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Comment by pastullo | Hacker News Reader

i'm sad to see a decline of nuclear energy everywhere in the world. While renewables are the end goal, nuclear was gonna be the perfect transition source for the next decades, providing emission-free and continuous energy to the grid.

I have the bad feeling that cancelling a nuclear power plant, means building coal/gas plants in its place. This article actually mention the renewaleble goal of Vietnam which are really unimpressive. 3.3% solar inputs by 2030...WOW, in the mean time how are they gonna keep up with the energy requirements of a developing country? Probably coal.

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Nuclear is good as long as it has very stable, secure and responsible local governance. You can't have political instability, people cutting corners, lack of oversight, lack of security or lack of resources ... or you have problems.

To me that's the problem with Nuclear. Following specific rules and conventions, some nations will be fine, but so many ... it's iffy. If Vietnam gets a couple plants, Burma, Laos, Cambodia etc. will want one too and then the risk of something bad happening just starts to crawl up.

> Nuclear is good as long as it has very stable, secure and responsible local governance.

...and no terrorist attacks. And no war.

And the governance remains stable and responsible for the next 100 years.

They’ve managed to not break even though they’ve been in counties which have been at war (Israel), experienced a military coup (Pakistan), disintegrated (USSR), and experienced terrorism (UK, USA), so none of that is strictly necessary.

It already means manufacturers get less experience building nuclear plants, and it's much harder to de-king the building process of new designs. We've been feeling those effects for the last decade or, Gen IIIs are manufacturing disaster due to the combination of the ongoing popularity of Gen IIs and the dearth of new constructions in the 80s/90s.

Abu Dhabi has 4 large plants coming online in the next few years. The first is going to start up at the end of 2018 (ie: soon).

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

Fukushima was the worst possible timing; it's a very hard sell now.

True, but in the long run, it might have been a healthy warning signal. Negative populism aside, we need to know that 'corner cases happen' and that there are consequences.

In a funny way, we're lucky it was a rather minor fallout in a 'good country' wherein we can take measurements, do experiments etc..

Fukishima should help us make more rational decisions if we can get over the populism.

Hmmm. There are many signals already in the nuclear industry that could have prevented a Fukushima.

Fukushima isn't a signal. It's one of the thing that might happens when signals are ignored.

Or you could consider it a signal that in one of the most orderly, fastidious, and organized cultures on the planet (probably THE most), people still manage to catastrophically fuck up nuclear, and if the Japanese can't do it, realistically no one can.

Coal it is, the planned nuclear reactor could provide 4000 MW with 10 billions dollar construction cost. It was too pricy so the plan was shelved and replaced with... 3 coal powered power plants instead. The coal will be imported from other countries, hopefully they will be as clean as President Trump said /s.

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