US undermining itself.
Apologies to Mr Kurzweil, but I think the reality on the ground is that the cost of research into keeping an aging population alive is a raised risk of Armageddon. The political tendencies in older age demographics is bad, the politicians surviving so many decades after a first to leadership position is bad, the billionaires living long enough to find whacky ideas or even directly manipulate politics instead of gifting money to charities is catastrophic, etc.
It has always been true throughout history in every country that political engagement skews heavily toward the old and the rich. I don’t know how to fix it, but thankfully Kurzweil is a hack and was wrong about most things and deserves no apologies; life expectancy might have increased a little since 2001 but human longevity isn’t really budging at all, so there is very little increased risk of a geriatric Armageddon.
I have special beef with Kurzweil’s life expectancy BS because he misrepresents facts in his essays. His famous “Law of Accelerating Returns” essay has an incredible number of misleading plots and conflated arguments, but the life expectancy graph at the bottom is a pure lie, and Kurzweil knows it. It conflates life expectancy with longevity, and it left out data from before 1840 and from between 1940 and 2000 that he already had. If you include that known data and explain what longevity is, it ruins his plot and his argument, but he wanted to pretend there’s a trend that doesn’t exist so he intentionally left it out. https://www.writingsbyraykurzweil.com/the-law-of-acceleratin...
It's popular to talk about unintended consequences, and site the most egregious, but everything has unintended consequences on top of its intended consequences. The world without all of the billionaire attempts to make a good legacy for themselves would in fact include a lot less interesting things.
Actually I believe a not small part of what's happening now is boomer politicians who have been in power too long realizing their time is coming to an end one way or another, and they are refusing to give it up to the younger generations. Trump and Putin in particular have every reason to be as unreasonable as possible if they believe either way there is no future for them if they stop.
These people should not expect to be alive in 10 years so if a trick for getting a few more months at the top means their country is nuked in 10-30 years, whatever.
The world is lucky that Zelensky is the President of Ukraine and not somebody like me - given that Ukraine does have plutonium from its power plants, i'd be already making the warheads (technological difficulties? they were solved 80 years ago and with the modern tech the 3 years is more than enough to produce something working).
That is also notable in the context of Trump yelling at Zelensky that Zelensky is supposedly playing with WW3. If anything, by not making nukes Zelensky shows an, unreasonable at my opinion, restraint here.
It's very, very expensive and (until last week) it was critical to keep the US on side, which would be jeopardized by breaking the nonproliferation treaty.
The MAD argument still applies: Ukraine can't threaten to nuke Moscow without Russia obviously threatening to retaliate with nukes.
Ukraine isn’t in and probably never will be in a position to credibly threaten a MAD second strike to Russia. From number of warheads to strategic depth, it’s not a realistic option. Instead it would seek to credibly threaten limited nuclear war using tactical nukes.
This would only make sense with European support. And at that point, it almost makes more sense for Europe to directly enter the fight. (Or give Kyiv the nuclear weapons.)
> both sides have to agree to the "limited" part for it to stay limited
It’s more that each side has to moderate itself. That’s true if both have nukes or just one. And it’s much easier to moderate oneself when it’s in one’s own interest, e.g. to avoid getting nuked.
I am curious about the plan of Europe about on countering a nuclear first strike on Ukraine by Russia, because the latter has run out of options because the war dragged on and on by the support from Europe, draining Russia of everything they have..
They can always just stop? It's not as if Ukranian tanks are at the gates of Moscow, it's more like the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Or the previous USSR withdrawal from Afghanistan.
It is unclear whether the UK or France would threaten a retaliatory strike in case of nuclear weapons use not against their own territory. It doesn't seem likely, but if there's one thing Putin is very cautious about it's his own personal survival.
They can, but that is what I am wondering about. Will a desperate Putin think he can get away with a nuclear first strike on Ukraine? If he thinks he can, why stop?
That's why you need 5 - 6 bombs - 1 to nuke Moscow, the rest to nuke Berlin, Paris, London, Tel Aviv if they don't help you out before it gets to this.
May be you mean uranium enrichment? When plutonium is already available, like in Ukraine, it is completely different game - you just need to chemically separate plutonium from the spent fuel. That is the only noticeable expense - needs facility with safety protections, etc. Or just a few people willing to die for the Motherland. The rest is putting charges around the plutonium sphere and timing them correctly with electronics. That is basically all. Couple weeks really :)
I think the MAD would be enough. Russia has such a vast space (not possible to effectively cover with air defense), even if just European part, with so many legitimate targets without any need for bunker busters/etc., that just a test underground explosion showing that Ukraine got it would be enough for Russia to hit the brakes screeching.
Btw, according to the Russian nuclear doctrine nukes can be used when the country is invaded even with just conventional weapons if the invasion presents severe threat to the country. Thus according to the Russian nuclear doctrine Ukraine is allowed to use nukes.
No their economy is not larger than Russia, this is a common trope among people whose only way to reach reality is to irrationally use statistics computed by bureaucrats
While CNN's assertion that Russia's economy is on par with Italy's in nominal GDP may be technically accurate, it does not fully consider the economic nuances that are crucial to a comprehensive analysis. This is an example of propaganda.
The WP link shows sourced data from the IMF and World Bank. Why did you respond to that with an unsourced claim this is CNN’s assertion?
The GDP ranking involves all countries. So whose propaganda is it, and what’s the motivation? If it’s technically accurate that Italy ranks above Russia by GDP then what’s the basis for calling it propaganda? Typically propaganda is nationalistic and spreading false information within a country and being used to justify a country’s moves against another, not international verifiable facts that are technically accurate and not being used to justify some action.
GDP is a single summary metric, not a comprehensive analysis. It’s entirely possible that Russia’s and Italy’s rankings could swap when using a different economic metric. That certainly doesn’t mean GDP rankings are propaganda.
Well, if it is [technically] correct, then it's obviously not "propaganda", but simply the truth.
Now you obviously can argue that there should be other considerations, but that is your argument and interpretation, not the obvious truth that the actual data needs to be judged against.
You can cite facts to provoke an emotional response and make people sympathetic to your ideology. That's propaganda.
> Citing a correct fact about the world is not propaganda, as facts are neither doctrine nor "reflect views".
It says "propagation of doctrine" and facts can be used to propagate a doctrine.
Edit:
Here's a definition from Wikipedia:
> NATO's 2011 guidance for military public affairs defines propaganda as "information, ideas, doctrines, or special appeals disseminated to influence the opinion, emotions, attitudes, or behaviour of any specified group in order to benefit the sponsor, either directly or indirectly".
Huh, so you're claiming that GDP data and such is not correct? Any source on that? Because I see multiple sources reporting that in 2023 the GDP of Russia was $2,009,959M and that of Italy was $2,300,941M, although Italy has a higher debt %. Which would confirm the original posters claim considering Italy is a much, much smaller country than Russia. What I find a common trope is people claiming facts are incorrect without stating proof.
At the start of Feb 2025 USD was 100 RUB, a few days ago it was 85 RUB. Does this mean their nominal GDP grew by 15% in one month? In some cases it's fine to use Nominal GDP while in other cases, you should use GDP PPP instead. When you look at PPP figures, Russia's economy is on par with Germany or Japan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
> When you look at PPP figures, Russia's economy is on par with Germany or Japan
The Russian economy cannot produce half of what Germany or Japan can. That means they have to import it. Which means the truth is somewhere between PPP and nominal GDP. (The simplest statistical treatment is to PPP domestic industries and nominalise imports, but that’s really an analysis one must do oneself as the assumptions are too numerous for convincing someone who’s already concluded adversely.)
> Does this mean their nominal GDP grew by 15% in one month?
If they could keep selling in rubles without a fall in exports or prices then the month's contribution to GDP was 15% higher than the previous one. That doesn't seem very confusing.
When discussing debt you need to factor in the interesting fact that people in Italy have savings sleeping on the bank that basically counter weight the debt.
You can make statistics about whatever you want and assign any meaning you want to the numbers you get. It doesnt mean it’s true. The assumptions in the economic theories do not hold true in real life, hence all computations are useless
Last time Italy decided to re-open the topic of nuclear energy, we ended up with the Fukushima disaster. The last time before that was Chernobyl. A nuclear accident in the US due to deregulation would be fitting with the current mood, but I'd rather not to, please.
Perhaps but it's also a common sentiment and also something that sways illogical voters. Both times mentioned by GP the referendums turned out against nuclear not because factual statistics about safety but because anti-nuclear activists were able to use those very public accidents to scare people.
First of all, this is obviously a joke, but in all seriousness there's more to nuclear accident than just the immediate danger it poses to people (which is, as you point out, very low).
My wife is a nuclear engineer (in France), and I'd have been the same hadn't Fukushima killed the job prospects in the field for almost a decade, so personally I would rather not have the “nuclear is too dangerous, let's kill this industry” once again.
Also, even if nuclear energy is very far from deadly in its day to day operations, nuclear accident have a lasting impact on the region near the plant, with people having to leave their houses and so on, so I'm not wishing that for anyone. (Living 8 km away from an nuclear plant makes me quite sensitive to this aspect, obviously).
The problem with nuclear in Italy is just one: how many time have you read about a public bridge fallen because of bad construction? Same for roads, houses and so on. Most of the time the reason is the company building those, trying to spend less in materials and avoiding regulations - something unfortunately not so unusual in Italy.
So imagine what could happen with a nuclear plant...
(nuclear is safe, building in Italy is often not)
As Portuguese, and regarding how things work there, regardless of whatever achievements get acomplished, the ways how to do business and handle bureaucracy walls aren't very far from stereotypes, even if it was improved during the last decades.
I assume same applies in Italy, given that we share some of those stereotypes.
I'm portuguese and I completely disagree with this. Stereotypes are just stereotypes, generalizing 10M people into a dumbed down pseudo reality doesn't make sense.
Then I can tell you that the favours culture is as actual as ever, maybe we hang around in different parts of the country.
