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> - "Rosatom, in a statement, insisted its plant was 'invulnerable to tsunamis.'" > Really ?? why are they trying to sell dumb electricity when they have the much more valuable technology of invincible ships. How many tsunamis has one of their ships survived exactly ?

A 10' dinghy in deep water is pretty well invulnerable to tsunamis. Invulnerability to hurricanes would be an entirely different proposition.

In deep water. Not moored at the coast providing electricity.

It could be moored off shore similar to Offshore Wind Farms.

> "Rosatom, in a statement, insisted its plant was 'invulnerable to tsunamis.'"

> - Coastlines near cities are expensive real estate (not to mention anyone with property there allowing a literal power nuclear plant blocking their view ) - it takes important real estate from ports that are much more useful for docking ships, etc. Its possible to build a separate port far away from the city; but then you have to pay the extra cost of building some extra infrastructure to deal with the ship, at that point its just easier to build your own power plant.

Both of these are pretty easily solved by floating the plant a short distance off the shore and laying a power line along the sea floor. Tsunami's aren't an issue till right along the shore and the ship would practically disappear if it were just a bit off shore.

You are still leaving out storm surges etc. The ocean is a terrible place for infrastructure, its why we only do it if we really have no other option (offshore oil rigs etc).

Storm surge isn't a danger to a ship unless it's docked on shore or gets pushed ashore. It's really not that different from a tsunami in that regard a ship at sea just moves up with the bulk of the water.

Oh, ships sink in the middle of the ocean, I believe, with utmost certainty.

>How many tsunamis has one of their ships survived exactly

A tsunami in sufficiently deep water is basically imperceptible. It’s only a problem once the sea floor starts pushing the water up.

The ship wont be in deep water though but in the shoreline !

You are safe in either direction, either 15 km inland of 15+ km offshore.

A 15km underwater line is not a problem.

Well the Australian government(s) aren't sane then. We've been privatizing our power plants for decades, and iirc some owned by Government owned Chinese enterprises.

EDIT: For what it's worth. I don't have a problem with foreign ownership of the powerplants. But I do have a problem with privatization in a market without much competition.

As others have said, ownership doesn’t precisely equal control, and certainly not in the way control can be exercised over one of these floating reactors. Also...

Well the Australian government(s) aren't sane then.

Yeah, hasn’t that been pretty well established in a myriad of other ways?

ownership is different from actually having ops capabilities,

I do not think there is a button somewhere is Beijing that China can use to just turn off Australian power plant on Australian soil.

The most China can do to sell the asset and temporary depress its price.

The Australian market is routinely manipulated by pretending to turn off equipment until the price rises sufficiently to pretend to turn the equipment on just in time for the high price market.

So yes, there is "a button somewhere" that a private owner can use to just turn off Australian power plants on Australian soil.

That's interesting, the US has an almost entirely privatized energy generation market and doesn't routinely have that problem.

I've read a bit about Australia's energy problems over the years, I'm unaware of how they regulate pricing though. The US has very strict rules in place for its private utilities.

Private + tight controls has resulted in the US having close to the cheapest power in the developed world. Roughly 1/3 the cost of Germany's or Australia's electricity. Privatization doesn't explain Australia's numerous disastrous energy choices and policies.

Incorrect.

"Tapes Show Enron Arranged Plant Shutdown"

In the midst of the California energy troubles in early 2001, when power plants were under a federal order to deliver a full output of electricity, the Enron Corporation arranged to take a plant off-line on the same day that California was hit by rolling blackouts, according to audiotapes of company traders released here on Thursday.

The tapes and memorandums were made public by a small public utility north of Seattle that is fighting Enron over a power contract. They also showed that Enron, as early as 1998, was creating artificial energy shortages and running up prices in Canada in advance of California's larger experiment with deregulation....

https://outline.com/f2N42r (nytimes)

Also:

Enron defrauded California out of billions during energy ...

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/05/enro-m10.html

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

California's problems in the early 2000s were caused by exactly that. Here's one tape where a trader asks an operator to "get a little creative and find a reason to go down".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBnnUIEZiNI

I'm not sure if its really been fixed or if its just not as aggressive.

As a vector for inserting software viruses ownership is second to none.

agreed

Off shore drilling rigs aren’t anchored to he floor, but the pipe could literally snap if the rig floats away.

They are kept in place solely by GPS and thrust vectoring.

The Ruskies are going to use the same technology here, known for decades, and probably safer than oil rigs since there nothing to snap and a small volume to protect if the whole thing sinks.

> nothing to snap

There's still an electrical cable, but I would assume it's more durable than an underwater oil pipeline.

True, but consider:

When an electrical cable snaps little happens, a breaker trips and maybe a fish got fried (but not many).

When a pipeline snaps you get deep water horizon.

- Your account was created 8 minutes ago

- defending some press release coming out of Russia.

How is the weather today in Moscow ?

