Utopia Talk / Politics / Marcel Boiteux

Seb Member	Mon Sep 11 03:56:54 http://twi...?t=gUEk45SUJ6Rf-kp5idVXHg&s=19
Seb Member	Mon Sep 11 04:04:05 And for those wondering why we just can't do that again - note the bit about ruthless discarding of fancy designs for tried and tested shovel ready design by Westinghouse. There aren't such designs available atm. Older ones can't be easily built from old design (supply chain to meet 60 year old specifications not there) - you'd need to redesign. Newer ones are unproven, difficult to build and operate. Pressure vessels for the French fleet: http://twi...?t=xzqtX8Vjm3TzftDCB26aLw&s=19 Pressure vessels for EPR https://www.world-nuclear- news.org/uploadedImages/wnn/Images/Olkiluoto%203%20vessel%20head%20installation%20460%20(Areva).jpg
murder Member	Mon Sep 11 15:43:01 Now again for those of us who don't xitter.
Rugian Member	Mon Sep 11 16:33:50 "supply chain to meet 60 year old specifications not there" So...why not just restore the supply chain? It's not like the original supply chain was some naturally-occuring phenomena that was unique to the mid-20th century...it had to be consciously established by design. Why can that not be repeated?
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Sep 12 03:30:50 Rugian Because there is little political will and plenty of political sabotage. Seb is another brick in that wall, where he comically argues against the strawman of reviving 60 old designs and supply chains, rather than initiate the same process that produced those designs and supply chains 60 years ago. We can't build the pyramids again, the supply chain is long gone, nobody knows how to cut stones like that again! Hence, mega projects can't be done. Framatome and Westinghouse are both building, where are the orders? Where is the western/EU cooperation with a long term vision for scaling up a stable electricity production? Oh right everyone is off reinventing that wheel on their own, fighting over taxonomy definitions and trying to hold back the Germans from blood letting everyone else, as they have done to themselves. If we don't want it, you can't have it! In other news: Green peace recently sued the EU for including nuclear in their taxonomy.
Seb Member	Tue Sep 12 03:46:38 Rugian: Because that's like one those historical re-enactments when you insist on rebuilding a medieval castle using only authentic tools and materials. It also wouldn't perform the same economically. Back then they used this type of piping because the material has X properties and you could buy them cheaply. Now that's no longer available. You could say up a production line to make a special run, but that would be really expensive. It's easier to just design a new one using modern materials and components. Basically it's better to redesign the reactor based on what's available today.
Seb Member	Tue Sep 12 03:49:22 Which they could and should do. The problem is Nim is a reductionist thinker so he equates the hideously overcomplicated really quite shit ultra high pressure reactors that the industry is offering today to fit the needs of today's market and thinks they ought to perform comedically like the French reactors because they both involve fission. When confronted with industrial reality he decides to deny and wish it away by invoking mysterious bad men, enemies of progress, servants of the dark lord etc.
Seb Member	Tue Sep 12 03:51:40 "Framatome and Westinghouse" are building enormous, finickety white elephants to cater to a market of customers that are looking at one or two nuclear plants over a 50 year period and aren't interested in buying a standardised fleet.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Tue Sep 12 04:14:54 The conclusion is that, nobody is actually serious about electrification or global warming. We can keep burning coal and oil.
jergul large member	Tue Sep 12 08:44:49 And what is available today can be sourced from either Russia or China. Both are arguably rolling out enough NPRs to maintain mass production capability (a total of 28 reactors are currently under construction in those two countries alone. They also have projects abroad). So, some countries are serious about nuclear power. Small, supplemental nuclear power plants to serve relatively isolated industrial communities (say like Kiruna or Hammerfest) are likely the only realistic way of setting up NPR production lines. But that would be back to Russia again. It has a civilian maritime nuclear power plant tradition it is leveraging. Military modules are not economically viable due to design characteristics.
jergul large member	Tue Sep 12 10:06:19 I think we will just have to jot it down to one of the side effects of deglobalization as the market fragments into spheres. We could import Chinese or Russian components, plans and specialists, but waah security and Ukraine. On the bright side, climate is a global issue, so it does matter that at least NPPs are rolling out somewhere.
