Cuba’s Unfinished Nuclear Power Station | Hacker News Reader

Cuba’s Unfinished Nuclear Power Station

exutopia.com

89 pointsgscott79 comments

> in such an economy the majority of workers will be glad to take a bribe

> gesturing to our cameras, making a meaningful pat of his wallet inside his pocket

> It might have been the presence of the work crew that deterred this man ... Perhaps the team of workers were looting the place

I really hate this attitude, this feeling of superiority that because you're in a poorer country and you're rich and entitled you just go there and bribe people to satisfy your misery tourism. They wouldn't do this in say, London, but because it's some poor country it's cool to even brag about it.

And not only that, they assume everyone is up for a bribe and even when they refuse it's because of some even bigger scam happening.

The London bribery rates are higher. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65077273

Fact of the matter is that bribery is common in many places, and, yes, often those places are poorer countries.

Regardless, I think your judgment of the author is a little harsh. They even acknowledge and question their assumed superiority in the very next paragraph, which I think is refreshingly honest:

> Of course, it was equally possible that the guard simply wouldn’t accept a bribe on moral grounds – and as we walked back to the car, I wondered whether it said more about me or about him, that this possibility only came as an afterthought.

I agree but think the only issue here is the use of the word “bribe.” Some places have a culture of paying “grease money” to get things done.

This is common behavior in poor areas with little tourism simply because no formal system for officially visiting exists and people do not earn enough to survive. These small payments are not seen as “bribes” in the western sense.

For example I just visited Guinea in Western Africa. On my first day I visited the Grand Mosque. There was no ticket booth or tour guide. Instead I had to pay “big boss,” a guard who showed us around.

I then went to the botanical gardens, which as it turned out had been turned into a military post. An unofficial tour was offered and of course payment was expected.

At the airport, security staff also asked for money. This was refused.

All of these things happened in plain view. I wouldn’t view it in the same light as paying a bribe, though westerners make no distinction. “Courtesy payment” or “tip” are not correct, either, but probably more accurate than “bribe.”

Tribune?

Hopefully it will be finished one day.

It's a shame how much the world has taken a step back with the collapse of the USSR and the rise of US unipolarity.

The once-great Buran space shuttles lie derelict in Kazakhstan and Russia (not even in a museum!). The huge An-225 that took it to space has been destroyed in the Russia-Ukraine war.

Investment in nuclear power has collapsed as projects like this show (and Germany's recent decision to shut down all nuclear power plants).

The lack of competition has also lead the USA to rest on its laurels - no longer investing greatly in STEM education, NASA, national infrastructure, etc. as they did in response to the sudden achievement of Sputnik.

Given sunshine in Cuba it might not be necessary to finish. The for-profit grid feeding giant solar power station in Rajasthan, India is buying power at a rate under 3 cents per kWh, and the private capital that put up the money to build it still has an ROI that pencils out. A hundred million dollars of ground mount photovoltaics in Cuba might do a lot more good than spending money to finish a possibly obsolete design nuclear reactor.

It only pencils out when you don't have to worry where your power is coming from at night or on a cloudy day.

Obviously you do need other base load generation as well. Air conditioner demand is also lower when there's no direct sunlight, and at night.

Air conditioning is not the only power consumer.

If your production goes from 100% to 0%, it's not just air conditioning that will be affected.

In particular, one can calculate minimum base load and amortized base load.

Critical infrastructure informs minimum base load. For example parts of defense grid, AC when disabling it would kill people, medical systems, certain lighting, running and monitoring the power plants, certain kind of industrial cooling, mining safety equipment like air and gas pumps, certain sluices in regions with flooding. More or less anything that if turned off would or could immediately cause a catastrophe.

Amortized base load adds some other things that just cannot be off for long or you incur huge restart or lack of function costs. Examples would be microchip manufacturing, water treatment, key mass transportation, oil pumping and drilling.

A lot of amortized base loads are on week scale rather than day, so they tend to be reasonably solar friendly, but less wind friendly.

What you're saying is: rolling blackouts are totally fine because no one will die if they sit in the dark for a few hours.

