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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

> But there should be 100 others under construction right now under a wartime like economy.

Average time to build a NPP is 5 to 7 years[0]. This also assumes that anyone can build and run an NPP, it's like saying that everyone should stop doing whatever they are doing and start building Fabs during the chip crisis.

"Designing a car? Building a pharmaceuticals factory? Coding JavaScript? Stop that, we have more important things to do. Just drop whatever you do and start making 5nm Fabs and Nuclear Power plants"

Also, what do you do with the NIMBYs?

[0] http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/park-k2/

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I like the "wartime like economy" analogy.

It took 6 years to defeat the bad guys during the second world war.

Most of the guys that defeated them had little to no military training at the onset of the conflict.

The NIMBYs in that scenario were marketed to with either assured oppression, or war with a "better" future. Same can be done today.

While we're on the "wartime economy" topic - is your country currently at war? Is any EU country currently formally at war? Is the US? How would that justify a "war time economy decision"?!?

You can't just throw all democracy laws and regulations overboard just because Russia is messing in their backyard (okay - that is an understatement, but you get the point)...

No we don't need to throw democracy and regulations overboard, but we do need policies that reflect the urgency of the situation. Europe needs be entirely off of Russian gas for the foreseeable future. And unfortunately in the short run this means bringing some coal plants that were slated for decommission back online just to get through the winter.

In the slightly longer term, the rest of the world really needs to get off of fossil fuels and be cutting carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions. This is critical and urgent, but not at the cost of the rule of law or democracy.

What we got is a society fully dependent on cheap electricity, that must further increase energy usage in order to prevent greater catastrophe, and which is on the verge of economic depression.

We can't throw all democracy laws and regulations overboard, but we can't continue with statue quo. Without energy we don't have working cities, agriculture stops producing food, heating and then public health starts to break down. The agricultural sector was one of the first areas that got hit when energy prices jumped.

Those things are close enough to be wartime-like, and could easily turn into actually wartime.

We are all stuck in a war against time in the fight against global warming. Any GHG we don't emit gains us time and saves lives.

Yes, but most of things built during wartime are quick expedients, not long term planned things.

For example, in both WW1 and WW2 a lot of capital ship constructions were canceled in favor of cheap quick to built ships (like cheap destroyers or submarines).

The liberty ships are another example, these things were kind of obsolete at launch and not really geared toward lasting that long (5 years engineered life span).

Lastly, we are not exactly in a wartime situation. Some emergency decisions need to be made (temporary LNG terminals for example), and also Europe needs to have an hard look at its energy policies, but that's a long term and for more complex set of decisions.

A long term commitment to nuclear energy is not something that could and even should be taken in the heat of the moment.

Why do you think this is a temporary situation? When the shooting eventually stops in Ukraine do you think the gas taps will just be turned back on?

It takes 5-7 years to build a nuclear plant? That means the best time to build them was more than 5-7 years ago. The second best time is right now.

This is no heat of the moment decision. We've had nuclear power technology for 75 years and know how to use it by now.

> do you think the gas taps will just be turned back on?

Well, kind of, whatever the outcome, Russia will have depleted much of its military strength and will need to reequip its army. That costs money, so they will be more or less forced (or even willing in case of a coup against Putin) to sell gas to the EU.

The real question is more what the EU will do. Most likely, the EU (or each country individually) will really want to diversify their energy sources and maybe be more self-reliant to not be subject to one actor like it is right now.

Nuclear may be one of the responses, but it's far from the only one.

On a side note, Russia is providing ~25% of the EU's uranium right now (in fairness, this dependency is easier to circumvent compared to the gas one).

Also, there is the additional point of liability insurance which is often swept under the rug. It's horrifically expensive due to the potential compensation payments...

> "It is important to remember that no matter what solution is adopted, some of the cost of a severe nuclear accident will inevitably fall upon the state," the report notes. "Fukushima's compensation payments to date amount to about EUR75 billion (USD91 billion). On top of this are the costs of site stabilisation and regional clean-up. These numbers are beyond the resources of most private enterprises and are even challenging for the global insurance markets.