Additionally, one just has to watch the news to see how it works, especially among our beloved politicians and major economical groups, should I list them here for our foreign friends?
They had luck, depending how hot this summer gets some nuclear facilities have to shut down again because the water gets to warm or they don't have enough water in the cooling water source.
The low river issue 2 or 3 summers ago was overblown. When there is not enough water, the production can be slowed down to use less water.
Regarding what happened during that heatwave, there are, rightfully so, regulations on how hot the water can be to be dumped into regular rivers. These regulations ensure the protection of the marine life and ecosystem of these rivers. During the that summer, the rivers' natural temperature was almost as hot as the threshold set by these regulations, so they could not dump any hot water into the rivers. But there are add-ons solutions to this in the future, such as cooling ponds where they would let water temperature dissipate before dumping it into the rivers.
As far as I know - which is definitely not that much - there are literally 3rd world countries operating nuclear power plants without accidents. It might have to do with iaea supervision as well, but I don't know what they do irl so I won't comment on that
I think realistically this is the only way in the turbulent times we live in. Even in the small and interconnected Europe, you have to be completely self sustainable when the need arises. We've seen more than enough broken pipes, power lines and the like in the last year alone to underline this need.
> you have to be completely self sustainable when the need arises
The last few days have also laid bare that there is no sovereignty without nuclear weapons. A civil nuclear fleet is a stepping stone to nuclear weapons stewardship.
(Even absent nuclear weapons, see the special treatment of Zaporizhzhia [1] over Ukraine’s other power infrastructure.)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhzhia_Nuclear_Power_P...
Italy neither has the engineers to build a nuclear power plant, they would have to ask another nation, like Russia, Canada or France, to build it for them.
And where does the nuclear fuel come from? Russia.
> And where does the nuclear fuel come from? Russia.
Not true at all. Russia is producing 5% of the world Uranium, and they probably use quite a lot of that domestically given they produce 8% of all nuclear power in the world with their own plant.
Kazakhstan + Uzbekistan is 50% of the word production. Canada is second and will be happy to start selling to the EU. Namibia and Australia both produce twice as much as Russia.
Not to say that supply of natural Uranium is not a concern because you do depends of a small list of countries but we don't need to buy any from Russia.
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_p...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country
Russia's large market share is rather in uranium enrichment than uranium mining. That's what I meant when I wrote "nuclear fuel".
That’s raw uranium ore. Uranium undergoes several refinement steps. In each Russia has an enormous market share.
You know refinement can be done anywhere? We take bauxite and ship it to the other side of the world to make aluminium because electric power is cheaper there.
Not true by skimming the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium
> The following countries are known to operate enrichment facilities: Argentina, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, the Netherlands, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
So? Refinement doesn't have a dependency on a particular location. This is like saying nuclear energy in Germany is dependent on France and other countries. Currently it is but only because we choose to not do it locally - it doesn't have to be this way.
That is simply incorrect, Italian companies are already building nuclear reactors/power plants abroad.
Enel has built/is managing nuclear plants in Spain and Slovakia: https://www.enel.com/media/explore/search-press-releases/pre...
Eni is involved in building the first fusion plant: https://www.ansa.it/english/news/science_tecnology/2024/04/0...
I would classify ITER as basic research instead of a commercial nuclear power plant.
I didn't know that Enel operates nuclear power plants, that's interesting, but they seem to come from an acquisition of Endesa and have been constructed way before that acquisition, and from designs of foreign places. So they aren't modern generation reactors that one would want to build from scratch.
As for the Slovakian nuclear power plant, it's a russian design as well.
I don't doubt that Enel could operate nuclear reactors of foreign design, where Canada, Russia and France have strong capabilities, but if the design comes from a different country, do you really achieve the independence goal?
Why not get the nuclear fuel from Canada? There's plenty of uranium in Saskatchewan.
The fuel comes primarily from Kazachstan, Canada and Australia.
Edit: Parent meant enriched uranium, not ore so this comment is not relevant.
Aren't there other ore sources ? I think nuclear powered countries diversified inputs.
>And where does the nuclear fuel come from?
Canada, Khazakhstan, Namibi, and so on. Russia is pretty far down the list. Australia has the largest known reserves of uranium they just haven pushed to extensively extract it.
Italy has highly skilled nuclear engineers.
>And where does the nuclear fuel come from? Russia.
Nonsense.
What are those engineers doing currently, then? It takes time to actually build a technology base for somethin like nuclear, and it generally requires that you are building and running nuclear power plants.
And even after years of the war in Ukraine, Russia is still the second largest source of uranium for the EU, making up a quarter of imports
>What are those engineers doing currently, then?
Italian companies that work on reactor design, decommissioning and technology commissioned by foreign countries, for example.
>Russia is still the second largest source of uranium for the EU, making up a quarter of imports
The vast majority of contracts are multiannual, the EU will rely much less on Russian uranium export once they expire. Italy has no reason to sign them with Russia.
You know how long and expensive it is to build and operate a nuclear powerplant?
And do you really want another target for foreign sabotage?
Isn't the price of a KW of solar panels similar to the price of a KW of nuclear power these days?
I wonder what hinders us to replace the roofs of all houses with solar panels and put batteries in all cellars?
It might still be useful to build out nuclear power plants. But the solar+battery approach seems like an easier first step to increase the available power, doesn't it?
> Isn't the price of a KW of solar panels similar to the price of a KW of nuclear power these days?
Solar with battery backup is about that, globally, on average.
But: the averages have sufficiently broad variance that there's places where one wins, and places where the other wins.
PV+battery is between 75-140 USD/MWh; whereas new nuclear is, depending on who I ask, any of 81-82, 65, or 141–221 USD/MWh.
What kind of battery backup are we talking about?
Enough for a long cold winter night in northern Europe?
Enough for a longer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute ?
Yes.
From your link:
"Events that last more than two days over most of Europe happen about once every five years."
I belive that for the EU as a whole, enough for two days works out as about 32 kWh per person. More or less for specific nations.
So, think in terms of what you'd repurpose used EV batteries for prior to fully recycling them.
There's no reason to believe nuear couldn't benefit from economies of scale.
Everything seen so far does not suggest it will improve.
SMRs might, possibly, change that — we shall have to see. I have nothing against SMRs, but they're novel, and I've seen a lot of novel ideas that seem interesting, go nowhere.
Almost all nuclear plants in the west were built in the 70s and 80s. The number built since is miniscule so of course the costs are going to be huge, they're one off projects.
True but irrelevant. The construction of new reactors now is unlikely to be in numbers greater than back then.
(Unless new ones are SMR, which is why there's now business interest in SMRs. They may well have numbers large enough to cut costs).
The other issue is that nuclear research has been underfunded for decades. We could have had new safe effective and cost efficient designs.
That is why I say "might, possibly", rather than being firmly yes or no.
R&D is high-variance.
Research is, engineering less so.
Apples to oranges. But in italy, solar with batteries may already be cheaper. Or geothermal energy. But, hey, they want to do a study and the study will find that out too.
Geothermal energy is already exploited in italy. About 1/3rd of Tuscany energy production happens thanks to geothermal, which is also used for heating purposes [1]
There are also new plants in the making [2]
Being tuscanian, I visited the museum or geothermal energy in larderello once, the area of larderello is quite uncanny, in some parts the ground is literally fuming steam. There's also a smell of rotten eggs lol
https://www.enelgreenpower.com/stories/articles/2024/10/geot...
https://www.lanazione.it/cronaca/geotermia-patto-regione-ene...
Are you sure it was Larderello? Are you sure it wasn't... hell?
It definitely resonates a lot, especially since that area has been known for centuries for that type of geothermal activity. I don't know whether Dante visited larderello, but next time I meet a local guide I'll ask them
Italy is one of the best countries in the EU to do solar in.
https://solargis.com/resources/free-maps-and-gis-data?locali...
It doesn't matter.
As far as I am concerned, self sufficiency comes before price concerns. Nuclear is very safe and reliable.
By all means, EU countries should keep investing in Solar, Wind, Geotermal, etc. but that should be done alongside Nuclear.
As always with nuclear there are a few taboo topics. One of them being fuel supply. For European reactors that seems to be either Mali/Niger, or Russia. Both not excellent if the goal is geopolitical independence.
Solar, wind and batteries have no fuel concerns, and they are inherently decentralized.
Are you joking? Renewables mean one order of magnitude more raw materials imports from China and Chinese operated mining in unstable African countries.
With some work and investment European nuclear fuel supply could be 100% free from Russia, which anyway is peanuts compared to billions spent on Russian LNG. Uranium ore can come from Canada, Kazakhstan and Australia, not only African countries.
Uranium could be sourced from both Greenland and Ukraine, but realistically Australia, Brazil and South Africa might be better options.
Denmark also have 3700 tons of uranium ore just laying around, not sure how much actual uranium you can extract from that, very little I suspect.
> As always with nuclear there are a few taboo topics. One of them being fuel supply.
It's not taboo, the answer is just extremely simple: mining needs people willing to work in a dangerous and exhausting field, so when practical, rich countries tend to prefer outsourcing this (capitalism does not tend to reward ethics). It's very practical for uranium because nuclear reactors need a tiny volume which is trivial to ship and to store. Most countries with a nuclear program keep a stockpile of multiple years.
Mining uranium in other places is very feasible, as are other more expensive options like extracting it out of the ocean. After all, with nuclear the cost of the fuel is a tiny amount of the actual cost of power generation. This is not happening because there's really no need to. In the past, there have been uranium mines in pretty much every european country, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_by_country#Euro...
(Refining/processing is a different story. But that's more obviously a "money/care" problem - there's no possible physical constraint for refining/processing as there could be for mining.)
Indeed this point is often overlooked.
I know the soviets dug up half the Czech Republic for uranium deposits though. There's still some left there, not sure how much though. I have a feeling that the reliance on Africa and Russia is more price and environmental regulation driven.