BTW, turning a lot stuff off and then turning it back on strains the grid immensely.

It's 20% of the cost not 20% less.

Matching solar and wind power with storage or peakers is still cheaper.

You're assuming this much storage exists.

And I'd love to see all the calculations that include the need to overbuild, the need for storage etc.

No, I'm assuming it can be built because the unit economics work better.

Back in 2013 I remember people used to constantly trash solar and wind because it was 1-2% of the grid anywhere, max, while nuclear power was often 10-30% (or 70% in France). We're at that same point with storage.

Since then we've had a decline in nuclear power due to the high cost and enormous growth in renewables due to it being 5x cheaper.

Unit economics prevailed with solar and wind and theyll prevail with storage. solar + wind + 8 hours storage is not just the cheapest way to get to a 98% carbon free grid it's also the fastest.

Gas is still the cheapest "battery" by far though, which is why so many countries use it as baseload and peaking. Pumped storage, batteries and syngas combined only make renewables a cheaper baseload/peaker than nuclear power.

> Since then we've had a decline in nuclear power and enormous growth in renewables.

The only reason we've had decline in nuclear is politics. That's why now Germany is busy burning coal and importing electricity.

> Unit economics prevailed before and theyll prevail again.

Wishful thinking is no substitute for reality. Where are the calculations? That include both the need to ridiculously overbuild renewables and the need for the so-far-nonexistent grid scale storage?

Germany is burning less coal than it used to 10 years ago.

Somehow this fact is not only relatively unknown, most people seem to have been led to believe that the exact opposite is true.

Nuclear propaganda has always had a bit of a reality problem.

> Nuclear propaganda has always had a bit of a reality problem.

Propaganda cuts both ways. For example, you completely ignore the reality that the sun doesn't shine at night ad that the wind doesn't alway blow. So Germany shut down its nuclear plants an now is burning coal to compensate.

Someone literally advocates for rolling blackouts in a sibling thread because renewable generation is intermittent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35675328

This is a good comment describing the current situation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35660884

This whole article illustrates a huge benefit of solar over nuclear: if you deploy 90% of the required solar panels, you get 90% of the energy, while if you build 90% of a nuclear plant, you get nothing. The power of incremental deployment.

> you deploy 90% of the required solar panels, you get 90% of the energy

No. You get 0% to 90% of energy.

E.g., right now in Germany solar is at 22% of its capacity. Wind is at 11%

On average you get 30% of capacity.

But, a solar plant with a nameplate capacity of 1GW is roughly 15-17x cheaper than a 1GW nuclear plant and starts chipping away at gas and coal usage almost straight away, not in 15-20 years.

> On average you get 30% of capacity.

Average means nothing when the output is zero (at night).

> a solar plant with a nameplate capacity of 1GW is roughly 15-17x cheaper than a 1GW nuclear plant

And produces zero electricity at night.

Just a random idea: given the nature of Cuban society would neighbourhood or house level batteries be viable? Enough to store your electricity needs for (say) two or three days. So you can smooth out the day/night wind/calm cycles to some extent?

Tangential: given the state of the structures in the OA is it really possible this facility can be completed without effectively rebuilding it?

> given the nature of Cuban society would neighbourhood or house level batteries be viable?

Possibly maybe?

You need 10kW per household per day with generous electricity consumption [1] Retail prices for 10kW batteries seem to be in the range of $5k to infinity.

At scale this will be cheaper, but then the question then becomes the same: availability at this scale

[1] https://solaremporium.com.au/blog/how-long-will-a-10kw-batte...

What's with this widespread confusion between kW and kWh, especially from supposed experts in solar power...

This plan for Hawaii is probably roughly in the same ballpark:

https://www.wartsila.com/energy/towards-100-renewable-energy...

That is a "model" tat is very handwavy about a lot of things.

36% battery power capable of sustaining Hawaii for 11 hours. 4% is "flexible gas" from "carbon-neutral synthetic fuels" that will be produced using "excess renewable energy", etc.

No numbers except "flexible solution is 68% cheaper than just overbuilding renewables". "All technology options have been priced at their expected costs at year 2030."

