YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Or renewables. I remind you that nuclear power is completely economically unviable today because it is the single most expensive way to generate power. Even with Trump rolling back safety regulations, it's still too expensive when solar panels are 10 cents per watt, nuclear is 50, and the amount of backup storage to offset the unreliability does not bridge that gap.

People only "change their mind" when it becomes an existential crisis. And energy security in Europe has reached that stage 10x.

This is such a bummer. Russia still has good long term energy plans for Germany. (if you are European this is sarcasm).

It really does feel a day late and a dollar short for Europe, especially Germany.

Or more probably, it's imputable to biology and the natural replacement of the "old guard" by adults who didn't grow up during nukes schizophrenia. Or in other words, I doubt that those folks reasoned themselves out of the irrational fear for nuclear energy that they did not reason themselves into.

In this case, the green is now for Islamism.

Once upon a time, there was also the Soviet propaganda effort in the West. Many of the Cold War reactors could be used to produce not just electricity, but fission material for nuclear warheads. Meaning that if you could persuade big countries to give up nuclear energy for good, you'd also reduce your adversary's capability to build and maintain their nuclear arsenal, or preempt its future acquisition in the first place.

This is a bit too cynical. It's impossible to understand the history green parties' opposition to nuclear energy without the context of their opposition to nuclear weapons. The argument went that "civilian" nuclear infrastructure was deeply interconnected with nuclear weapons. They share infrastructure. The existence of a civilian nuclear fuel cycle brings into existence a latent nuclear capability (you may recognize this theme from such films as the United States vs the Islamic Republic). Creating fissile material while avoiding diversion and proliferation requires the secrecy, security, and centralized technocratic control of what activists sometimes called the Atomic State, which they argued was incompatible with liberal democracy. I think these were quite serious arguments, though of course they'd persuade only if you're already bought in on unilateral nuclear disarmament.

You think.. I heard some antinuclear guys opposing fusion because the vessel for fusion reactor would get radioactive, and that is "nuclear waste" (of course, it's not the dangerous, long-term kind).

I've commented before on this, but I don't think it ever becomes financially viable.

Assuming all the physics are completely solved tomorrow;

Private capital can easily get better returns, not to mention sooner returns, doing pretty much anything else.

Public capital requires a very long-term govt spend spanning multiple governments. China could do it, but hard to see a western govt doing it. Plus it would add a decade to the schedule and costs would spiral upwards.

All of which is a huge bet against improvements in grid-level storage.

What's your take on why every hyperscaler is getting into nuclear if the economics are actually as you suggest?

> but now nuclear power is too expensive compared with renewables plus solar

Brit here: we need renewables and storage and nuclear.

> compulsory wind farms on golf courses owned by foreign billionaires

We need this x100.

Nuclear power is not too expensive, it's expense is artificial. Also - renewables can't provide base load energy to replace mos of carbon stuff. You need a powerful base load to support most renewables in the mix

> ... but now nuclear power is too expensive compared with renewables

It's not.

It's a protest vote. Anti-fascist eco-fascism isn't a viable basis for the coherent governance of anything larger than an ecovilliage.

That said, it seems neither pragmatism nor ideological coherence is really necessary to hold power these days.

One of the useful policies mentioned in the article is:

> Last year, Adrian Ramsay, then a Green co-leader, criticised government support for Sizewell C. “The money being spent on this nuclear gamble would be far better spent on insulating and retrofitting millions of homes, bringing down energy bills and keeping people warmer and more comfortable,” he said.

Classic negawatt approach, to use Amory Lovins' term.

Seems, though, like most people would rather build impressive infrastructure than improve what's already there. Grid expansion and new energy production development have far more cachet than paying a bunch of people with white vans to go around fixing up houses.

Second best time is now.

They were never were in control of the government, so it seems a conspiracy theory that the greens somehow did "a lot of damage". I think a conspiracy needed by people who can not deal with the fact that nuclear is simply not economical, and therefor fails on the market.

Where in Germany could one build a new nuclear powerplant without noticeable local opposition (or opposition to new power lines)?

Our energy is expensive enough as is, we don't need to spend many billions on expensive nuclear power.

