1,774 karma · joined March 10, 2026
So small were the amounts of early produced plutonium, than new methods to study it had to be used.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ultramicrochemist...
Of course we have now military plutonium production reactors.
In term of decarbonization of electricity production and independence of imported fuel for electricity production, it got less then France for comparable amount of money.
But this is quite clear as the first and foremost goal of German Energiewende was denuclearization of German electricity production, not decarbonization of electricity production.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321765366_How_expen...
From point of view of an electrical grid operator only wind/solar+fossil are alternative to nuclear, if you want to maintain stable electric grid without blackout or rolling blackouts.
" Plutonium (specifically, plutonium-238) was first produced, isolated, and then chemically identified between December 1940 and February 1941 by Glenn T. Seaborg, Edwin McMillan, Emilio Segrè, Joseph W. Kennedy, and Arthur Wahl by deuteron bombardment of uranium in the 60-inch (150 cm) cyclotron at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Discovery
There are interesting designs for Subcritical reactors. A nuclear fission reactor operating without achieving criticality, but with additional neutrons from a particle accelerator.
https://www.whalebattery.com/blog-detail/lead-acid-vs-lithiu...
Cost per kWh per year:
lead-acid batteries: $100 per kWh per year
LFP batteries: $50 per kWh per year
https://www.justplugsolar.com/blog/lithium-vs-lead-acid-batt...
US is outsourcing recycling of Lead acids to Africa.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/11/18/world/africa/...
" President Barack Obama used his State of the Union speech to underscore the role of natural gas in transitioning to a lower-carbon nation, the White House indicated tonight.
According to a White House briefing document issued in conjunction with the speech, Obama’s agenda for natural gas includes a call for Congress to work with the administration to create new “Sustainable Shale Gas Growth Zones” to help “regions come together to make sure shale gas is developed in a safe, responsible way that helps build diverse and resilient regional economies that can withstand boom-and-bust cycles and can be leaders in building and deploying clean energy technologies.”
"
https://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-now/2014/01/obama-to...
" SQLite is built using a DO-178B-inspired process. The testing standards for SQLite are among the highest for commercial software.
SQLite is open-source but it is not open-contribution. All the code in SQLite is written by a small team of experts. The project does not accept "pull requests" or patches from anonymous passers-by on the internet. "
" Our analysis suggests that the recent investments in AI-related categories have contributed significantly to the real GDP growth in 2025. It has surpassed the contribution of IT components to the real GDP growth made during the dot-com boom, both in levels and as a share of GDP. As firms continue integrating AI into their operations and building the infrastructure required to support it, these categories are likely to remain significant drivers of investment well into 2026 and beyond. "
https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2026/jan/tracking-...
" Gas covered a little more than a quarter of Germany’s primary energy use in 2025, making it the country’s second most important energy source. Germany is among the world’s biggest natural gas importers – around 95 percent of its gas consumption is met by imports, according to energy research data group AGEB. "
" Energy industry association BDEW said that Norway has now become Germany’s top gas supplier by far, with about 45 percent in 2025, transported by pipeline. Around one tenth of the gas used in the country arrives as liquefied natural gas (LNG) directly at one of four import terminals along the coast. In 2025, around 95 percent of that LNG came from the US. "
European countries are trading gas between them, we have to look into whole European imports. For example Germany is import lot of US gas through Belgium.
" Russia has continued to supply a sizeable portion of gas imports, although the EU has decided to fully phase them out by 2027. Most natural gas in a gaseous state was imported from Norway (52%), Algeria (20%), Russia (10%), and the UK (8%) in 2025. LNG came from the US (55%), Russia (14%), Qatar (9%), and Algeria (6%). "
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germany-eu-remain...
Cory Doctorow wrote a book exactly about this business practices, "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It."
"Once the platform is fundamentally focused on the shareholders, and the users and vendors are locked in, the platform no longer has any incentive to maintain quality. Enshittified platforms that act as intermediaries can act as both a monopoly on services and a monopsony on customers, as high switching costs prevent either from leaving even when alternatives technically exist."
" De Gaulle asked asked Kennedy: “Would you trade New York for Paris?” His point was that if he wasn't convinced, would the Russians be? So it's not just about numbers of warheads. It's about the defensive posture overall. "
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2025/03/nuclear-deterre...
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1962/08/de-gaul...