These are not calculations. These are marketing materials for Wärtsilä

Edit:

There are some interesting things though. For example, if you click on solar, they show that you need 3.4x installed solar capacity compared to peak load. And (emphaisis mine): "Because the sun is only shining for part of the day, solar panels can on average over the whole day produce energy at maximum of around 25% of their installed capacity"

I know xkcd thinks we should celebrate the 10,000 people learning something new each day, but I wish people would hold back from having strong opinions on renewables if facts like the sun not shining at night are blowing their minds.

> if facts like the sun not shining at night are blowing their minds.

If that was a jab at me it's misdirected. In the comment you originally replied to I literally talk about overbuilding.

And yet very few if any renewables proponents talk about the absolute requirement to overbuild, and the cost.

Oh they absolutely do. "did you know you need to overbuild?" is well up there with "did you know the sun doesnt shine at night?"

A solar farm with a nameplate capacity of 1 GW is about 5% of the cost of a 1GW nuclear plant. The need for overbuilding pushes the price up to roughly 20% of the cost.

Adding all the necessary storage to provide peaking can push it all the way up to ~80% of the cost of a nuclear power station.

Storage is kind of a moot point anyway these days. Most grids don't even have enough nameplate capacity to supply 100% of demand for even 1 day a year. With a few exceptions every GWh produced at any time by any solar panel or turbine - is just a GWh of gas that can be burned some other day.

> "did you know you need to overbuild?" is well up there with "did you know the sun doesnt shine at night?"

Of course it isn't. Almost none of the renewal proponents take those costs into account.

> A solar farm with a nameplate capacity of 1 GW is about 5% of the cost of a 1GW nuclear plant. The need for overbuilding pushes the price up to roughly 20% of the cost.

Are you sure you added all the requirements to the picture?

E.g. Two weeks ago there was a quiet night in Germany. Solar was at 0%. Wind was at 5%. You'd need to overbuild wind 400% just to compensate for some of the power needed then.

> Adding all the necessary storage to provide peaking can push it all the way up to ~80% of the cost of a nuclear power station.

Ah yes. The magical non-existent storage.

> Storage is kind of a moot point anyway these days. Most grids don't even have enough nameplate capacity to supply 100% of demand for even 1 day a year.

Funny how storage is moot, so Germany is burning coal during the night to compensate for solar, and for wind on quite nights, because they shut down their nuclear power plants.

I linked you to a comprehensive study that explicitly discussed overbuild and storage to meet both diurnal and seasonal variation, for 147 regions around the globe.

There are many interesting take aways from that, but the one you quoted, and added your own emphasis to, is that solar has a 25% capacity factor.

> Because the sun is only shining for part of the day, solar panels can on average over the whole day produce energy at maximum of around 25% of their installed capacity"

Why did you find this interesting if you are aware that the sun doesn't shine constantly all day and night?

> There are many interesting take aways from that, but the one you quoted, and added your own emphasis to, is that solar has a 25% capacity factor.

Yes, I did. So?

> Why did you find this interesting if you are aware that the sun doesn't shine constantly all day and night?

Whatever you're trying to ascribe to me exists only in your imagination.

Let me quote my comment again:

" And I'd love to see all the calculations [for the cost] that include the need to overbuild, the need for storage etc."

Yes. You linked the study. It does quote the need to overbuild solar by a factor of 3.4. What's the cost?

The US still invests heavily in defense, which props up STEM. I agree it was nicer when the goal was space though.

I'm not sure how military spending props up STEM exactly, but I do often hear people say that military spending is good for science because so many research advances have come from the military.

But if you look at how much the US spends on military versus the scientific progress coming from the military (e.g. DARPA stuff), the yield is actually surprisingly low. At the very least we can probably agree that it's not a very efficient way to fund research.

It's nice that pure mathematics is funded, but it should not be funded by the army.

https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2020/12/the_lie_of_its_...

My pet theory: the MIC buys goodwill and scares academics to criticize the MIC.

"nicer"?!

On the other hand, the USSR is no more, which is a plus. But yes, I too, can have nostalgia for some aspects of USSR - US duopoly.

The competition is back, with China this time.

