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Comment by olddustytrail | Hacker News Reader

And who exactly are going to be paying for these ruinously expensive nuclear power stations for the poorer countries? Is it you and rayiner? Or perhaps you want your government to fund it through increased taxes on you?

I'm sure you wouldn't want the poor countries to pay for it themselves.

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The point is that if everyone in the developed world had built more nuclear in the 1960s like France did, we wouldn’t be in such a dire situation now.

France’s CO2 emissions per capita are right around the world average. That means the rest of the developed world had done the same way as France half a century ago, we would have room to bring the whole developing world up to the same level as France while still being at the same overall CO2 output as today. And we wouldn’t have had all that extra CO2 for 60 years, giving us much more runway for the developed world to go to net zero while the developing world continues to develop.

Whenever this line of reasoning is brought up, i ask one question - what is the cost of climate change? Who will bear that cost and who will deal with the effects?

A poor country deriving energy from a nuclear power plant means that carbon isn’t being emitted for energy production over the lifetime of that nuclear plant.

Despite all the hype, no renewable technology has been able to supply a growing electrical demand anywhere in the world. Every example is small, isolated or limited in time. Renewables will eventually get there but there are countless other things we must solve before that day comes.

Meanwhile, the argument of cost is trotted out without ever considering the full impacts of climate change on the flip side.

Complete failure to answer the question of who is paying for the nuclear power plant.

Both mine and rayiner's commentary wasn't focused only on nuclear, but rather the harebrained and unrealistic doomscape narrative coming out of the West. When did it become so unpopular to point out what is most likely to happen? Because if we're placing bets, I'm gonna put my money on the developing nations not giving a flying F about emissions. Therefore, we need to think like realists and instead of idealists.

If you want to be realistic, the more realistic option is for rich nations to fund green infrastructure projects in poorer countries. It is much easier and cheaper and likelier to succeed than every nation with a GDP lower than Connecticut developing a nuclear program on their own, or for carbon sequestration to become viable.

And alas, climate relief fund—or rather a loss and damage fund—is already a thing. Approved in the last COP and already ratified by the EU. (I know, it is much weaker than real climate relief, but proves it is possible). with some European countries already with some programs in place for paying climate relief in foreign countries.

If you want to be a realist, you should commit to it, and apply it equally.

> If you want to be realistic, the more realistic option is for rich nations to fund green infrastructure projects in poorer countries.

It's not realistic at all for developed countries to bankroll green infrastructure in the developed world at a scale that allows those developing countries to continue 6-8% GDP growth annually.

So you want your government to subsidize nuclear energy in other countries?

IF we don't choose to build the expensive ones we'll never learn how to make cheaper ones, it is the cycle of every technology. Nuke development in the West has been stymied for generations by pearl clutchers.

> ruinously expensive You just disqualified yourself from any argument there. Nuclear power is the cheapest and most efficient form that we have ever found. Yes, the upfront cost may be huge but loans can help with that

You really have no idea of costs. Nuclear is by far the most expensive. Well, ok, gas became equally expensive with the Ukraine war but it had to quadruple in price to get there.

If nuclear was more expensive China wouldn’t be building it. It’s stupid western regulations that make nuclear expensive.

China builds it because they are putting government money towards it, rather than allowing private companies to build infrastructure that can make themselves a profit.

Now, I do understand why China works that way, and I also get why Western companies can use this to funnel taxpayer money to their friends, but I don't get why someone like you would support either of these ideas?

If you ignore all the costs, yes, the costs are low.

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