> For European reactors that seems to be either Mali/Niger, or Russia. Both not excellent if the goal is geopolitical independence.
Australia, Kazakhstan and Canada are main suppliers.
> Nuclear is very safe and reliable.
How do we stop fukushima-like disasters?
Accidents happen, you cannot eliminate completely the risk, but that is fine as long as you minimize the risk. People died because of wind power [1] but since the event is quite rare we don't ask ourselves "how do we stop wind-power-related disasters".
In the case of Fukishima, only one person died directly because of it. About 2000 more deaths can be related to the nuclear accident, for example because they were displaced and living in worse conditions [2]. Since this is the kind of event that every few decades (we have to go back to Chernobyl for something similar) I would say that it is not a reason for worrying.
For comparison, that is 1/10 of people that died in Japan because of the Tsunami that caused it, and it is less than the number of people that die every year for traffic accidents in Italy, so if I was Italian (wait, I am!) I would be more worried about the road traffic than a nuclear accident.
[1] https://www.electricaltechnology.org/2024/07/two-engineers-h...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident_cas...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an...
How many people died at the Fukushima disaster?
As one of the worst Nuclear accidents in history (caused by one of the largest earthquakes to hit Japan along with a tsunami), an awfully small amount of people died.
If anything, Fukushima shows how safe Nuclear actually is.
By not ignoring studies that find risk of tsunami damage:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident#Pri...
And how do you stop that? It’s like saying a kingdom is kept safe for its people by avoiding corrupt kings
Your link shows a deeper root cause
> TEPCO admitted that it had failed to take necessary measures for fear of inviting lawsuits or protests against its nuclear plants
Scientific and engineering reports don’t solve that one
> Scientific and engineering reports don’t solve that one
No tell me why we are still building hydroelectric plants?
Hint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
Mainly by not building reactors designed in the 1960s.
Better and more modern designs with sensible passive features and so on will solve a lot of the problems compared to these ancient plants.
These more modern designs don't solve the primary problem of nuclear, which is cost.
That is not really the case.
Nuclear power is extremely cost effective, even with the current plants.
The individual plants are currently expensive, because they are large and produce huge amounts of power. Since that means you only have a fairly small number of plants, that means the risk is higher than preferable.
However, even with existing designs, building a common design multiple times and overlapping the build times brings down risk, build-time and costs tremendously.
The German Konvois were built for DM 5.8 billion in less than 6 years, and we were just getting started.
China is currently building their version of the passively safe Westinghouse AP-1000, the CAP-1400, in 5 years for $ 3.5 billion.
Nuclear is being vastly outcompeted globally for new installations of power capacity by renewables. It's not even close. The only inference that can be drawn from this is that renewables beat nuclear in the market, that nuclear is the loser technology economically.
Even in China, two orders of magnitude more PV comes online each year compared to nuclear (nameplate power, adjust by a factor of maybe 4 for levelized power).
Nuclear advocates defending the fantasy you are espousing here have to resort to universal conspiracy theories to explain away this unpleasant reality. But how are supposedly omnipotent greens and public fear supposed to be hindering nuclear's rollout in China?
Nuclear may benefit from experience, but that means that as rollouts are scaled back, experience decays away and nuclear gets more expensive. Below a certain (and probably pretty large) rate of installs, nuclear just regresses. It's not clear even China can avoid this at the current install rate.
You can't. The problem with nuclear is that it needs to be properly maintained forever. If you get an irresponsible government or power company that cheaps out in 30 years, oopsies, you're going to irradiate the local area.
It's a lot like trusting your private data to a company. Sure, Google in 2007 is pretty great, but maybe you have some doubts about their integrity in 2025. Too late, they have what they have, forever.
> If you get an irresponsible government or power company that cheaps out in 30 years, oopsies, you're going to irradiate the local area.
How many times did this happen in 80 years? according to [1] not many times.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nuclear_disasters_and...
And this is including very early technology and government (e.g. the Russian one) that I wouldn't trust with anything.
Sure, but this is HN, and we get a lot of The Case For Nuclear Power articles coming through, and startups building micro reactors that everyone thinks are very cool- me too, honestly- but I think that the case against gets given short shrift, or can turned into a strawman.
The consequences of a nuclear incident are very high, and can be more or less permanent for an area. It's a lot to ask for a technology to be absolutely resilient to mismanagement or even sabotage.
> The consequences of a nuclear incident are very high, and can be more or less permanent for an area. It's a lot to ask for a technology to be absolutely resilient to mismanagement or even sabotage.
Now apply this logic to many other power sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
Water-cooled reactors are the ones that are vulnerable to meltdown, but they're not the only way to do Nuclear.
You can build systems to fail safe, so that lack of proper maintenance leads to the plant becoming safely inoperable, and only grossly-improper maintenance would cause a fallout incident.
Is this guaranteed to work? The Chernobyl disaster was caused by grossly-improper maintenance, so… :shrug:. No matter how many physical safety mechanisms you have, a determined mechanic could remove them – but at that point, it becomes deliberate sabotage, which is rare, detectable, and not unique to nuclear power plants. (You could probably kill more people by destroying the right dam in the middle of the night.)
> grossly-improper maintenance would cause a fallout incident.
At scale, in the long run, you will get grossly improper maintenance. I feel comfortable asserting that without feeling like a total cynic.
It's not just nuclear either, this is also a problem with dams.
... and with every other energy source. The only difference is that some spread the damage out enough to the point where people stop caring vs. (somewhat) larger but incredibly rare incidents that make headlines.
And that's before you take into account second order risks like people dying because they can't afford to heat properly during winter.
The damage from Fukushima has been so small that it wouldn't make it past regional headlines if it didn't involve the scary word "nuclear".
Nuclear power plants don't need to be built at scale. I reckon we could get away with a few thousand in the entire world. And by "grossly improper", I mean things that are more expensive than correct maintenance, and make the power plant work less well: I can't rule out that anyone would want to do that, but you'd need a bona fide conspiracy (or some kind of purge of all available experts) to even attempt it.
There should be international agreements for nuclear energy where neighboring countries can come and inspect each others power plants, or one org on the continent level.
You're describing the IAEA, founded in 1957 and in activity since: https://www.iaea.org/topics/verification-and-other-safeguard...
>If you get an irresponsible government or power company that cheaps out in 30 years
One solution is to house government officials and their families close-by so they're incentivized to never cheap out.
Just don't build the plant next to Vesuvius. The biggest recorded earthquake in Europe was 7.1 magnitude, compared to 7.4 that caused tsunami that hit fukushima.
The thing is, it's not the biggest earthquake in the past we have to worry about, it's the biggest one in the future.
And climate change can have very sudden and unpredictable results too as we've seen all over the world in recent years.
Europe just isn't a particularly seismically active and then only it's mostly southern Europe.
The article is about nuclear plants in Italy.
Do you have any evidence to indicate that earthquakes could increase due to climate or is this just FUD.
The poster isn't saying they are related. The poster is listing two separate things.
By building nuclear plants in places that won't get hit by tsunamis.
Different types of reactors have less risk of meltdown. Look up Molten-Salt Reactors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUnik4gxrtM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_reactor
> MSRs eliminate the nuclear meltdown scenario present in water-cooled reactors because the fuel mixture is kept in a molten state. The fuel mixture is designed to drain without pumping from the core to a containment vessel in emergency scenarios, where the fuel solidifies, quenching the reaction.
A minor concern compared to pollution from other energy sources, including "renewable" ones once you include all materials needed.
In the same way we have handled other dangerous activities (including aviation and driving around with sloshing flammable liquids)
Improving continuously, having strict but not restrictive regulation, addressing risks before they become a problem.
TEPCO decided to ignore regulations and reports on how they could improve and reduce risks. How do you solve corruption?
Aircraft can be grounded, so I'd say in some cases some more stringent enforcement is needed
How do we stop Banqiao Dam-like disasters?
There was no nuclear disaster at Fukushima. There was a tsunami and there was a destruction of a nuclear power plant. There were a couple cancers and an undetectable release of tritiated water into the Pacific Freaking Ocean.
The death toll from that incident was one (1).
You can see online, nuclear power is actually one of the safest methods of energy generation, behind solar and ahead of wind, because sometimes dudes fall from the tops of the windmills.
Could you start looking at the second-order effects of the meltdown to get a higher death toll? Probably, but you could probably also look at all of the pollutants generated by solar panels, and the fact that they get shipped to Africa and crushed up and thrown in the ground to make solar's death toll look higher too.
Death toll isn't the only metric for accident severity. Environmental pollution is really important too.
And with Fukushima we were kinda lucky. It was still a double meltdown with several hydrogen explosions and could have been much worse.
I think I already addressed this point. You also need to think about second-order effects, but like I said, there are second order effects to all of these solutions. Just because nuclear's side effects are more easy to dramatize doesn't mean that it is necessarily more deadly / harmful to the environment.
Death toll so far. Projections of cancer deaths from Fukushima go up into the hundreds.
That's not true.
The WHO says there will be no detectable health effects.
That's because the deaths would be lost in a sea of ordinary cancers. Hundreds of additional cancers would not be detectable; that would be below the statistical noise floor. Not being detectable does not mean they won't occur.
Anyway, let me steelman what you're aiming at here. I think you want to argue not that hundreds of deaths won't occur, but that hundreds of deaths don't matter that much. These are statistical deaths, so it's appropriate to treat them using the "statistical value of a human life". This is the value of a life to be used for policy purposes (like deciding if a safety measure is needed, if spending on a medical treatment is appropriate, etc.) In the US, it's around $12M per life. So, 200 (say) deaths would have a value of $2.4B. This is not enormous compared to overall cost of the accident, even to the utility. It could be reasonable to treat radiation releases as at Fukushima by fining the polluter by an amount related to this value.