The USSR held back a huge part of the world. The Baltics, the whole of Eastern Europe, East Germany, all suffered immensely under their influence, and are still feeling the consequences.

The USSR created ruthless regimes all over the world, some of which are still standing: Cuba, North Korea. Even after the partial collapse of that Empire, Russia degraded to openly being a terrorist state, sending Wagnerites all over the world, attacking its neighbours, destroying marvels of technology like An-225, bringing nuclear power plants to jeopardy.

From the perspective of this Eastern European, the collapse of the USSR was a huge improvement for the world. I can only hope the collapse continues.

I'm not a fan of the world being lead by the US, I'd prefer it very much if the EU could take that role, but even so, the US-lead world is infinitely better than the one where the USSR has any influence.

Putin is the chosen successor of Yeltsin, who was backed by the USA. I wouldn't pin the current state of Russia on the USSR - the Orthodox Church, etc. have far more influence.

Your point is definitely true for the psuedo-occupied countries like Romania, Poland, the DDR, etc. though. My point wasn't to defend the USSR but that we need competition to drive progress.

For example now the EU has almost none of its own industry - Concorde failed, ARM was sold (and the UK left), there is no equivalent to Big Tech. There is almost no competition (literally the only major examples I can think of are AirBus and Volvo/VW/Renault, and then some industrial ones like ASML and Nordvolt).

China poses more competition because it's chosen to actively protect its own developing industries. So they do have Baidu, WeChat, Bytedance, Huawei, Xiaomi, etc.

I'm also not sure about an EU-led world - the EU isn't even democratic in its current form (the Commission makes most of the decisions, and there are no EU-wide elections). I think it's best if we don't have any leading nation at all but true competition.

It's the Council that takes most of the decisions, and it's made up of the leaders of the national governments. They don't want it to be different, as that would mean giving up national power. The Commission is rather toothless in comparison, they can only carry out existing policy.

> the EU has almost none of its own industry

This is just wrong.

> there are no EU-wide elections

This is also wrong.

>Yeltsin, who was backed by the USA

Russian victimhood is so tiring. You forget the part where they blame Bill Clinton for causing child prostitution in 1990s Russia.

The "US caused 1990s Russian chaos" narrative is based on an 1996 IMF loan and Yeltsin hiring American political marketers for his 1996 reelection campaign. But by 1996 Russia was already in utter chaos.

In 1996 Russia asked for a peanut $10 billion IMF loan and the US (being the biggest IMF contributor) were among the countries that approved the loan. Yeltsin was also impressed by big US-style political campaigns that he hired American political marketers.

I fail to see how either of that means the US backed Yeltsin or that the US caused the 1990s chaos in Russia.

Not exactly caused, but the voucher privatisation was under western influence.

However, the stage was set for total chaos already in the 80s when the komsomol money laundering loophole opened.

It feels like USSR / Russia took so many bad turns in the late 80s early 90s.

You can’t blame western yuppies for creating chaos when you explicitly import them to administer “shock therapy”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization_in_Russia

It’s sad how many people have forgotten what the USSR was and how it subjugated and terrorised millions (even some Hungarians amazingly). Especially so when people defend Russia now saying the USSR shouldn’t have been dismantled. Why not? They were ruling people by force not consent.

They're still ruling by force not consent. Unrest in the "ethnic" Russian federation states has been on the rise since late last year when Russia exposed her weakness in Ukraine. Countries that previously leaned towards Moscow are now distancing themselves and asserting their independence. Even Kazakhstan is now openly bypassing Russian oil and diversifying its foreign relations. The younger generation see Russia as a colonizer and are pushing for a Kazakh ethnic identity.

This latest invasion is the push these groups needed to finally throw off their yoke.

> The once-great Buran space shuttles lie derelict in Kazakhstan and Russia (not even in a museum!).

Buran was developed under the impression that the Shuttle would have a primarily military use, to place weapons in orbit, and so was made for a similar sort of imagined mission.

The Shuttle just didn't get used the way the US hoped to use it at the start, and ended up wasting a lot of resources and money. It made a lot of sense to cancel Buran then.