Seb Member	Tue Sep 12 15:04:30 Jergul: China doesn't have capacity to expand unless you are going to have a vid order book, so you would go to bank of the queue and you'd need to bring in their workforce. And if you have the order book you don't need China. Russia, you wouldn't want to trust anything coming from Russia. ITER has had massive problems with the Russian components not being up to spec. If the US or EU/club of European nations were willing to basically rip up the idea of market system for electricity and commit to state financing it would be doable.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu Sep 14 02:29:22 I'm sure there are free market ways to do it, but national-private cooperation is how Sweden did it. And once up and running, the last reactors took 5 years to build. Energy infrastructure is such a basic and critical component of civilization, it is of national security concern, a fully privatized system probably isn't going to work, at least not everywhere. At any rate we are facing a Foundation level crisis regarding energy, even if we start breaking ground today, it will plague us for years to come. We need to be preparing things and stuff and apparently not everyone is even saying the right words or thinking the right thoughts. And it's not Small vs Big, it's nuclear vs non-nuclear.
jergul large member	Thu Sep 14 03:33:05 Nimi Deindustrialization also works. It is one way of going nuclear. Germany deindustrializes somewhat. China sells more stuff abroad while increasing the nuclear fraction of its energy production. Win!
Seb Member	Thu Sep 14 04:46:38 Nim: 10:1 the national private cooperation involved the state formally taking the financing and operating risk. The last few reactors appear to be the Westinghouse3 loop PWR that the French used - the earlier ones home brew BWRs. I would just say "yeah, simple designs from the 70's 80's designed with a view to mass production, rather than attempting to maximise operating efficiency". The issue with nuclear scale out is heavily based on the fact that companies have designed for this - and plant operators in free market countries are not looking to build 10-20 of these. And state programmes have adopted a rather hands off approach: guarantees but not direct financing, and an "even handed" approach (we will help get X nuclear plants built, but we will not pick winners on operators or designs). You need something that recognises that nuclear power needs industrial sustainability (a steady build rate with reducing build and operation costs from learning) that in turn needs an aggregated demand and standardisation of that demand. A modern version of the smaller, less technically efficient PWRs isn't attractive to an operator looking to build one or two plants - so not a sensible pitch for nuclear industry to offer.
Seb Member	Thu Sep 14 04:56:45 Basically, what we need, is a strategic commitment to nationalise provision of baseload supplies. You might franchise out operation of the plant to various companies, but essentially the state should say "we are going to buy X number of these plants using state borrowing, we are going to licence the design so we can pick who builds it and we can also iterate on it slowly over time, and we are going to oversee delivery of these plants ourelves" and ideally you would want the lifetime of plants to be such that there is not a big gap between the end of life of the first plant and the end of the construction phase of the last plant.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu Sep 14 04:57:08 Seb "You need something that recognises that nuclear power needs industrial sustainability" Yea it's called electrification, transition etc. global warming and stuff. If we needed something to motivate a large scale, international direction to head in, to build reactors for the coming 60 years, it's already there. Nobody seems to care though. AKA How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love CO2.
Seb Member	Thu Sep 14 04:58:35 Any whinging about the greens absent those is beside the point. The economics and commercials don't work and guarantee the dysfunction you see today in new build programmes.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu Sep 14 05:02:15 There are so many examples though, of countries reaching the opposite conclusion. Korea, China, UAE, and most recently Japan. So no, the greens are a unique problem to the west and Europe specifically. Part of the same wok imbecile movement, oh look, is completely absent the countries mentioned above. Shocking!