Under this sort of regulatory regime, the purpose of regulations is not to avoid all releases, but to keep the releases small enough that the utilities would have the resources to pay the fines. So, no 100,000 death accidents. Nuclear power plants designed to this concept could allow some small radiation release in accidents.
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Different products -- nuclear provides grid stability, power quality and dedicated baseload power. Rooftop solar provides some residential power but not helpful for the grid at large -- requires upgrades to the local infrastructure and decreases reliability. All manageable but people constantly think of power in terms of how much is $/kwh - there is soo many more important qualities to powering the grid than strictly cost.
Well, solar and wind are only usable when it is sunny or windy. The only way to make solar or wind power sustainable is to have ways to store the energy, like hydroplants or hydro pump stations. Right now, they are sabotaging the economy to build sustainable sources.
If you add storage to the network you can store the surplus renewable generation for later dispatch, Europe's largest just went online: https://archive.is/p9qsS
Their math is a bit off though... 300MW is not enough for 3.1 million households. That's 97W per household for like 2 hours.
To my understanding the use of nuclear would be to reduce the ammount of spread out battery stations that'd have to cover the base load when cloudy / at night.
There'd also be less overbuilding of solar as you have to build for winter weather and day length instead of summer if solar is supposed to cover everything
Covering winter with renewables would use longer term storage than batteries, for example hydrogen.
Personally, I will install batteries in my cellar when they no longer spontaneously burst into flames that are impossible to put out.
But this shouldn’t even be a requirement as long as you can feed it into the grid.
LiCoO2 / NMC aren't the popular chemistries any more. LiFePo4 is a remarkably stable chemistry, with extremely low risks of fire.
In the unlikely event that they do catch fire, they are extinguishable with water.
Nothing has zero risk, but there are much more stable chemistries available than those that formed this (rational) opinion.
That's reassuring to know, thank you for pointing that out. I didn't get the impression this was already solved since you still keep hearing about battery fires, but hopefully this means that will be a thing of the past soon.
I would still skip this step and let it be the power company's problem though, simply because at ~400 USD / kWh they don't seem very cost efficient for off-peak storage (at least in my country).
To be sure, they're a cost -- but at least in America, LiFePo4 batteries are practically being given away right now -- 100Ah@12V for ~$100 US. I suspect these are the "let's make hay before the tariffs hit" prices, but there are a lot of unpronounceable brands making surprisingly high quality products in the space.
As for off-peak storage, these would allow you to replace a Tesla powerwall for ~$600-750 US. I don't know your country, or its peaks (or valleys) but on my sailboat, off-peak is night time or cloudy days, and in sunny climes, 600ah gets me nigh infinite power. Without clear skies, I'm limited to ~4-5 days of normal consumption.
(Not trying to nudge you off your position at all, just sort of reflecting/remarking at how practicable this all is at the moment.)
Look into LiFePO4 batteries
Never mind the cost, it has taken the UK over a decade from initial decision to not yet completing Hinkley Point C. Nuclear is really slow to build. You can get a solid decade of carbon-free electricity out of solar panels in that time.
Panels today. Batteries as available. Nuclear eventually - maybe.
(people will respond with "what about SMRs", to which I will ask "what's the shortest time from decision to online that a SMR project has achieved?")
Price != cost/value. You can produce cheap electricity at noon, which would have little value.
Most people do not understand this and think that we can reall talk about nuclear vs solar when we really need to talk about an energy mix where you pick one point (for example you pick nuclear or solar) and the rest depends on this choice.
Than you can calculate the price.
To add, it's worth reading the Levelized Full System Costs of Electricity paper: https://iaee2021online.org/download/contribution/fullpaper/1...
Energy mix is key: the cost of 100% dependency on intermittent renewables is extremely high.
Going for 95% dependency on intermittent renewables with the remainder being filled in by low-cost dispatchable generation halves system costs (see table 6, pg. 21).
95% renewables would be incredible, I’ll take it :)
Isn’t this a pretty much solved problem though? Just add a battery to your house?
Batteries are just going to get better - especially over a 10y time span
Batteries simply raise the price of power up by 10x if not more. Not a viable solution.
Are batteries cheaper in 5-10 years?
How about large nuclear plants, what are the probabilities of cost overruns and who is insuring that?
These nuclear cost arguments always gloss over the fact that nuclear has no insurance or cleanup costs. Developers will only build plants if the government assumes both of those costs.
Add to that the uncertainty over fuel and the disposal of used fuel, and there's literally no valid cost argument for nuclear.
I'm not anti-nuclear, but the fiscal realities seem insurmountable.
>Isn’t this a pretty much solved problem though? Just add a battery to your house?
In winter the days are short, the sky can be covered in clouds for an entire week, the solar panels can be covered in snow also. I have solar panels but I do not have a way to export my data to show you the summer vs winter GIANT difference.
So people like me with solar need the other people in the area not to all go for solar, then we will need to find a way to burn the excess. Is the same with a country, we can't store the energy from summer for winter and also resist for say 2 weeks of snow and clouds. The EU market might be so in demand that the rich countries will bid for the energy and the poor will have to burn their things to survive.
I am wondering if it would happen that with so many solar roofs we will either have to pay for people to use my energy or I will need to actually throw the excess in the ground safely somehow.
> In winter the days are short, the sky can be covered in clouds for an entire week, the solar panels can be covered in snow also. I have solar panels but I do not have a way to export my data to show you the summer vs winter GIANT difference.
Short days, but still enough to make a lot of juice in Italy. Scotland and Scandinavia get issues, but Italy's basically OK for winter: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28sunrise%2C+Rome%2C+2...
And: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601...
> we can't store the energy from summer for winter and also resist for say 2 weeks of snow and clouds
You, personally, can't store 2 weeks of energy (though it's closer than you may expect, 1 person-week of Italian average electrical consumption is ~= 1 EV battery*). But you personally don't have to, transmission to another part of the country (or continent) has a huge impact on how much storage you need.
Basically, this problem is known, it's not all that difficult to work around — everything on the scale of "national power supply" is expensive and has pros and cons, PV isn't particularly remarkable in the scale or cost of those pros and cons even with current solutions and assuming no R&D effort can improve the trade-offs, they're just different than the pros and cons of the other options.
* https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28%28%28300+terawatt-h...
> I am wondering if it would happen that with so many solar roofs we will either have to pay for people to use my energy
This is already the case - Germany ends up paying for both electricity exports and imports.
Solar is much cheaper than nuclear. Italian new builds need to add solar panels.
Nuclear isn’t a bad option too. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
The major point here is that nuclear is controllable energy type while solar is not. So comparing only the price is apples to oranges comparison. Most human energy consumers need energy with a fixed rate and all physical metrics withing a tight margin. To prouduce that with only solar energy is impossible.
This means you have to build other energy sources into the grid like gas turbines to be able to control the grid. So if you really want to compare energy prices than you have to look into the TCO.
https://www.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/11q58pe/price_trend...
Solar + batteries is still cheaper than nuclear
In what timeframe?
Solar panels last 20-25 years. Nuclear power plants last for 50+ years and use fraction of the space that solar. It is hard to believe that the TCO is lower. Usually people just looking at the price in the short term and comparing that. Batteries are a whole different can of worms. Super toxic and you need a high volume of those because the energy density is much lower.
https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Energy_density
In the timeframe of the duration of the installation. (Total cost for the whole project + total costs for fuels & maintainance) / (kW generated * lifetime of the project)
Space isn't really an issue. There's many places that are no good for building but are great for solar, like mountainsides.
Besides, if the Netherlands can have solar then Italy can too. It's much less densely populated.
And nuclear lasts 50+ years with constant maintenance, which is really expensive.
> no good for building but are great for solar, like mountainsides.
And what's the cost of building on a mountainside, and how much is maintenance?
> Besides, if the Netherlands can have solar then Italy can too
How much solar are they building in comparison to other sources?
> And nuclear lasts 50+ years with constant maintenance, which is really expensive.
Unlike solar panels built on mountainsides which are not suitable for other types of buildings?
Maintaining solar panels will be always way, way, waaay cheaper, than maintaining a nuclear reactor and disposing safely the waste.
Batteries would need to be cheaper, that is all that is needed for italy. In the south, they have sun all year around.
See how you decided to completely ignore my question. But I like that on top of that, batteries are not cheap either
See how I am still free to ignore any question you asked and answer just what I want?
Which would be: there is not really a need for stationary batteries to be expensive.
and in 0-10 years solar make infinitely more power than a nuclear plant.
Sure, but given that hypothetical new nuclear plants would become effective in a decade or more from now, and that we already have an energy crisis, one would expect Italy to first ramp up the fastest option (solar).
Italy (and others) could (and should) do both.
Only thinking in terms of cost is short vision IMO. What happens if in 20/30 years you need to dramatically ramp up the energy generation (maybe everyone will drive electric, maybe house heating will be electric, maybe someone will come up with a new tech that requires a huge amount of energy, ...) and you already covered most of the roofs? or panels and batteries are at their end of life and you need massive investments just to keep up with the status quo?
I woulnd't go in a fight with a fist tied behing my back, and global warming is one of the biggest fights we must face.
I didn't say we shouldn't do both, just that since we are already in an energy crisis, ramping up solar very quickly should be a priority, compared to nuclear plants. Nuclear plants will improve the lives of our children, solar will improve our own lives. The problem is that I'm not hearing anything about solar investments from the Italian government.
Another great move would be to stop the warmongering and to start buying gas from Russia, while we work on solar and nuclear.
I agree in spirit, but given the massive cost premium of nuke power and the impossibility of insurance, the only way new nukes are going to get built in the west is via state guarantees /subsidies. That means higher taxes, or forcing citizens to pay much higher power rates for ~50 years. Both will be very unpopular, especially as green power continues to get cheaper and cheaper
Probably the fact that we should first admit we have something to learn from China?
China spans couple of timezones, Italy is a boot.
Where and when? For how long? Does it include dealing with wastes? Does it include powerlines, maintenance and land?
It's not a universal answer.