But yes, the remains of the program could have used better treatment. One of the models was used as a roof for a bicycle rental at a public park in Moscow. So at least you could see that very easily.

https://i0.wp.com/www.travelsinorbit.com/wp-content/uploads/...

> Investment in nuclear power has collapsed as projects like this show (and Germany's recent decision to shut down all nuclear power plants).

Investment in nuclear made a lot of sense back when countries wanted lots of nuclear missiles. As far as peaceful applications go, nuclear just doesn't compete on price. I think the tech is very cool, but nobody is going to spend tens of billions just for the sake of cool.

East vs West Germany seems to offer something akin to a natural experiment that suggests this view is largely incorrect.

> Hopefully it will be finished one day.

It won't. Decay, updated power plant designs, and changing component availability would make completing it more expensive than starting afresh.

Paraphrased:

"I tried to bride the guard. But he refused. Probably because he'd already received a better bribe or was stealing. It only occurred to me later the possibility he might be honest. For a fleeting second, the thought crossed mg mind that I might be the criminal - but I shrugged it off and jumped over the fence and trespassed in."

This attitude is slathered with contempt and superiority. Its also quite common among travelers. We act aghast when our "tourists" are arrested and sentenced to decades of jail or execution for drugs or taking pictures of sensitive installations.

Good riddance! If you're unwilling to do the time obey the local laws or stay in your country!

Yeah what the hell. F*k that guy.

Similar thing happened in Argentina: started to construct a nuclear power plant, stopped construction for 10 years. But it was eventually finished: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atucha_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Atu...

PS: Isn't it illegal for Americans to bribe people abroad? Why is this guy openly admitting to it?

I wonder if it’s only illegal for corporations to pay bribes but not individuals

I paid a bribe to get my cat out of quarantine in Nigeria when I lived in Lagos years ago. Nobody's coming after me for that.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes bribery a crime for business-related reasons.

>Specifically, the anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA prohibit the willful use of the mails or any means of instrumentality of interstate commerce corruptly in furtherance of any offer, payment, promise to pay, or authorization of the payment of money or anything of value to any person, while knowing that all or a portion of such money or thing of value will be offered, given or promised, directly or indirectly, to a foreign official to influence the foreign official in his or her official capacity, induce the foreign official to do or omit to do an act in violation of his or her lawful duty, or to secure any improper advantage in order to assist in obtaining or retaining business for or with, or directing business to, any person.

That's one sentence. Good job DoJ!

https://www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/foreign-corrupt-pract...

That's a mouthful of a sentence. Wikipedia's summary is a bit more direct.

> The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 is a United States federal law that prohibits U.S. citizens and entities from bribing foreign government officials to benefit their business interests.

So if your cat is the star performer of your cat circus show business, you could have technically broken the law :p

It's not really a business interest though.

If the government is holding the gear for your show in customs, and is going to hold it for 3 months, but with a payment it can be released next week and your show can happen and you make a lot of money from ticket sales, that sounds very much like a business interest, and thus a bribe according to the FCPA. That the "gear" is a live cat in my ludicrous example seems immaterial of it's a bribe or not.

Umm yeah but in this case they just wanted to take a few pics for curiosity's sake. It doesn't look like the site they published them on even makes them money, there's no ads.

I didn't claim their cat was a business expense, but presented a scenario where it could be considered one. I don't see what their site has to do with my hypothetical.

The most interesting part is some bribes are not bribes by law. They call it facilitation payment! In legal terms there is nothing bad in paying corrupted employee of some government office to do his work. Imagine you had all papers correct for your cat, but they anyway would not release your cat from quarantine, without any reason. Then your facilitation payment is not a bribe.

> Criminal violations of the FCPA (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) anti-bribery provisions must be enforced within five years of the last act required to complete the crime or violation. Criminal violations of the books and records and internal controls provisions have a six-year statute of limitations.

https://complianceconcourse.willkie.com/resources/anti-bribe...

how convenient /s

Not everyone is American. The author is British: https://lithub.com/author/darmonrichter/, https://www.forbes.com/sites/annabel/2019/05/31/finding-beau...

