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Comment by vamur | Hacker News Reader

They should have built nuclear plants when oil was expensive.

That's a good idea in the general case, but in the case of Venezuela would lead to disaster.

Actually in Venezuela every power plant ends in disaster but disasters in nuclear plants have much more severe consequences.

Why would it be a disaster? The plants would be built and operated by an outside company - e.g Areva, Rosatom.

And hydro power they have today is not reliable. So they would need to use coal or natural gas. And both of these pollute compared to nuclear.

Nuclear power stations require a high initial capital input. AFAIK nothing of this sort has been happening since Chavis became president. They have essentially starved their own energy industry of necessary reinvestments to get a quick buck.

This is of course, ignoring the risks that the government claiming that they will take over the nuclear plant and put a high school dropout in charge.

Venezuela had a mostly positive balance of trade last 10 years. So they had enough money to ask for financing for a nuclear plant (usually 5-10bln) to stabilize their grid. Instead they wasted money on the ridiculous gasoline subsidy, creating a huge smuggling industry.

>The plants would be built and operated by an outside company

What are you, a capitalist? That won't work in Venezuela's current political climate.

Political climates tend to shift when people figure out that idealism won't fill their bellies or keep a roof over their heads.

Misplaced and ill-thought-out idealism at that.

That is false. The people in power have an insentive to keep current policy. Yes, maybe if a totally different government is put into place, things will change, but before that, no western coopration will make huge capital investments.

So for your solution to work the government would have to remove itself, and they want.

A lot of outside companies were seized by the government and nationalized.

I'm a huge fan of nuclear power, but I do tend to think it would be a bad idea in an unstable country.

> The plants would be built and operated by an outside company - e.g Areva, Rosatom.

And take the risk of being "nationalized" by the state.

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