Comment by graycat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by graycat | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Something doesn't match here!

First,

> The Japanese and Germans are not known for their wildly emotional thinking

Okay. But the French, uh, sorry, but IMHO, the French are "known for their wildly emotional thinking", e.g., French music, painting, cooking, ballet, wines, architecture, perfume, women's fashions?

Second, it's the French who have done especially well with nuclear power!

Doesn't match!

How? Why? How could that be?

Uh, a guess: From the old French kings to Napoleon and DeGaulle, the French have had, have put up with, relatively strong, maybe autocratic, governments.

So, the difference might be that the French have autocratic governments. Uh, right, Japan and Germany have had governments that were even more autocratic, that is, until the end of WWII. Since then, maybe France has been the more autocratic.

So, why might autocracy help in being successful with nuclear power and, in the US, our democracy has fumbled, dropped, tripped over, kicked, fell over the ball?

Obvious suspicion: The US has had (A) too many politicians, lawyers, and news journalists causing trouble just because they like causing trouble and (B) too little strong leadership, e.g., autocracies, able to make the decisions mostly via the science and engineering to get the real work done without being blocked, attacked, misled, dragged around, kicked, etc. by (A).

Just a guess, guys!

The evidence is sitting there: Emotional France has done well. Rational Japan and Germany, not so good. US, with plenty of science and engineering smarts, fell over the ball, might have been cheaper to generate the energy just by burning dollar bills in a coal plant! WHY??? Got a better explanation?

It has nothing to do with the US. I disagree entirely with your suspicion, it's closer to a conspiracy theory than reality.

With regards to the German and Japanese response to Fukushima. It happened to Japan, that explains their emotional response quite easily. Germany could afford to be skittish and shut down nuclear, although with a price to pay for less energy security in the short-term. Not enough of the German economy was powered by nuclear for it to be a terminal threat to their economy.

France can't afford to consider shutting down 70% of their energy generation any time soon. There's a lot less room for emotional debate there. Sure some people can get upset about it, doesn't matter, they're not closing down their economy. The French are not stupid, they're often practical when it's time to be practical; they're fully aware their economy rides on nuclear.

The issue in article was about being successful BUILDING nuke plants, not "shutting down" the plants: Bluntly, France built lots of plants and Japan and Germany didn't. And as in the Georgia example, the US has had trouble BUILDING.

So, the issue I addressed was WHY for the building or not building, nothing about shutting down.

Sooo, the lack of fit was that emotional France built lots of plants and rational Germany and Japan didn't -- in addition, the US, awash in science and engineering smarts, has been slow to build the plants and, in the Georgia example, spent way too much money and took way too long, dropped the ball.

My explanation was -- France had a government with more power, closer to an autocracy. Explanation in one word, autocracy. Why claim that France can be autocratic? DeGaulle ... Napoleon, Kings.

Soooo, if an autocracy had an advantage, why??? It's common, a usual thing: Any major project needs some strong defenses or will get picked on, picked nearly to death, by attackers. Where are the attackers? Easily, politicians, lawyers, and journalists -- on average, attacking is a big part of their jobs. This need for defense against these three sources of attackers holds for essentially any large project of any kind. One source of the defense -- autocracy.

Is this more clear???

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351839/age-of-nuclear-p...

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

Note that the age of reactors is calculated based on the date they were completed, not on the date that construction began.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com