What's the price of solar power at night?
> Isn't the price of a KW of solar panels similar to the price of a KW of nuclear power these days?
Solar panels are down to something like $0.20/W, a factor of 50 cheaper than a nuclear power plant. Solar panels are only a fraction of the cost of a solar installation though. Utility-scale solar is around $1/W, a factor of 10 below nuclear. Adjusting for capacity factor, solar is still several times cheaper than nuclear (and has lower operating cost).
And takes weeks to plan and set up. Compared to decades.
Government can centralize the cost of nuclear. All goes to 1 contractor who builds it. With solar, every house is a different size so each house will have a different cost. Pretty hard political sell to tell your voters you are going to give more to the rich because they have bigger houses. Totally makes sense from a "well they use and pay for more power" perspective but a really hard sell politically. Plus renters get nothing.
Indeed rooftop solar is something that rich people benefit from the most: it's a fun gimmick that people who own houses can use to dodge taxes and network fees. The most cost effective solar deployments are larger industrial setups due to the economics of scale. From a national economy point of view, rooftop solar makes less sense. Someone still needs to pay for the network after all, it just gets onto someone else's shoulders.
The direction where market must go on that is clear. Higher standing charges for grid connection, more variable market rates. And maybe also more variable transfer rates. Meaning that roof top solar will get less economical as true costs will shift to times when energy is pulled from the grid. Home batteries will shift some of this, but if you want power after they are dark and everyone else want it too it will be expensive.
As an Italian abroad, this came out of the blue and I was not expecting this change of mind, at all. There have been two referendums on nuclear energy in Italy: one just after the disaster of Chernobyl. They tried again decades later, in 2011; just after the disaster of Fukushima. The result was of course overwhelmingly negative both times.
This is great news, and will hopefully lower the cost of electricity that we mostly import from France.
Who's brilliantly dumb idea was it to have the only two referendums ever also immediately after a disaster? That is what you'd do if you want an overwhelmingly biased referendum playing off people's rash and short term panic based decision making.
The green energy lobby has everything to gain, and it's been working extra to make it a reality. For example, Greenpeace has been fighting nuclear power all over the world.
The anti nuclear lobby was funded by the KGB.
Also the petroleum industry.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f...
> Who's brilliantly dumb idea was it to have the only two referendums ever also immediately after a disaster?
Well-timed populists.
> Well-timed populists.
not really. The referendum was planned long before Fukushima, but then Fukushima happened at just the right time, reminding voters just in time to vote against nuclear.
I stand corrected. They indeed started collecting signatures for the second referendum in spring 2010.
The second referendum had been planned long before, and then the Fukushima disaster happened, just a couple of weeks before the vote. A stark reminder that nuclear energy is not safe.
By the way, Italy had several nuclear reactors, but they were shut down after the first referendum.
A bunch of aviation accidents have happened in the last few months. Is flying unsafe?
See, your definition of safety seems to actually be "what feels safe to me". As such, it happens to be exactly opposite to what the data tells us.
> A stark reminder that nuclear energy is not safe.
For some nebulous and often politically-charged definition of safety.
The import of electricity is around 10-15%, a significant amount, but Italy does not MOSTLY rely on imports.
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Produzione_di_energia_elettr...
This says that up to 25% of electricity is imported during peak times, and as of 2016, Italy was the third-largest net importer of electricity after US and Brazil.
Quite the contrary: it literally says that imports are not always proportional to demand. During the day, imports are around 10%, while at night, they rise to 25%... probably because it's much cheaper and more convenient.
One has to wonder if a desire to develop nuclear weapons may have something to do with this, in light of recent events...
No, just weird timing but this has been floating around for a while
As the 4th richest country in Europe, after Germany, UK, and France, it does make a lot of sense.
Oh, I hoped it's about nuclear weapons. Pitty, it's not. Now, as US is slowly leaving NATO, European countries should urgently work on increasing their nuclear capabilities, developing strategic and tactical nuclear weapons and means of delivery (rockets, bombers, submarines).
Can you effectively have nuclear weapons without a civilian nuclear power infra?
Depends on what you mean by "effectively". Yes, you can absolutely have nuclear weapons without nuclear power infrastructure, North Korea and Israel both have nuclear weapons, but no nuclear power programs.
Having a civilian program makes things a little easier, or at least easier to hide. Italy does have a tiny uranium reserve, which it never mined, but I'd guess that they'd need to buy the uranium they'd need for a nuclear weapon. That's a bit easier to do, if you can disguise it as nuclear fuel.
I don't know how effective are NK nuclear weapons, but Israel would definitely count. But according to WP[1], Israel has "research reactors" which might or might not have military use.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Israel
So you think Americans honestly think nuclearly destroying Europe will give them peace?
> you think Americans honestly think nuclearly destroying Europe will give them peace?
American here. It’s becoming clear that a sizeable section of our electorate only respects nuclear sovereignty.
> Oh, I hoped it's about nuclear weapons. Pitty, it's not.
If you were going to resume work on nuclear weapons, would you announce it immediately? ... Or would you say that you're developing your nuclear power capabilities.
There are well established historical lines here to be read between.
So basically "we are deciding on how to organize how to begin deciding how to approach nuclear in the future"
Nuclear isn’t something to be afraid of, in fact it’s a natural progression. It’s quite safe when done right, it’s cheap, there is the disposal question but in relation to anything else it’s pretty manageable. If nuclear was a bigger resource we might even see better research into better methods of disposal.
THe green narrative fromt the 70s is still strong today. Many of my friends still believe that nuclear is the most dangerous source of energy even though the per TWh metrics are pretty clear.
How much nuclear? The nuclear lobby "recommends" 10-15% of the mix, but when a country has that (Spain 20%) they keep asking for more.
Also... nuclear cheap? Come on, it's the most expensive energy source of the mix, except maybe peak gas.
Nuclear is big in France, has always been big and favoured. Still no "better research" and no magic disposal, after decades of investment. We are asked for religious levels of faith but they don't deliver.
Italy has solved the nuclear waste disposal problem. They ship it to Somalia or sink it in old ships. It's quite cheap as well.
And that's already the commonly accepted solution for pollution from other energy sources!
> it’s cheap
yea after you build the damn thing maybe. Good luck with that. There is a reason 90% of new added capacity is renewable and it's not because of the environment.
To be very clear, the title refers to nuclear energy, which may not be immediately obvious given the current geopolitical climate.
I am not knowledgeable about nuclear energy, however, I would not be surprised if this reversing could have to do with having a nuclear pipeline - or at least a nuclear knowledge - already available in the country, in case things go south and there's need to develop own nukes
It’s obvious, given the current geopolitical climate, that this announcement is about more than electric power generation.
Considering the insane business and government bureaucracy in Italy, I can’t wait for this to happen within the coming centuries.
They should focus on their modern renewables buildout, they've got half compared with Spain and Portugal (20% Vs 40%). With some existing geothermal and hydro in their mix they should be further along.
If you want to be cynical than this latest move could just be the same as Australia's right wing party's pretence about nuclear.
At least in Australia it's local fossil fuels they'd be burning not imported gas.
The current US Administration does not understand the basic mechanics of American hegemony. I think Trump truly believes that we are getting ripped off and stand to gain nothing from our current position with the EU and other allies. But if you take away the incentives and guarantees they'll just turn their back on you and seek their own protection—it has to be symbiotic.
I fully agree that the US benefits from its hegemony and that Trump's statements that the US is getting ripped off are completely false.
But what game is currently being played by the Trump administration? He told the EU to be self-sufficient in defense spending, insults them and Ukraine to awaken their pride. He (temporarily) cuts off public ties with Zelensky. The press conference with the row at the end actually ended with Trump winking at the audience and Zelensky putting his thumb up. That part is cut out of many videos.
EU leaders scramble to put up the type of peace plans that they know will be refused. What if all is prearranged and Trump just wants to dump Biden's conflict on the EU, at least temporarily until everyone has rearmed?
Trump has said a lot, including lifting sanctions on Russia. But he extended the sanctions. He did halt arms shipments to Ukraine either to pressure Ukraine or the EU.
The EU should negotiate with Russia without the US, get a viable peace plan and drop sanctions. Then we'll see if Trump's behavior is more than theater.
Good.
The superpower (America) is dead. Long live the superpower (EU).
Based...
Maybe not well known, but during the 20th century a number of nations started a nuclear weapons program, but then were convinced to halt the work by security guarantees by the U.S.
You better believe that every single one of those nations is now revisiting that decision.
For those wondering if Italy can afford to build nuclear: their economy is larger than Russia’s. As is Brazil’s, another nation that put nuclear weapons on hold per U.S. request.
BTW, Ukraine already had nuclear weapons, but agreed to give them up for security guarantees by the US, the UK, France and Russia (!) in 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
The Budapest Memorandum had no security guarantees.
> Another key point was that U.S. State Department lawyers made a distinction between "security guarantee" and "security assurance", referring to the security guarantees that were desired by Ukraine in exchange for non-proliferation. "Security guarantee" would have implied the use of military force in assisting its non-nuclear parties attacked by an aggressor (such as Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty for NATO members) while "security assurance" would simply specify the non-violation of these parties' territorial integrity. In the end, a statement was read into the negotiation record that the (according to the U.S. lawyers) lesser sense of the English word "assurance" would be the sole implied translation for all appearances of both terms in all three language versions of the statement.[17] In the Ukrainian version of the document, the wording "security guarantees" was used though.[19]
To clarify, the upholding of the security assurance is still left up to the discretion of nations in the agreement, based on how important non-proliferation of nuclear weapons is to them. It seems that recently, nuclear proliferation is no longer a concern for the US, hence they no longer enforce this agreement, which is their right, for better or worse.
I'm not sure any of these things are really enforceable short of someone taking military action? I think Russia has broken loads of agreements re Ukraine and nothing very much usually happens.
Even NATO article 5, I'd expect if Russia rolls into Lithuania Trump would ignore it.
