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Comment by fdomig | Hacker News Reader

Living in Germany I can add: Yes, shutting down nuclear power plants "so early" was naive, however, even the now horrible war in Ukraine boosts the process to migrate to (more) sustainable energy even faster. Also, pretty soon energy prices in Germany might be so much lower and this will be a key advantage.

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Also: The war in Ukraine shows what a security liability nuclear plants are in wartime.

Which, in what is surely a coincidence, is good for Russia.

…with the Russian state-owned Rosatom being the biggest (and cheapest) builder of nuclear plants abroad? Occam’s razor applies here, I think; no need for conspiracy theories.

Cheap is not necessarily better, their designs are now outdated.

Most importantly, they are not water sparing, which will be necessary really soon now.

Aren't you all kinda missing the main point: who is the world's manufacturer of nuclear fuel. Hold your laugh when you realize. :)

That is an common misunderstanding. You can't interchange one nuclear fuel for an other. Fuel rods are designed and built explicitly for the kind of plant that will use it, which mean that the fuel mostly used will be for the plant that is mostly built. Guess who holds the patents to the fuel rods design for a specific nuclear power plant design.

Uranium mining however is pretty diversified. about 1/4 come from Canada, 1/4 from Australia, 1/4 from Russia and 1/4 from Africa. It then get processed into a powder, and then shipped to a fuel construction facility. One of the larger site of fuel rod construction is actually Sweden, which has also recently started to expand construction for fuel to Rosatom reactors.

Creating fuel rods from Uranium refined powder is however not the biggest problem that the world has.

I didn't say rods were interchangeable. Also, between powder and tablets lies the most complicated and expensive process - enrichment. I'm not aware of the current way of things, but about 10y ago US was importing fuel, mainly from Russia.

or gas pipelines

or food imports

can't go back to the age of empires, sorry

What security vulnerabilities are they in wartime? Especially when Germany is a NATO member, so basically any war against Germany would result in WW3, where nuclear power plants will be the least of your problem.

The Russians are basically holding hostage a nuclear plant in Ukraine. It is a very convenient position to hold in an offensive war as the defender can't very well attack the place.

Medvedev also threatened to attack or sabotage nuclear plants in the rest of Europe. Sabotage can not only lead to serious blackouts, but also to widespread contamination.

I am not sure if these lower costs are ever projected onto the end users. the energy prices weren't lowered since ~2000

As long as most of the wind-mill and solar components are manufactured in China, it's difficult to call it "sustainable".

You are right about solar panels being built in China, but windmill components are usually built in local factories, because they are very hard to transport.

You might call the dominance of the Chinese solar manufacturers a national security risk, but as long as we have the knowledge and resources to theoretically build them in the West (albeit more expensively), they are easier to replace than for example Saudi-Arabian oil or Russian natural gas.

I'm also talking about the very large amount of Neodymium magnets needed for the very large generators of wind-mills.

It's the most dirty part to mine and is exclusively from China (95% of worldwide production).

Uhh, I didn't know about that and will read up on it - thank you!

> Also, pretty soon energy prices in Germany might be so much lower

Jürgen Trittin (2004): Eine Kugel Eis... (costs for "Energiewende" )

There is the infamous saying, "Fusion is always twenty years ahead." But renewables seem to be trying hard to live up to that saying (AND getting more expensive along the way)

https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/13020/umfrage...

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