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Study-examines-n...

> Average time to build a NPP is 5 to 7 years[0].

What is the average time to build a grid-scale solar power plant?

I guess you should Google it but the point is not about if NPP is slower or faster to build than PHV.

But isn't that the point? If solar plants can be deployed quicker and cheaper, that is what should be done (and of course the same applies for wind generators).

So did you Google it? Is it faster? How many days it takes for a JavaScript developer to learn building PHV if they are faster to build?

> Average time to build a NPP is 5 to 7 years

The best time to build a NPP is 5-7 years ago. The second best time is now.

> This also assumes that anyone can build and run an NPP, it's like saying that everyone should stop doing whatever they are doing and start building Fabs during the chip crisis.

This analogy doesn't hold in two different ways;

> it's like saying that everyone should stop doing whatever they are doing

That's not what people (like me) are saying. They're not saying "stop all the other programs", they're saying "heavily heavily prioritise over many other things, as this is critically important for a country's energy security, the continent/political bloc's security, and the planet's future". We're saying claw back some of the £16 billion lost on covid loans [0], or the £10 billion spend on useless PPE[1], or don't spend hundreds of millions to send 300 people a year to rwanda [2], and instead spend _that_ on building nuclear power plants.

> and start building Fabs during the chip crisis.

There's a big difference between selling shovels in a gold rush and investing in power sources that are likely to be operational for decades even after the current crisis is resolved in whatever form it resolves in. If you build a bunch of fabs, they're useless once the pressure wears off. If we build a bunch of nuclear power stations, they're usable instead of the coal and natural gas that we're currently reliant on. Coal can stay where it is, or be used for industrial applications, and natural gas can be used as a heating source for the next 30 years until it's phased out.

> Also, what do you do with the NIMBYs?

Educate them, show them the benefits, spend money on them, and the same as we do if they oppose to fossil fuel extraction - ignore them and do it anyway. Imagine if the UK had spent £100 billion on building 3 hinkley points for £75bn, and spent £10bn on shutting up NIMBY's over the last 20 years. We'd have 3 nuclear power plants, the ability to build more for cheaper, would have created dozens if not hundreds of high skilled jobs and thousands of jobs for manual workers, _and_ it would be cheaper than freezing the energy bills of the entire UK for 18 months [3]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/23/uk-lost-up-to-... [1] https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/127/public-accoun... [2] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/only-300-migrants-face-be... [3] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/liz-truss-cost-of-l...

Throwing money on people and they suddenly be able to build and operate NPPs? Maybe even hundreds of them at the same time without stopping doing anything else? I guess you are tapping into the huge number of unemployed nuclear experts. At %4 of unemployment rate, even if just half of them are engineers capable of building nuclear power plant it should be enough.

Throw money at people who don't want NPPs and they learn to like NPPs? No more NIMBYs.

I agree with your sentiment, but I'm going to nitpick one thing:

> Coal can stay where it is, or be used for industrial applications

I presume you're referring to the energy situation in the UK specifically, in which case I don't know how reliant you are on coal. At a global level, coal use cannot stay where it is beyond the very short term caused by the current crisis. We really need to get off of coal or work out a safe and long term carbon capture solution as soon as possible.

I think they meant 'leave the coal in the ground' or use it to make chemical things.

UK has basically phased out coal already for electricity, it's not going to be around much longer and is already a fallback choice. And I think the coal burned was mostly imported anyway.

We're not reliant on coal at all here for energy. I didn't mean to imply that we should, more that we can _only_ use it for heavy industries where we don't have a suitable replacement yet, e.g. steel manufacturing

>Also, what do you do with the NIMBYs?

ignore them

How do you do that? Take await their properties? Voting rights? Money?

How do you ignore a subset of people when maintaining a democratic society?

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