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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

First in Finland for 40 years, first in Europe for 15. (According to the pr release)

>first in Europe for 15

Not if you count the Astravets plant in Belarus and a bunch of reactors in Russia.

People have this weird tendency to equate “Europe” with Western Europe (or more accurately: EU + Switzerland + Norway (+ UK sometimes, since Brexit it depends))

It's not that weird that people shift the borders given that Europe is not a real continent but rather constructed around ideas of "Western civilization". Is using it EU + close allies model really worse than drawing a border at the point where there starts to be too much non-Christian influence to bare?

"Europe" is a name of Phoenician origin, much older than Christianity. It was already old when Classical Greece was young.

A lot of the modern confusion stems from the tendency of EU to refer to itself as "Europe" (see: European Council, European Central Bank, European Parliament etc.)

I really think it's backwards: EU tends to refer itself as Europe because of the former Western block mindset.

That might be the case in the 1980s, but later I believe another mindset prevailed: an ambition of the EU to actually expand to include entire Europe, or at least the non-Russian part thereof.

With Brexit, the complicated security situation east of Poland and the fact that the Swiss, the Norwegians and the Icelanders seem to be OK with staying outside, this ambition is no longer realistic to fulfill short- to mid-term, but it survives nonetheless.

> an ambition of the EU to actually expand to include entire Europe, or at least the non-Russian part thereof.

No, not “the non-Russian part thereof”, the entire Europe “From the Atlantic to Ural”[1]

[1]: https://mondediplo.com/2018/10/04russia

As recently as 2019, Macron expressed the idea that "Europe stretches from Lisbon to Vladivostok".

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/20/russia-is-deeply-e...

Realistically, though, Russia would have to change a lot internally before joining the EU.

I am slightly more optimistic about Turkish membership, if Erdogan bites the dust and someone more Western-like (Imamoglu?) comes to power and rewrites the constitution again. Turkish industry is very much integrated into European supply chains.

"Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok" is a much older ideal, IIRC it has roots as far as in early 90s. And if you stretch it enough you can even trace it back to Charles de Gaulle. But for it to happen not only Russia has to significantly improve internally, but also EU itself has to be different. For starters it would have to be truly independent from the US influence and Brussel's grip on the union would have to be weaker. Russian political culture historically is very firm on being able to independently decide its own fate (and no, it's not a matter of "democratization"). Take the current EU issues with the Poles and multiply it a hundredfold to get a rough approximation of what the current EU would have with Russia.

Before 2007 (see the Munich speech) Russia sincerely tried to join the EU and the collective West. But the condition "proposed" at the time and attitude towards Russia fundamentally collided with that deep culture, resulting in the situation which we see today. If you want to learn more about it from a non-Western perspective, I recommend watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7Ng75e5gQ

Given the prominent role that Russia played in European history since the 17th century I find it really annoying to rule it out of Europe just because it wasn't in the American side of the cold war.

Russia is definitely part of the Western civilization by any means if you don't limit this definition to what happened during the second half of the twentieth century… What on earth would make Russia less part of “Western civilization” than Slovakia or Greece?!

I think Russia is commonly excluded from "Europe" simply because only a small part of it is in Europe and the rest is not. Bundling it in would've caused Europe overlap with Asia and that's just confusing.

Funnily enough it makes nearly 40% of land area of Europe... And 14% of population... Reality is that most of Russia west of Ural is kinda just there.

The majority of the Russian population lives in Europe. It's a bit like saying that Denmark isn't really in Europe because most of its land area are actually Greenland. Yet nobody does that!

And the OP was not only excluding Russia from Europe in their post, but also Belarus which is unambiguously in Europe. It's a former part of the eastern block which is still under Moscow's influence so in must not be “Europe” because this word has been preempted by the American block.

I don't really remember ever hearing anyone talk about Russia when they refer to Europe except in geography class.

In any history class about the history of Europe, you would have a hard time not talking about Russia…

Excluding Russia from Europe is a really recent trend actually, it appeared even after the fall of the iron curtain, during the late 90 s, early 2000s as an attempt to marginalize Russia.

You'll also have a hard time not talking about Spain in the history of Latin America, but that doesn't mean it's part of it.

I should have added “as a European power” because it's what Russia was: a European power, and nobody would have questioned that in the 1950.

If they wanted us to be inclusive towards them, maybe they should've tried not invading us.

Are you talking about the country which was invaded numerous times from the west?

Are you going to kick France out of Europe then? Because we've invaded our neighbors way more than Russians ever did. Heck, without the Russians Napoleon would probably have invaded England, achieving complete French domination over the continent!

Just like "America" doesn't include Mexico and south...

Well, in topics like these, where economics and technical standards play a huge role, it totally makes sense to use this interpretation of Europe.

Its not really much different than saying "America" when meaning the US. Or even England vs UK/GB.

And as I understand, this is already an old design (they started building it in the 00s).

You might think so but this is the nuclear energy industry - where building a plant typically takes at least a decade (or not-uncommonly 2 decades or more). In fact, this is currently the most modern production reactor design in the world.

It's an EPR[1] - a third generation reactor design. But so far it's been plagued by massive cost and schedule overruns and of the two reactors of this design to become operational, Taishan 2[2] has already been taken offline after less than a year in order to investigate problem with the fuel rods.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishan_Nuclear_Power_Plant

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