It was ultimately a conservative government that was responsible for exiting nuclear in Germany. But also nobody wants nuclear back, not even the industry - as it is too expensive.

>The Greens are a niche party in the UK

Are they really?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_U...

Because HN loves nuclear power plants aka complicated steam machines.

There is a very very strong pro-nuclear contingent on HN and in tech in general, and most of the tech pro-nuclear support comes from viewing nuclear as environmentally positive compared to alternatives, so I'm not surprised at all to see this. It hits all the right "this is good" receptors, even if UK Greens are a tiny party. (I personally view nuclear as completely infeasible, economically, while also being environmentally friendly, so I've had few allies on any grounds when it comes to public debate on nuclear.)

They were, but the current popularity of the 2 main parties (in recent times) has led to this or a couple of right wing ones as a popular protest vote.

The Greens, under Polanski, have never been less "niche".

There are three Green Parties in the UK. The SGP members have had a supply agreement with the ruling SNP in the Scottish Parliament for years. There was even talk of them being in coalition for a while.

We're familiar with the Green point of view, your niche parties are like NGOs in the US. I think the larger context might be the conversation about technology we've been having in the US since the atom bomb. Articles about nuclear power, GMO, AI, and other advances will trigger similar interest. The timeliness of this article isn't a factor, it's an interesting event and a chance to broach a few topics.

> Fusion reactors in Virginia

I was curious and did the reading. The technology still doesn't exist as far as I can tell. Even according to the Commonwealth Fusion Systems who says they will build in Virginia.

The International Atomic Energy Association says:

> there are still some technological issues to address before a commercial power plant can operate. A prototype of a fusion reactor (DEMO) is expected to be built by 2040. [1]

[1]: https://www.iaea.org/topics/energy/fusion/faqs

It was a great peacetime technology during the cold war

Nuclear ICBMs generally make this a moot point. An advanced enemy can explode a "nuclear reactor" anywhere in your country at any time.

Regarding drones, most reactors are built relatively hardened. For example, they're protected against a 747 flying into it at full speed. So even a drone attack would take an advanced enemy, and they might as well drop a bomb on you.

The destruction of the Kakhovka Dam flooded over 500 square kilometres and carried a significant death toll, caused major damage to the surrounding area and impacted over a million people.

Besides maybe solar, there is always the potential for harm during war times. Heck, even with solar, cutting off electricity supply to a major urban area can tragically carry a death toll that goes beyond even the few severe power plant disasters we as a species have ever encountered.

Fission is not an outlier here and designing any power plant for resilience is a necessary step, whether in war or peacetimes, whether in a tectonically stable or seismically active area.

Third-parties are generally full of eccentrics (remember that the UK is still FPTP, even if they're a multi-party system). Eccentrics typically aren't the "very serious" types looking at tradeoffs.

The large portion of the environmentalist left are degrowthers who literally want people to just live with less, which means "less energy" is actually good. It will never be a politically viable position, but again, we're talking about a party that until recently has never come close to wielding power.

I oppose nuclear for a very simple reason: there is no way to deal with the long term waste. Not just the small amount of waste from the fuel, but the reactor components.

The waste will burden hundreds of generations for millenia and the reason? Our current consumption

Such greed and disregard for following generations

Climate change is a minor problem in comparison

It was part emotional response to Chernobyl, part is was full on Russian propaganda infiltrating parliaments in Europe.

The leader of Germany that phased out nuclear and made Germany fully reliant on Russia then took a job... at Gazprom. The VP from the Greens responsible took a very high paying job lobbying for foreign Gas firms, too.

It has to be one of the most successful foreign influencing campaigns in history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der#Business... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joschka_Fischer#Business_activ...

It's perfectly understandable, if you allow that most peoples' understanding of nuclear safety is not perfect. Chernobyl and 3 mile island, but also Hiroshima and Nagasaki- atomic power's dangers get a lot more press than when it works quietly and reliably.

Sure, you and I can talk about newer plant designs that fail safely, or about how coal plants emit more radiation by far. But if we had the ability to rapidly convince large swathes of the populace of provable scientific facts, then clean power is only one of the many many problems we would be able to solve.