Try to present the idea of "degrowth", to China, India, Indonesia, Brazil. They all on path of growth.
I agree that France, should be paying more to Françafrique countries, but raw uranium cost is only 50% of the finished nuclear reactor fuel. And nuclear reactor fuel is 5% to 10% of the operating costs of a nuclear power plant.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec...
Heinrich Böll Foundation and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, both funded from Germany, published many documents criticizing uranium mining in Africa:
" Addressing uranium-producing countries in particular, whom it seems to want to stop or at least reduce their activities, the report also focuses on the health hazards associated with extraction and the neo-colonial aspect of exploiting the resource. Particularly virulent regarding France, which is the subject of three articles and cited in several others, the Atlas targets head-on Paris's relationship with one of its main suppliers: Niger.
The Atlas likens the uranium mining model to a vestige of Françafrique and accuses the French government of enriching itself on Niger's behalf while orchestrating an ecological, human and social catastrophe in the country. The French company Orano - formerly Areva - which mines and produces uranium in Niger for French power plants, is a particular target."
https://www.docdroid.net/y7NENZB/comment-lallemagne-finance-...
https://www.ege.fr/sites/ege.fr/files/media_files/German_Int...
" The four low-level waste facilities in the U.S. are Barnwell, South Carolina; Richland, Washington; Clive, Utah; and as of June 2013, Andrews County, Texas. "
Is the customer 10, 50 or 500 km from the power plant?
Do I need to build a second backup power plant for each installed primary power plant, 100% backup capacity? Or 40%, or 20% backup capacity?
Costs of pumped hydro/battery energy storage.
What are the costs of CO2 emission? Europe 80 Euro per tCO₂, China/India 8, US zero.
UK Eighth Allocation Round are from 20 July to 7 August 2026, Offshore wind £113 /MWh, Onshore wind (>5 MW) £92/MWh
UK Government also awarded a CfD to Hinkley Point C nuclear power station, set at £92.50/MWh for a 35 year period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contracts_for_Difference_(UK_e...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katharinabuchholz/2026/02/27/ch...
The share of primary energy in China in 2025 was: coal 56% , oil 20.8%, gas 9.8%, nuclear 3.2%, hydro 3%, solar 2.6%, wind 2.5%
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-primary-energy-b...
But there is one positive change. 2025 was the first year in history of China when solar energy production increased more then increase in coal, gas or oil energy production.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-primary-ene...
The biggest radiation dose to the population was not from breathing air filled with radio-nuclides, but from drinking locally produced milk and eating milk products and leafy vegetables. In the first days after explosion Iodine-131, with half-life 8 days, is the biggest source of radiation dose.
Had the Soviets informed the population not to eat local milk, leafy vegetables for 3 months, the health impact would be much smaller (also distribution of Potassium Iodide would help). In case of Fukushima accident, health protection was implemented.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-131
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission_product#Iodine
So nuclear radiation impact from Fukushima is minimal in the total loss of life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an...
https://theconversation.com/peaceful-sweden-once-sought-nucl...
Sweden is currently using almost none natural gas for electricity production. How could the replace the current 25% of nuclear electricity? wind+natural gas? New hydro dams?
It was a political decision and in the end a very costly one: much bigger burning of coal then necessary, new gas power plants, increased dependence on foreign energy imports.
Steel is taken apart and measured, non-activated steel can be melted down and recycled. Activated steel has to go into storage, either low level nuclear or medium level nuclear waste.
The biggest concern for steel is cobalt. During manufacturing steel with very low cobalt content is usually used for nuclear applications, but there is still small amount of cobalt.
In reactor, under neutron radiation, stable cobalt-59 changes to cobalt-60, strong gamma ray emitter with a half-life of 5 years. So neutron activated steel has to storage for at least few decades.
When done not properly, this is a health hazard.
" Circa 1983, construction was finished of 1700 apartments in Taiwan which were built with steel contaminated with cobalt-60. About 10,000 people occupied these buildings during a 9–20 year period. On average, these people unknowingly received a radiation dose of 0.4 Sv. Some studies have found that this large group did not suffer a higher incidence of cancer mortality, as the linear no-threshold model would predict, but suffered a lower cancer mortality than the general Taiwan public. These observations support the radiation hormesis model, however other studies have found health impacts that confound the results. "
https://www.edf.fr/en/the-edf-group/producing-a-climate-frie...