The two main enforcement mechanisms are economic sanctions and military aid, which even the EU has been involved with. Economic sanctions haven't had much impact but coupled with military aid has stopped Russian progress in the invasion. The problem is, with the US pulling out, EU big shoes to fill with military aid.
Please cite the discretionary parts of the agreement that US is not upholding or will stop upholding.
The agreement has no explicit terms for whether or not nations must enforce it, that's left up to the nations to decide on their own. It was intentionally written this way, otherwise Russia would have never agreed to it.
What discretionary action suggested by the memo does the US not uphold. All I am asking for is specifics here.
You keep misunderstanding. As I have already stated, the agreement lacks formal enforcement mechanisms, how it is upheld is up to the agreeing nations to figure out. In 2014 that was economic sanctions. In 2022 that was military aid. This is how political agreements work.
Oh yes, so many subtleties.
From now on anything short of "Can I press the red button myself?" will not cut the mustard.
Really odd that everyone is mad that the US is supposedly breaking an agreement that nobody can actually point to.
I never said they are breaking the word of any agreement. I just told you what they are are all thinking. And there is nothing you can do to stop it now.
Thats kind of lawyer speak, not much different when insurance company don't wanna cover you because of some tiny font paragraph or different interpretation in the contract.
USA could before this war started (because they publicly on camera warned about invasion days before) tell Putin that in case of invasion they believe they cannot fullfill contract commitment so in this situation the contract would be void and they would have to return few old nukes to Ukraine. This would be enough deterrent and fair to justify.
There is no part of the agreement that US didn't uphold. That is not lawyer speak, that is reality. If you think I am wrong cite the part they are not upholding.
By the lawyer speak I mean for the same reason insurance put some misleading wording that other party don't understand so that you can interpret it differently. I think the intent should more important.
U.S. support of Ukraine fulfills a commitment we signed, and which Russia broke.
The U.S. president doesn’t seem to care about international commitments, though. How does that work out in the long run? Would you do business with someone who tells you up front that they might break any promise they make?
There is no binding commitment that the US broke. You may not like that fact, but it is a fact.
The U.S. declined to provide a security "guarantee" because that would have amounted to a backdoor accession to NATO, and the U.S. could not grant that unilaterally. (An example of the U.S. honoring a prior commitment, by the way.) A "guarantee" would have required the U.S. to commit its military forces to the battlefield if Ukraine was invaded.
The U.S. instead provided a security "assurance" which was understood to mean a level of support short of U.S. troops on the ground. And in fact that is what the U.S. has been providing: intelligence and material, but no U.S. forces.
In other words, the level of support has been commensurate with the agreement signed. Until today, apparently.
Please cite the part of the agreement that US will be reneging on from today.
What's binding between sovereign nations anyway?
Ultimately it comes down to trust. And the current US administration is doing its best to destroy trust built up over the last 80 years.
You are right that most international agreements are essentially unenforceable, especially with a world hegemony like the USA.
That being said, the US still has not broken any agreement, binding or non-binding. So your point is somewhat beside the point.
Not legally binding perhaps.
> Clinton and Yeltsin did promise Ukraine “full guarantees of security, as a sign of friendship and good neighborliness.” The two leaders also reaffirmed “the obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” including Ukraine.
Still - guess you have to check the small print.
I'm not even sure they broke any non-binding agreements. But do share any if I'm wrong, I really would like to know.
The words you quoted came out of Yeltsin's mouth, not Clintons:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/30921-document-9-memorand...
Dunno. "Clinton and Yeltsin did promise Ukraine “full guarantees of security" is from https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/01/ukraine-nuclear-...
It was Yeltsin that said that, not Clinton:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/30921-document-9-memorand...
Also, that was not any form of an agreement, it was just words in a meeting. Nobody signed, it was not ratified with US congress as a treaty.
If you take that as binding then all the verbal commitments made to Russia that NATO won't expand eastwards should also have been binding, and they were broken first. I know you will get angry that I mention it, but it's a fact.
Well, I did say not legally binding. But you can see how someone might interpret "Russia and the U.S. will give full guarantees of security" to mean "Russia and the U.S. will give full guarantees of security" if they weren't really paying attention?
It was not even an agreement at all, nevermind binding. It was words said by the Russian president. Not a contract, not a memorandum, just words in a meeting. If Ukraine took one sentence said by the Russian president in a meeting as security guarantees from US (emphasis on the word guarantees) then they are the problem.
Security guarantees would at minimum require a treaty ratified by congress in US, something which I don't think is on the table any more at all.
Has the US ever honored their word when it mattered? You do business with them because otherwise they roll up with warships.
No - it's because they roll-up with cutting you off from the US banking system - which is a prerequisite for basically all international trade.
This happens probably 100x more than rolling up with warships.
> has the US ever honored their word when it mattered?
When it mattered? Yes. When it was against its own interest? Almost never, just like every other great power.
In normal business the US is usually pretty good. A lot of the reason people trade with US dollars is the system normally works.
Also in matters of security they did a good job between 1945 and 2014 of keeping peace in Europe and stopping Russia running amok which was not that easy in Stalin's day.
I think the mess we have right now is because of many bad choices by US and allies since WW2:
1) They could reduce and rate limit lend lease to Soviet similar like they rate limited to Ukraine so buy themself more time until nuke is ready and then drop one on Dresden or Berlin (Berlin capitulated in May and they had first nuke in July so just few months later). After that probably didn't had nuke Japan. Also Poland and other eastern countries maybe wouldn't be a puppet state because Stalin lied to them and they would be under influence of US and Soviet Union would be weaker.
2) If they didn't have russian spy in their manhattan project then maybe russia wouldn't have nukes or had much much later.
3) If their didn't listen to british and US didn't overturn Mossadegh (instead of negotiating oil deal) then they wouldn't have maybe such a big mess in Iran and middle east now.
4) If the put some leash on Wall Street and their corporations then maybe they wouldn't let China to outcompete them so easily and now wouldn't have to worry about their own economical dominance.
5) If they would upfront told russian they will return nuke to Ukraine in case invasion because of broken contract commitment then they wouldn't have to worry about current mess in Europe.
6) Not much familiar with the whole history of Afganistan but still wondering what and how badly they US screwed that Afghans that were fighting with Soviet Union with aid of US turned agains them.
Sure there's a lot of truth to that, but you used to be able to know what mattered to the US. It wasn't erratic. The magnetic poles of the US just flipped.
Yes
Trump is slapping 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico because the USMCA agreement "is a scam" and he was the one to negotiate and sign it. After ripping up NAFTA. The USA's word is worthless now.
Very technically speaking Ukraine didn't have a nuclear weapons program the way we speak of China or India having one. What they had was nuclear weapons left over when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Exactly.
The US nuclear umbrella was not charity, contrary what some in the US appear to believe. It was and is a pure power play.
Another little tidbit that is not generally well-known is that the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) actually requires the current nuclear powers to get rid of their nuclear weapons...eventually.
You're going to see just how much of an act of charity it was when it's withdrawn.
Charity ≠ one side of a quid-pro-quo was worthless.
The US gave/gives something that is fairly easy for it to provide, and valuable to the other side.
In return the US receives something that is of great value to it and fairly easy for the other side to provide (as long as the US keeps its side of the bargain).
If US security guarantees turn out to be worthless, you will see a lot more nuclear powers as well as a drastic increase in conventional capabilities.
The US will then be one power among many, rather than a mostly unchallenged superpower.
the Netherlands has nukes in loan from the US. They are at Volkel Airbase. Officially it's a secret, but it's common knowledge and was also confirmed by a former prime-minister. In exchange for these loaned nuclear weapons the Netherlands promised not to develop nuclear weapons of their own.
With the US now showing they are not afraid of doing a "rug pull" on agreements, one starts to wonder if the Netherlands shouldn't start development of nuclear weapons again.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkel_Air_Base
These are not "on loan". They are stationed in the Netherlands. They are fully under US operational control.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing
> With the US now showing they are not afraid of doing a "rug pull" on agreements, one starts to wonder if the Netherlands shouldn't start development of nuclear weapons again.
This discussion is already looming in Germany, especially now that Elon Musk openly wants the US to leave NATO. There is a standing offer by Macron for Germany to go under French nuclear protection. The UK also appears to be more than willing to fill in the nuclear vacuum left by the US. If things continue the path of the last 2-3 weeks, I am sure that at some point there will be a discussion about whether Germany should prepare to be able to at least build nuclear weapons quickly.
I have a feeling that Canada has similar thoughts. I wonder what would happen if they started developing nuclear weapons. The US president already announced he would make Canada the 51st state, and around 25% of Canadians saw the US as an enemy country 2 weeks ago [0]
Strategically, it does not make any sense to me. I am pretty sure that the Russians are just as confused. I wonder if there is a historic precedent of a country giving up a functioning empire voluntarily, without any internal or external pressure to do so.
[0] https://www.newsweek.com/canada-us-relations-enemy-poll-tari...
I don't see proliferation in Europe as realistic politically. Europeanising the French program is what makes the most sense in that regard.
There is a lot of planning going on now in Europe, both on international (EU, UK) and national level, that would've been politically impossible just a few months ago.
Canada has been refused nuclear submarines by the US which are an absolute necessity to patrol the Canadian arctic. But the US also decided Australia should get American nuclear subs and cancel their order of French nuclear subs. I believe the French would be more than happy to build a few subs for their Western NATO friends for a reasonable price.
> it's common knowledge and was also confirmed by a former prime-minister
And also, inexplicably, via (formerly) publicly viewable Chegg flashcards (???): https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/05/28/us-soldiers-expos...
Are the Netherlands able to control these devices? I would be very surprised if that were the case.
Codes are not given and are only in America.
Since DOGE has wrecked any semblance of data security in the US government, we can assume the codes are also in Moscow by now.