Completely finished, everything was ready, even the protective clothing and all employee contracts, fuel rods on standby, just never switched on due to popular vote (political miscalculation).

"The most expensive museum in the world".

Let's hope this one never gets completed. This is ancient tech the world no longer needs. Assuming that it can't be converted into a modern nuclear plant, that is.

Perhaps the US could donate them some solar technology to help them make the right decision?

Cuba's unfinished power plant is the least of their problems. At this point, Cuba's problems are so big that they seem insurmountable.

To see what I mean, imagine that tomorrow the Communist Party is dissolved, a new democratic constitution is installed, and following that, the country elects a true parliament and a new executive. Is it hard to believe that all of that will ever happen? Yes, it is very unlikely. But that would be but the very beginning of what is needed.

The next step would be for US to lift sanctions against Cuba. Legislation needs to be passed for that, and said legislation would be against the interests of people who used to have properties in Cuba before 1959.

Nationalized properties are not the only litigation targets over anything Cuban, because the government from 1959 to the date took a lot of loans that didn't repay. The international legal system would find ways to ask for that money back to any future government, corporation, or individual living in the island, which in turn would make the cost of living or doing business in Cuba extremely high, even in the absence of the Communist Party.

Yeah, but if you speak to Cubans they really think it become Miami overnight if they get rid of the Communist Party.

Whereas the reality is probably much closer to Haiti.

It'd be best if there were a steady transition of ending the blockade, allowing markets in non-natural monopoly industries and services (in practice this largely exists already), multi-party democracy without persecution. Cuba has pretty great education in comparison to similar nations and a relatively large population, so I think there's a lot of opportunities.

I can understand why they're so defensive though, the USA has openly admitted to dozens of assassination attempts on the Castro family, etc. - literally no different from Russia poisoning Yushchenko.

> Nationalized properties are not the only litigation targets over anything Cuban, because the government from 1959 to the date took a lot of loans that didn't repay. The international legal system would find ways to ask for that money back to any future government, corporation, or individual living in the island

That would indeed turn it into Haiti, just as Haiti was made to pay for expropriated property (human beings): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti_indemnity_controversy

If the world, or more specifically the US, wants a free and democratic Cuba, it's going to have to agree to a blank slate and not try to take back the pound of flesh. "Come back to the international order, we'll impoverish you for generations" is not a tempting offer.

It sounds like all of these problems are completely invented by people who are not Cubans?

I don't think such massive political change must happen overnight. A country needs time to learn to deal with democracy. See what happened to Russia for example. It was only a true democracy for a year or two until Jeltsin's coup.

And the Cuban regime doesn't seem so bad anymore. They have the second-most doctors per capita in the world (the first is one of the rich oil countries, I forget which). Good education too.

I don't know why the US is still sanctioning them so heavily. Other than 'communism bad'. They do seem to be looking after their people. And they haven't been a nuclear threat since the Cuba crisis.

Without the sanctions they'd have a much easier time and could transition to a democracy much more gracefully. Take a 10 year timeframe for example to transition instead of doing this big bang.

Such a danger and progress ! ...

Bataan Nuclear Power Plant in the Philippines was completed in 1984 but never turned on, but fingers crossed it still might get a chance -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Clean-energy push puts abandoned Philippine nuclear plant back in spotlight - https://www.bworldonline.com/bataan-nuclear-power-plant-the-...

"The latest offer to rehabilitate the BNPP stands at $1.19 billion, put forward in 2017 by South Korea. In January 2023, the U.S. also revealed that it is in talks to assist the Philippines in its transition to nuclear energy."

> > Minimum wage in Cuba runs at around $8 a month. Of course, the socialist nature of the country means that this isn’t quite as bad as it sounds – with free healthcare and education, along with state housing, and food rations [...]

What an awful propaganda piece.

The guy was using it to explain why the guard took the bribe so easily. This is the opposite of propaganda.

But he didn't take it.

> and food rations that will almost keep hunger from the door

Do you seriously think that's propaganda?

I know. I have access to "free" healthcare, "free" schooling, had contact with food rations, communism, so I actually know.

Just don't tell me that THAT wasn't real communism, because it felt real to me.

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