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Comment by bayesian_horse | Hacker News Reader

That reads like a nuclear-fan-boy article. No, we can't just waive security requirements to modernize the old plants and keep them save. No, I don't see where you could eliminate all the Russian gas just with those reactors already standing.

The war in Ukraine remains us of one thing: You don't want unpredictable things to happen around a nuclear plant. Nuclear power can be relatively cheap. If you subsidize it heavily. If you scale it up (and thus the risks) to drive down costs. If and only absolutely nothing goes wrong. No unforeseen natural catastrophes. No other "impossible accidents" of the kind that keep happening. Absolutely no possibility for ill intentions...

Stopping the import of Russian gas now instead of allowing more time does absolutely nothing for Ukraine except for a little bit of moral support, while tanking the German economy. Russia is already in a downward spiral.

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> Stopping the import of Russian gas now instead of allowing more time does absolutely nothing for Ukraine except for a little bit of moral support, while tanking the German economy. Russia is already in a downward spiral.

You truly believe that stopping to transfer multiple millions a day to Russia will not have any effect in how it spends money? Even though, in your words, they're in a downwards spiral?

Russia is financially teetering on the edge of bankruptcy (if they haven't gone over yet). Wars are expensive. The absolute best the EU could do right now to affect the war is to stop purchasing Russian gas for a week. Sure, that will have repercussions inside the EU. It'll also significantly cut into the resources available to Russia to spend on the war.

You are lying. I did not say "it will not have any effect on Russia's spending".

Clearly, it would have. But not in the military, certainly not in the short term.

Russia can be completely bankrupt and still keep destroying all of Ukraine for years. A year to phase out all Russian imports? With most of it gone a lot sooner? Not that big a deal.

Can you rephrase your post to assume good faith on the part of the person you're responding to?

>Russia is financially teetering on the edge of bankruptcy

Russia's budget surplus is at all-time high now due to increased fuel prices. I recommend you to revise your sources of information, they may have misled you about that "defaut"

Honestly, I would gladly take 10 major Chernobyl-style accidents each year than what's coming with climate change. It's way, way worse.

I don't think that either is good, but what you think is coming could potentially be delayed or stopped still. Once there is a nuclear meltdown the long-term damage is basically irreversible, not to mention the people that could die or have their lives changed which has a very real impact

Nuclear power is just not that scaleable when you think through the implications. To stop climate change, you'd need a huge multiplication of nuclear industry. You'd need plants everywhere. All major cities in the industrialized world. And in developing countries. All of them, including those you wouldn't trust to officiate a child's birthday party without corruption and mismanagement.

All of that assumes none of those countries start using their new nuclear industry to get nuclear weapons. The world is unsafe as it is with some rogue/rogue-ish states having them. And dirty bombs are even easier, especially with all the nuclear waste being produced and stored... somewhere.

Either this or you need all the nuclear power stations to be in safe countries (and that definition might change suddenly) with an almost globe spanning grid. If you had a globe spanning super grid you could probably just do it with solar anyway, no batteries needed for the sun shines 24/7.

> The war in Ukraine remains us of one thing:

I think it shows us instead that Germany worked hard to put itself into position where it is strategically aligned with Russia, and is willing to sacrifice life and freedom of everyone around to keep it that way.

Putin-Merkel is the new Molotov-Ribbentrop.

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