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Comment by nivenkos | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

>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

> the EU has almost none of its own industry

This is just wrong.

> there are no EU-wide elections

This is also wrong.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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

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.

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?

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.

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.

> 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.

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

The competition is back, with China this time.

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