Was DOGE able to affect the Pentagon or three-lettered security agencies yet? I would assume anything defense-related is kept separate from civilian government structures and may not be as collapsible. Some may even have internal plans to defend against a take over from the top.
The code is 00000000 anyway!
Could always dismantle and repurpose.
Yes, when Trump complains about NATO most people hear dollars, tanks, and planes, but European leaders hear the nuclear deterrent.
This is one reason Britain and France are out front right now on matters of European security.
Belgium is the same, and I don't know about you, but F16's and F35's are the only ones that can carry those bombs. That's why Belgium ordered a bunch of them and not some European planes.
It's too late to cancel now, but I guess in the future we will have to reconsider the true value of these bombs and airplanes. Once we really need them, US might "force us into peace".
The Netherlands also has elections.
I believe the article is about nuclear energy, not weapons, though.
Korea is probably the list as well.
Brazil simply does not have any leverage in the matter. The country almost conducted the first test in Serra do Cachimbo, but the hole where the nuke was to be detoneted was closed by the former president. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serra_do_Cachimbo
Here's a list of countries with a nuclear industry but no nuclear weapons program.
Taiwan South Korea Japan Germany Sweden Italy UK (not counting trident) Ukraine
Sweden had nuclear weapons program and was only six months away from completing a working bomb in 1965. Program was abandoned in 1966.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_nuclear_weapons_prog...
Sweden was far closer than that and only gave up its plutonium in 1990.
What nuclear industry does Germany have?
The map I found says there's still a couple operating reactors.
They are not operating anymore. Last 3 were shutdown last(?) year. They are now being dismantled. Though, there is research done, but mainly fusion, and some Fusion-reactors. Doesn't help with weapons, but might be your map is not specific enough about this?
Nuclear dismantling industry
Can We Please Stop Comparing Russia’s Economy to Italy’s?
Who's comparing Russia's economy to Italy's? Apparently Lindsay Graham did in 2014. CNN in 2022.
I like this article because it made me think about Russia and it's economy in a way that I didn't fully appreciate before. The article calls out an argument that compares Russia's economy to Italy's economy, using nominal GDP as a measurement. This is supposed to be a Western attempt to brush off Russia as a small(er) player than it really is, but that is a skewed perspective. The use of nominal GDP, especially in times of conflict (and war), does not fully encompass all of the resources that a country is capable of summoning and utilizing. Russia's oil and gas resources, as well as production in wheat, corn, and other earth metals provides it with "substantial leverage" on international markets. Furthermore, when the measurement used to compare the GDP is purchasing power parity (PPP), Russia's economy is more like that of Germany, than Italy. Taken together, the PPP and Russia's domestic production capability, and it seems to make sense why Russia's economy has not completely faltered in the face of sanctions imposed by the West. Could we say the same for Italy? Or even Germany?So all though, CNN is not wrong to make the claim that Russia's economy is equivalent to Italy's in nominal GDP, that comparison fails to take into account the economics of reality. And that's the very definition of propaganda.
> Taken together, the PPP and Russia's domestic production capability
What does exactly Russia produces ? Most of GDP of Russia comes from export of natural resources [1]. This is by design: raw material extraction can be managed even by corrupt friends of the government even with a lot of "inefficiencies"; meanwhile higher level production is left to languish on purpose since it would be a potential vector for others to gain wealth and power (most of the oil infrastructure in Russia is serviced by western tools, for example).
Up to a few years ago I would have added weapons to the list, but it seems to me that they can't produce quality weapons anymore, there are very few moderns Russian weapons in use in Ukraine, for example.
[1] https://www.tradeimex.in/blogs/russia-top-10-exports
You seem to downplay the strength of Italy's status in the EU and its non-sanctioned access to international trading partners as part of its economic strength. Italy, just like Russia, has its own economic advantages.
Italy would probably withstand Western sanctions pretty well too, if it had a land border with China who would provide them with anything they need.
Russia's strength is not its own economy, which is a total mess.
Are you an AI?
Well said, this kind of comparisons always bugged me.
If I didn't know how incompetent and delusional our "leaders" are, there would probably be a sense of betrayal. But now it's just... void. Well, at least I got to grow up during the best time this world has ever seen, so I'm thankful for that.
Putin, Trump, Russians, Americans... are just doing their thing. Can't really be mad about that. I always thought there will never be another war in Europe, because (1) nobody's dumb enough to die for a bunch of crooks and (2) cannon fodder is not a great use of people anyway. Oh well, turns out propaganda is one hell of a drug (on both ends of the political spectrum).
Meanwhile... my hotel room in Shenzhen could change window tint with a voice command and automatically detect the language. My Indian colleague's 12yo kid wants to be an astronaut and has a better investment portfolio than me. It is so over.. people have no idea. Like, not tomorrow, not in five years, but certainly by the end of the century. Vivek Ramaswamy tried to give MAGA a hint, but got cancelled for it. (Cancel culture was supposed to be a left-wing postmodern thing btw. Oopsie! Let's pretend we're surprised, ok?)
Yep - Trump's actions are going to weaken the US's position on the world stage by pushing everyone else to provide for themselves what they had previously got from the US (security, advanced compute, etc).
Trump appears to only think in short term transactional way - no long term strategy.
> pushing everyone else to provide for themselves what they had previously got from the US
Did you write this, review it, then post it as if that's a bad thing? wow
edit: grammar
Yes, potentially a very bad thing if it accelerates isolationist policies and further erodes US/world relations.
The sentiment I’ve seen increasingly that goes something like “but they’re freeloading” completely misses the nuance of decades of foreign policy and why the interdependence between allies and enemies alike has maintained relative peace.
If you’re worried about world wars, you should worry about the US undermining itself.
Apologies to Mr Kurzweil, but I think the reality on the ground is that the cost of research into keeping an aging population alive is a raised risk of Armageddon. The political tendencies in older age demographics is bad, the politicians surviving so many decades after a first to leadership position is bad, the billionaires living long enough to find whacky ideas or even directly manipulate politics instead of gifting money to charities is catastrophic, etc.
It has always been true throughout history in every country that political engagement skews heavily toward the old and the rich. I don’t know how to fix it, but thankfully Kurzweil is a hack and was wrong about most things and deserves no apologies; life expectancy might have increased a little since 2001 but human longevity isn’t really budging at all, so there is very little increased risk of a geriatric Armageddon.
I have special beef with Kurzweil’s life expectancy BS because he misrepresents facts in his essays. His famous “Law of Accelerating Returns” essay has an incredible number of misleading plots and conflated arguments, but the life expectancy graph at the bottom is a pure lie, and Kurzweil knows it. It conflates life expectancy with longevity, and it left out data from before 1840 and from between 1940 and 2000 that he already had. If you include that known data and explain what longevity is, it ruins his plot and his argument, but he wanted to pretend there’s a trend that doesn’t exist so he intentionally left it out. https://www.writingsbyraykurzweil.com/the-law-of-acceleratin...
Gifting money to charities is way more catastrophic.
It's popular to talk about unintended consequences, and site the most egregious, but everything has unintended consequences on top of its intended consequences. The world without all of the billionaire attempts to make a good legacy for themselves would in fact include a lot less interesting things.
Could you elaborate?
Actually I believe a not small part of what's happening now is boomer politicians who have been in power too long realizing their time is coming to an end one way or another, and they are refusing to give it up to the younger generations. Trump and Putin in particular have every reason to be as unreasonable as possible if they believe either way there is no future for them if they stop.
These people should not expect to be alive in 10 years so if a trick for getting a few more months at the top means their country is nuked in 10-30 years, whatever.
The world is lucky that Zelensky is the President of Ukraine and not somebody like me - given that Ukraine does have plutonium from its power plants, i'd be already making the warheads (technological difficulties? they were solved 80 years ago and with the modern tech the 3 years is more than enough to produce something working).
That is also notable in the context of Trump yelling at Zelensky that Zelensky is supposedly playing with WW3. If anything, by not making nukes Zelensky shows an, unreasonable at my opinion, restraint here.
It's very, very expensive and (until last week) it was critical to keep the US on side, which would be jeopardized by breaking the nonproliferation treaty.
The MAD argument still applies: Ukraine can't threaten to nuke Moscow without Russia obviously threatening to retaliate with nukes.
> MAD argument still applies
Ukraine isn’t in and probably never will be in a position to credibly threaten a MAD second strike to Russia. From number of warheads to strategic depth, it’s not a realistic option. Instead it would seek to credibly threaten limited nuclear war using tactical nukes.
This would only make sense with European support. And at that point, it almost makes more sense for Europe to directly enter the fight. (Or give Kyiv the nuclear weapons.)
> credibly threaten limited nuclear war
Both sides have to agree to the "limited" part for it to stay limited. Mind you, threats of nuclear escalation are routine from Russia.
> both sides have to agree to the "limited" part for it to stay limited
It’s more that each side has to moderate itself. That’s true if both have nukes or just one. And it’s much easier to moderate oneself when it’s in one’s own interest, e.g. to avoid getting nuked.
I am curious about the plan of Europe about on countering a nuclear first strike on Ukraine by Russia, because the latter has run out of options because the war dragged on and on by the support from Europe, draining Russia of everything they have..
> draining Russia of everything they have
They can always just stop? It's not as if Ukranian tanks are at the gates of Moscow, it's more like the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Or the previous USSR withdrawal from Afghanistan.
It is unclear whether the UK or France would threaten a retaliatory strike in case of nuclear weapons use not against their own territory. It doesn't seem likely, but if there's one thing Putin is very cautious about it's his own personal survival.
>They can always just stop?
They can, but that is what I am wondering about. Will a desperate Putin think he can get away with a nuclear first strike on Ukraine? If he thinks he can, why stop?
That's why you need 5 - 6 bombs - 1 to nuke Moscow, the rest to nuke Berlin, Paris, London, Tel Aviv if they don't help you out before it gets to this.
