Meloni's push to revive nuclear power runs into Italy's old ghosts | Hacker News Reader

Meloni's push to revive nuclear power runs into Italy's old ghosts

politico.eu

4 pointsleonidasrup9 comments

The real ghost here is a technology from the XX Century that some, like Politico and, I imagine, their corporate backers, would like to bring back to life.

The article says "Sweden, Finland and the U.K. are expanding or extending nuclear programs". AFAIK, 'new' nuclear energy facilities in Finland and the UK were planned a long time ago, and have been delivered late and terribly over budget.

Shutting down nuclear plants now is unwise, but building new ones is folly. In Italy, new plants would be ready by 2040 (my guess) the earliest. We need to move away from fossil fuels NOW, and solar + wind + batteries is the way to do it.

'new' nuclear energy facilities in UAE, South Korea and China have been delivered on time and on budget. It really depends on stability of political support and maturity of the supply chain, as hinted in the article "“One of the first reactors would more likely take 12 to 15 years,” Romano said."

The problem with "We need to move away from fossil fuels NOW" is, that the world is currently not moving in this direction, as you can see from the annual CO2 emissions statistics.

https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2025/co2-em...

We need all the low-carbon technologies and nuclear power is a long term low-carbon technology.

Wind is growing and solar in growing incredibly fast, and they are growing NOW.

Demand is also growing, but I doubt the solution is to bet on something that will be ready 15 years from now, when either solar and batteries will have solved the problem, or we’re going to be in serious trouble.

Even China is betting on solar (and batteries) much more than on nuclear.

Solar is growing 2x faster than wind.

https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix

China is betting on everything: solar, wind, hydro, coal, nuclear.

China is building the most solar, most wind, has build the biggest hydro power plants, is building most coal power plants, is building most nuclear power plants.

I agree that China is betting on solar (and batteries) much more than on nuclear, on the other hand China is currently betting more on coal than nuclear. Decarbonization is not high priority for China, the priority is producing cost effective energy from domestic sources, be it domestic coal, solar, hydro, wind.

https://www.iea.org/countries/china/energy-mix

Do you have any idea about how to store, or discharge, surplus solar, or how impactful wind turbines have been for local people without them getting anything back but losing agricultural land (Look at Sardinia and Apulia)? You make it sound easy, but none of what you said is reliable enough. Nuclear must be there as a baseline, at least for industrial purposes.

Germany doesn't need it and Italy does?

Germany will still rely on coal for at least the next four years[0], and they are even pondering about opening more plants [1]. I have my reasons to be cautious on fully relying on renewables.

[0] https://www.iea.org/countries/germany [1] https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-considers-ramping-up...

Germany plans until 2032, to reserve between 1,3% - 3% of total surface for wind and solar production.

https://www.fachagentur-wind-solar.de/veroeffentlichungen/in...

The biggest difference between Germany and Italy is that Germany, because of it's much better financial situation, can pay for the in long term more expensive electricity generation (overbuild solar,wind,batteries and backup fossil power plants, massive grid upgrades).

Germany can overpay by investing in less expensive technology. Interesting.

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