Hacker News Reader

Comment by didip | Hacker News Reader

If the Russian government want to stoke fear about Nuclear power plant to keep the EU addicted to their oil and gas, this is a smart play.

View on HN

And already working, here in France the main leftist candidate (JL. Mélenchon) has used these events as definitive proof nuclear energy is not sustainable (France's presidential elections are taking place next month), anti-nuclear rhetoric has been one of his hobby-horses for a while now, conflating civil nuclear with military.

Ha, sort of ironic to me as a Kiwi - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior

We are still nuclear free too - and we still don't have many military visits to our ports or marine territory considering it's illegal to have a ship or submarine with nuclear weapons or reactor. most navies won't tell you if they have nuclear weapons/reactors so basically they're not allowed here.

(but really, what are we gonna do? we have like two boats.) ;-)

Oh yeah uh... sorry about the Rainbow Warrior. And don't let any DGSE agent anywhere near those two boats of yours.

Apologies probably should include the deportation of those involved rather than their lionization.

France is almost completely unapologetic over any of it's past actions. They will issue lowkey official apologies, like they did to new Zealand in 2015 but nothing will change and no one will be prosecuted.

If anything, there is a huge desire to "go back to the glory days". It's pretty much the only country that is still so brazenly colonial (the concept of a francafrique is not even subject to any debate there) and they are regularly pulling "rainbow warrior" types of actions in africa even now. A good example is their complete control on Ivory Coast politics to the point of violently interfering when things don't go their way.

They even had generals openly admit on TV that they greenlit almost every type of war crimes in Algeria, with nothing of consequence happening to them even after their own confession. The past is the past, right?

So yeah I wouldn't hold my breath over the deportations happening anytime soon.

He's a running joke though. His stance on many things is outright ridiculous ( like the EU) and he doesn't stand any chance of getting actually elected. He also had very dubious stances on Russia before the invasion of Ukraine ( he's of course changed course). Nobody is taking his position on nuclear seriously. I hope.

If ineffective, because the IAEA and co have already indicated the risk of incidents is low. Same with the other nuclear power plant being captured; at this point I'd say the danger of Russia launching nukes is a tad bit higher than a nuclear power plant.

Besides, don't nuclear power plants have safeties built in these days in case of power loss or a lack of attendants? I've pulled up the article about control rods, if I'm reading it correctly, if inserted fully they should stop the reaction. I presume nuclear reactors have failsafes so that the control rods are inserted fully in case of incident.

The details not sure but you know they use graphite in those days that get into big trouble. Just melt down is problem. But explosion then spread out. Not sure these cool down of rods of 21 years have year. Hope not.

Please explain how Germany should heat most of their households with nuclear power?

This nuclear Astro-Turf is really jumping the shark these days...

What do you need an explanation about? Electrical heating is a solved problem at this point.

So what do you propose? To roll out electrical heating for 75% [1] of the German population?

You think this is in any realistic way affordable or even doable in a significant time? Seriously?

[1]https://de.statista.com/infografik/11385/art-der-heizung-und...

Heat pumps?

75% of the German population uses oil or gas for heating[1].

Most of them rent a flat[2] in a city [3].

So heat pumps are nice and you even get money from the state to install them but they're not doable by most of the people.

[1] https://de.statista.com/infografik/11385/art-der-heizung-und...

[2] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/171237/umfrag...

[3] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/152879/umfrag...

There are at least three different actually deployed methods for doing so, all with working principles older than nuclear. If you want to be in an energy debate knowing them is not hard.

I have to downvote you, because requiring others to spend their time explaining basic technologies as a rhetorical tactic is *rude*.

I like how you didn't provide even a single one but instead left some useless ad hominem and downvote. Sounds pretty rude to me.

Electric heat is great, actually. My house has a heat pump and it’s terrific. It’s a mini split system so each room has a wall-mounted head that circulates hot or cold air, with a large compressor outside. The system is quiet, efficient, and clean, in fact, it’s much cleaner than ducted systems because there are no ducts to bring dirty particles in. It can be expensive when it’s cold out, but total cost of keeping the house cool and warm averages out to be a pretty good deal.

Houses here actually get support from the state for such heat pumps.

Unfortunately it doesn't help most of the citizens of Germany since most of them rent in cities and don't live in houses where they can decide and install easily.

Sounds like that's a better spot to be in for a big push to deploy heat pumps since the property owners have greater assets & financial acumen than the average homeowner in many places so you can work with one entity on upgrades to a number of households at a time. The government could announce a big program to fund upgrades, make massive order commitments with the major manufacturers so they scale up production immediately, and negotiate with installers to hire & train more staff.

The government already does that and the market for those is huge, people who can install them are in high demand. It's happening and has been for years now but this is not Luxemburg. It takes a lot of time to switch 75% of the whole population over to new heating even if everybody would do it and if it would be possible everywhere. Which it isn't. This just not a relevant time frame or topic for the conspiracy OP wanted to push here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com