> It's very, very expensive
May be you mean uranium enrichment? When plutonium is already available, like in Ukraine, it is completely different game - you just need to chemically separate plutonium from the spent fuel. That is the only noticeable expense - needs facility with safety protections, etc. Or just a few people willing to die for the Motherland. The rest is putting charges around the plutonium sphere and timing them correctly with electronics. That is basically all. Couple weeks really :)
I hear that plutonium is a metallurgical nightmare to work with.
Which is fortunate, because it's also quite easy to make plutonium by exposing (natural or depleted) uranium to neutrons…
Just to illustrate how expensive: UK spends 2.3% of their GDP on their military. 1% is allocated to maintaining those nukes!
Hopefully this is already underway, and Ukraine has also the know how to build stuff that can deliver these payloads.
They need to develop bunker busters though.
I think the MAD would be enough. Russia has such a vast space (not possible to effectively cover with air defense), even if just European part, with so many legitimate targets without any need for bunker busters/etc., that just a test underground explosion showing that Ukraine got it would be enough for Russia to hit the brakes screeching.
Btw, according to the Russian nuclear doctrine nukes can be used when the country is invaded even with just conventional weapons if the invasion presents severe threat to the country. Thus according to the Russian nuclear doctrine Ukraine is allowed to use nukes.
The bunker busters is more in line with the old "US doctrine" that was developed against terrorist leaders: a decapitation strike to the leader.
Let's not forget these folks have their self preservation in first order, the population is just a means for their survival.
That's why it's imperative for Ukraine to have bunker busters, like gravity bombs, because the first strike would need to be where the leadership is.
[flagged]
No their economy is not larger than Russia, this is a common trope among people whose only way to reach reality is to irrationally use statistics computed by bureaucrats
Actually: it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
Your assumptions are wrong. GDP does not mean anything in real life
While CNN's assertion that Russia's economy is on par with Italy's in nominal GDP may be technically accurate, it does not fully consider the economic nuances that are crucial to a comprehensive analysis. This is an example of propaganda.
The WP link shows sourced data from the IMF and World Bank. Why did you respond to that with an unsourced claim this is CNN’s assertion?
The GDP ranking involves all countries. So whose propaganda is it, and what’s the motivation? If it’s technically accurate that Italy ranks above Russia by GDP then what’s the basis for calling it propaganda? Typically propaganda is nationalistic and spreading false information within a country and being used to justify a country’s moves against another, not international verifiable facts that are technically accurate and not being used to justify some action.
GDP is a single summary metric, not a comprehensive analysis. It’s entirely possible that Russia’s and Italy’s rankings could swap when using a different economic metric. That certainly doesn’t mean GDP rankings are propaganda.
Well, if it is [technically] correct, then it's obviously not "propaganda", but simply the truth.
Now you obviously can argue that there should be other considerations, but that is your argument and interpretation, not the obvious truth that the actual data needs to be judged against.
Just to be pedantic, propaganda doesn't have to be false.
"The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause."
Citing a correct fact about the world is not propaganda, as facts are neither doctrine nor "reflect views".
You can cite facts to provoke an emotional response and make people sympathetic to your ideology. That's propaganda.
> Citing a correct fact about the world is not propaganda, as facts are neither doctrine nor "reflect views".
It says "propagation of doctrine" and facts can be used to propagate a doctrine.
Edit:
Here's a definition from Wikipedia:
> NATO's 2011 guidance for military public affairs defines propaganda as "information, ideas, doctrines, or special appeals disseminated to influence the opinion, emotions, attitudes, or behaviour of any specified group in order to benefit the sponsor, either directly or indirectly".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda#Definitions
Does that sound like the information has to be false to be propaganda?
I don't understand why you are so animated by this issue. What am I missing? Propaganda about what?
Huh, so you're claiming that GDP data and such is not correct? Any source on that? Because I see multiple sources reporting that in 2023 the GDP of Russia was $2,009,959M and that of Italy was $2,300,941M, although Italy has a higher debt %. Which would confirm the original posters claim considering Italy is a much, much smaller country than Russia. What I find a common trope is people claiming facts are incorrect without stating proof.
At the start of Feb 2025 USD was 100 RUB, a few days ago it was 85 RUB. Does this mean their nominal GDP grew by 15% in one month? In some cases it's fine to use Nominal GDP while in other cases, you should use GDP PPP instead. When you look at PPP figures, Russia's economy is on par with Germany or Japan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
Anders Puck Nielsen just published an interesting video on this topic [How does Russia's military spending compare to Europe?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxq-TvgNCBU)
> When you look at PPP figures, Russia's economy is on par with Germany or Japan
The Russian economy cannot produce half of what Germany or Japan can. That means they have to import it. Which means the truth is somewhere between PPP and nominal GDP. (The simplest statistical treatment is to PPP domestic industries and nominalise imports, but that’s really an analysis one must do oneself as the assumptions are too numerous for convincing someone who’s already concluded adversely.)
> Does this mean their nominal GDP grew by 15% in one month?
If they could keep selling in rubles without a fall in exports or prices then the month's contribution to GDP was 15% higher than the previous one. That doesn't seem very confusing.
When discussing debt you need to factor in the interesting fact that people in Italy have savings sleeping on the bank that basically counter weight the debt.
You can make statistics about whatever you want and assign any meaning you want to the numbers you get. It doesnt mean it’s true. The assumptions in the economic theories do not hold true in real life, hence all computations are useless
Last time Italy decided to re-open the topic of nuclear energy, we ended up with the Fukushima disaster. The last time before that was Chernobyl. A nuclear accident in the US due to deregulation would be fitting with the current mood, but I'd rather not to, please.
Do you know how many people die because of coal plants every year?
It's far, far more than nuclear per unit [0]. Nuclear power is nearly a thousand times less murderous.
0 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...
The comment you're replying to is pretty clearly making a joke
Perhaps but it's also a common sentiment and also something that sways illogical voters. Both times mentioned by GP the referendums turned out against nuclear not because factual statistics about safety but because anti-nuclear activists were able to use those very public accidents to scare people.
First of all, this is obviously a joke, but in all seriousness there's more to nuclear accident than just the immediate danger it poses to people (which is, as you point out, very low).
My wife is a nuclear engineer (in France), and I'd have been the same hadn't Fukushima killed the job prospects in the field for almost a decade, so personally I would rather not have the “nuclear is too dangerous, let's kill this industry” once again.
Also, even if nuclear energy is very far from deadly in its day to day operations, nuclear accident have a lasting impact on the region near the plant, with people having to leave their houses and so on, so I'm not wishing that for anyone. (Living 8 km away from an nuclear plant makes me quite sensitive to this aspect, obviously).
The problem with nuclear in Italy is just one: how many time have you read about a public bridge fallen because of bad construction? Same for roads, houses and so on. Most of the time the reason is the company building those, trying to spend less in materials and avoiding regulations - something unfortunately not so unusual in Italy.
So imagine what could happen with a nuclear plant... (nuclear is safe, building in Italy is often not)
> The problem with nuclear in Italy is just one:
Remember when Italy paid the mafia to get rid of nuclear waste, they put it on old boats and sunk them :D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27...
Water is the best insulant for radiation.
Apparently even mafias bosses know that famous cartoon where it says that you could swim in the exhaust nuclear bars cooling pool
You would hope that the containment is sealed for this though, releasing the material into the water still isn't ideal.
National stereotypes...
Italy's the 3rd largest economy in the EU, and 8th in the world, with an advanced technology sector to boot.
And if they somehow cannot figure it out, their French neighbors most assuredly can.
As Portuguese, and regarding how things work there, regardless of whatever achievements get acomplished, the ways how to do business and handle bureaucracy walls aren't very far from stereotypes, even if it was improved during the last decades.
I assume same applies in Italy, given that we share some of those stereotypes.
I'm portuguese and I completely disagree with this. Stereotypes are just stereotypes, generalizing 10M people into a dumbed down pseudo reality doesn't make sense.
Then I can tell you that the favours culture is as actual as ever, maybe we hang around in different parts of the country.
Additionally, one just has to watch the news to see how it works, especially among our beloved politicians and major economical groups, should I list them here for our foreign friends?
Or are you going to say it is all fake news?
It makes less sense the further from the stereotypical thing you go.
It's nuclear, not burning clothes or giving your uncle the building contract.
not exactly a stereotype, just facts.
for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Morandi_collapse
and also check what happens (now more than ever) everytime there's a big rain in a lot of italian places. I'm very concerned about this.
Bridge failures regularly happen in many countries, including France and South Korea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures#2000%E...
If you're worried about this, you should probably avoid flying in America.
I am Italian and currently live in Italy, and don't trust my government with building nuclear plants.
As long as the people in power are famous for lying and twisting reality, we should not touch nuclear.
Would you welcome your comrades Russian when they roll over your country? No? Then deterrent is the only option.
France has never had a major nuclear accident. The biggest issue is of course, earthquakes in Italy.
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They had luck, depending how hot this summer gets some nuclear facilities have to shut down again because the water gets to warm or they don't have enough water in the cooling water source.
The low river issue 2 or 3 summers ago was overblown. When there is not enough water, the production can be slowed down to use less water.
Regarding what happened during that heatwave, there are, rightfully so, regulations on how hot the water can be to be dumped into regular rivers. These regulations ensure the protection of the marine life and ecosystem of these rivers. During the that summer, the rivers' natural temperature was almost as hot as the threshold set by these regulations, so they could not dump any hot water into the rivers. But there are add-ons solutions to this in the future, such as cooling ponds where they would let water temperature dissipate before dumping it into the rivers.
You're saying the media lied to me? For a political point?
I've generally been impressed with engineering works in northern Italy, the tolled autostrada in the mountains etc.
As far as I know - which is definitely not that much - there are literally 3rd world countries operating nuclear power plants without accidents. It might have to do with iaea supervision as well, but I don't know what they do irl so I won't comment on that
I'm sorry, did you forget "mafia"?
I didn't. that's implied in "avoiding regulations".