This breaks the HN guidelines by being (1) a personal attack, (2) nationalistic flamewar, and (3) insinuation of astroturfing without evidence. We ban accounts that post like this, so please don't do it again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

No sane govt will allow a foreign power to literally be able to shutdown one of their cities on a whim.

Western Europe is already critically dependent on Russian gas pipelines, so this would be no biggie. Russia needs the foreign currency desperately so it won’t act lightly.

Western Europe is well aware of this fact this is why they are desperate to get the pipeline from Qatar built - which is not going anywhere because of destabilization in Syria (The pipeline needs to pass through Syria). Hmm.. I wonder which foreign power is helping prop up the Assad Regime

Also Germany is building HVDC lines from solar power plants is Spain. Depending on Russia has already got us in the mess where Europe is unable to hold them accountable for a lot of crimes they have committed on European soil.

Because Assad was going to let a Qatar pipeline go through Syria in the first place? Hmm I wonder which foreign powers destabilized Syria and have been trying to overthrow the current government for close to 7 years now.

" On 1 June 2012, President Assad vowed to crush the anti-government uprising. On 12 June 2012, the UN for the first time officially proclaimed Syria to be in a state of civil war. " - Wikipedia

I am sorry but the conspiracy Theory that the US had anything to do with starting the Syrian conflict is simply not true.

> I am sorry but the conspiracy Theory that the US had anything to do with starting the Syrian conflict is simply not true.

The US had a lot do with it, but by (among other things) bungling the occupation of Iraq, not by any deliberate policy.

You started this flamewar, took it into increasingly off topic politics, and (elsewhere) attacked another user personally. None of this is ok on HN and we ban accounts that do it, so please don't do it again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I didn't mention US in my post, but since you insist... here is what is declassified and publicly known: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore

I do not see anything wrong with providing weapons to people who are being literally slaughtered by their own govt.

There is no evidence that any foreign govt helped cause the Syrian Civil War in the first place.

You first said that the Qatar pipeline is not going anywhere because of destabilization in Syria... I guess you should've been honest from the beginning and said that it's not going anywhere because the project to remove Assad from power has failed.

>No sane govt will allow a foreign power to literally be able to shutdown one of their cities on a whim.

Hasn't Gasprom done this [cut supply] in the past but continues to have customers in Europe? If it's cheap enough they will probably have customers.

After a long running dispute over theft of gas intended for western Europe, Gasprom cut off gas to Ukraine for 3 days in winter 2006 [1].

Note that Naftogaz (Ukraine gas organisation) later admitted to this theft, which was worth $3 billion.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93Ukraine_gas_dis...

Please note, that no theft was admitted by Naftogaz (outside usual Russian circle of propaganda).

Also, these are small plants; not the amount of power that would cripple a country.

Make its e-supply more reliable, yes. But not replace the bulk of the supply. For that Rosatom will sell you a few GW units on land

> No sane govt will allow a foreign power to literally be able to shutdown one of their cities on a whim.

Doesn’t Europe, and in particular Germany, already do this with Russian natural gas?

If that happened, the client government could nationalize the reactor and seize control of it. This would provoke a diplomatic incident, of course, but that'd be something for the two governments to sort out.

Or, less aggressively, they would retain enough reserve power generation capacity to replace the electricity. For example, have gas plants that can be spun up on demand if the nuclear reactors were shut off.

Either way, a government isn't going to be held ransom by Rosatom.

> "Or, less aggressively, they would retain enough reserve power generation capacity to replace the electricity. For example, have gas plants that can be spun up on demand if the nuclear reactors were shut off."

If your country has the capabilities to build reserve power plants why allow the Russians to get all the profit from the power market ? You could just spin up your gas plants indefinitely.

Nuclear power is also not cheap, and the main cost is associated with risk (disposing of waste, etc), I am sorry but if their is one area where you cant be cheap its nuclear power.

Also the countries that Russia seems to target are poor countries with weak governments like Sudan (not to mention Sudan's main cites are all far away from the coast). Most poor countries these days are located in perfect places for solar energy, which is anyway cheaper than nuclear.

>Nuclear power is also not cheap, and the main cost is associated with risk (disposing of waste, etc), I am sorry but if their is one area where you cant be cheap its nuclear power.

I see nuclear power as being just as susceptible to off-shoring the dirty parts as any other industry. Russia could just dump all the waste in a mine in Siberia and even if they did a terrible job it would be a century before anyone noticed. Until the waste containment becomes a problem this would be a win-win because the buyer can say they're buying environmentally friendly nuclear energy and the Russians can make money hand over fist.

> Most poor countries these days are located in perfect places for solar energy, which is anyway cheaper than nuclear.

Apples to oranges. Solar can't cover more than a fraction of the total energy because of it's fluctuating nature.

"holding Europe hostage with their gas pipelines"

Only countries that can't or won't pay. Take Ukraine, all the gas destined for Germany and the Netherlands (people who have payed their bills on time since 1950) had to go through them. Russia couldn't shut down those Ukrainian deadbeats because then they would lose billions.

The world is not black or white.

Ukraine doesn't buy Russian gas for years. :-/