The German nuclear phaseout, had as side effect a national security issue, increased dependence on Russian natural gas.
A typical third-party liability insurance cap for large hydroelectric dams ranges from $50 million to $100 million per occurrence, with major facilities stacking excess liability layers well beyond that.
Dam failures can cause very large costs. The 2015 Fundão tailings dam breach:
" On 25 October 2024, mining companies BHP and Vale signed an agreement with the Brazilian government to pay nearly US$30 billion in compensation over the Mariana Dam collapse. The terms include $18 billion in funding for public authorities and $5.6 billion in additional compensation, resettlement, and environment restoration. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_dam_disaster#Governmen...
1975 Banqiao Dam failure, Deaths 26,000–240,000. Property damage: 62 dams collapsed, more than 5 million houses collapsed, 10.75 million people affected
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
For sabotage in Europe, I would be much more worry about security of hydro dams, chemical facilities and water supply. They are much more weakly protected then nuclear power plants.
https://www.nrc.gov/regulations-legislation/fact-sheets-broc...
" I own a few companies which means I'd be hit by the German exit tax. "
We don't know how many companies does he own.
We can look into exit tax rate, in different countries:
Germany: effective tax rate of up to roughly 28.5%
Japan: CGT rate is 20.315%
Israel: Standard CGT rate is 25%
Austria: Standard CGT rate is 27.5%
" I am so glad I resisted pressure from Intel engineers to let /dev/random rely only on the RDRAND instruction. To quote from the article below:
"By this year, the Sigint Enabling Project had found ways inside some of the encryption chips that scramble information for businesses and governments, either by working with chipmakers to insert back doors...."
Relying solely on the hardware random number generator which is using an implementation sealed inside a chip which is impossible to audit is a BAD idea. "
https://web.archive.org/web/20180611180213/https://plus.goog...
Putting a backdoor into CSPRNG is a favored way to break crypto, for example Dual_EC_DRBG.
"
Weaknesses in the cryptographic security of the algorithm were known and publicly criticised well before the algorithm became part of a formal standard endorsed by the ANSI, ISO, and formerly by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). One of the weaknesses publicly identified was the potential of the algorithm to harbour a cryptographic backdoor advantageous to those who know about it—the United States government's National Security Agency (NSA)—and no one else. In 2013, The New York Times reported that documents in their possession but never released to the public "appear to confirm" that the backdoor was real, and had been deliberately inserted by the NSA as part of its Bullrun decryption program. In December 2013, a Reuters news article alleged that in 2004, before NIST standardized Dual_EC_DRBG, NSA paid RSA Security $10 million in a secret deal to use Dual_EC_DRBG as the default in the RSA BSAFE cryptography library, which resulted in RSA Security becoming the most important distributor of the insecure algorithm. RSA responded that they "categorically deny" that they had ever knowingly colluded with the NSA to adopt an algorithm that was known to be flawed, but also stated, "We have never kept this relationship [with the NSA] a secret and in fact have openly publicized it."
"
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-mix?tab=line&...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-mix?tab=line&...
What I'm worried is that people don't understand the energy priorities of China, they are first and foremost: energy independence and cheap plentiful energy. Any decarbonization efforts are pursued only if they are not conflict with the first goal. This is very different from the goals of many European governments of phasing out nuclear energy, fossil energy, even when it causes dependence on energy imports and high energy prices (high when comparing with China, US).
When comparing growth of low-carbon energy in China, France. In 15 years (2010-2015) China's share of energy from low-carbon sources changes from 4% to 12 %. In France (1976 - 1991) from 5% to 38%.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-mix?tab=line&time=...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-mix?tab=line&time=...
The biggest difference between China and France is: China has plentiful coal reserves and mines a lot of coal, France has only small coal reserves and had to import lot of coal.
"Despite its wealth, France has never been self-sufficient in coal, and even at the peak of production in the 1960s, it always imported foreign coal (from Belgium, the UK, Germany, the Soviet Union, Poland, etc.)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_France
I'm perfectly aware that we (we as the whole humanity) are turning our planet to hell with our CO2 emission, but Asian countries is not following the path of European countries of decreasing energy production and Asian countries are building renewables not to replace fossil energy production, but to add to fossil energy production.
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Germany/coal_production/
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/France/coal_production/
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/india/coal_production/