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu Sep 14 05:09:30 You can die on this hill where nuclear power isn't a major political and social issue, which is rightly should be, given that critical and hazardous nature of the project, but it is inherently so. Hence why you have Japanese politicians eating "radioactive" fish. Gotta respect that :) It is a pain issue also, the constituency can, potentially, be are scared into nuclear (high energy costs) as quickly as they are scared out of it. Sweden has felt the pain now, so the winds have shifted and the greens have been sidelined. Germany, well Germany loves pain, it is their national hobby to inflict massive amounts of hurt on themselves, like twice every century. Say around 2039, the next German disaster will be unleashed.
Seb Member	Thu Sep 14 05:40:23 Korea - literally a national backed programme predominantly focused on a single design OPR-1000 and an iteration APR-1400. China - literally a state backed scheme UAE - literally a national backed programme with a single design reactor iterated on the Korean design The pattern ought to be really clear here: Where you have full state backing, pick a single design reactor that is an iteration then you get success. Where you fuck around trying to build one or two reactors - you get fucked. And yes, if you have a core order book over a certain scale, then you can start exporting to a few other countries too.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu Sep 14 05:45:35 You have to take that up with someone, who thought, or thinks that national programmes are a bad thing. Someone who literally just didn't make a principle argument for why it should be viewed as a national concern. Just that I disagree it is an investment issue *when viewed from a corporate lens*. Corporations don't view things in 10-20 years, let alone 60-80 or a 100 years which is probably what the technical lifespan of reactors can be. Yet those are and should be the pace of civilizations' concerns.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Thu Sep 14 06:00:59 There are certain projects that need to be built and they need to have a very long payback time. Or maybe none at all, we have a military, not because they turn a profit, but because we need security. Energy is is even more important than physical security, not to get too philosophical about it, but it's absolutely in the same neighborhood. Too important you could say, to be left to the free market. Not so much if everything was running on carbons, very very suitable for the free market. High turnover, low capital costs etc. Things have changed, or rather, not changed on the nuclear front. Every successful nuclear programme is the result of government interference. Sweden and France included.
Seb Member	Thu Sep 14 12:18:46 Nim: *sigh* You keep waffling utter rubbish about how it is the greens, regulation and planning laws stopping new nuclear power plants being built. In reality it is because we mostly leave it to private enterprise which results in crap attempts to piecemeal mini fleet of overly complicated reactors. Every time I point his out Nim, you keep making this stupid straw man statements like "Seb is another brick in that wall, where he comically argues against the strawman of reviving 60 old designs and supply chains". Private enterprise is never going to build a nuclear industry - and the issue there isn't greens and regulation. It is the lack of a determined, national programme to do so. Everywhere there isa determined national programme, it happens. Every where that is lacking, we get failure.
Seb Member	Thu Sep 14 12:20:10 And where you have no national programme, you have no nuclear industry, no natural constituency with a vested interest in nuclear power - and so nobody countering anti-nuclear propaganda. But the cause and effect is the reverse of what you think it is.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Sep 16 05:15:24 "about how it is the greens, regulation and planning laws stopping new nuclear power plants being built." Green and the voters affected by fear mongering and lack of basic technical judgment or logical thinking. Regulation and policy lives down stream of that. Because it is. "In reality it is because we mostly leave it to private enterprise" That would be completely wrong, you can go read the list of western countries who currently have or had until recently, regulatory bans on nuclear power. Read about the German sabotage and attempts to stop EU money to go towards nuclear. All these things have been pointed out to you, you just rambling the same repetitive nonsense. "Private enterprise is never going to build a nuclear industry" Complete non-sequitur as I mentioned the regulatory situation, a lot of potential countries that could fuel a nuclear industry in the west, have POLICY AND REGULATION AGAINST BUILDING NUCLEAR. Additionally, you know have you lost the plot, when you bring up "private free market actors", when I have twice in the thread said that national program will do and is actually preferable. "It is the lack of a determined, national programme to do so." Bla bla bla. National policy and regulation against nuclear power. Largest economy in the EU ideological against nuclear and uses their massive heft to tip the scale against it and usage of EU funds towards it. But do keep bla bla bla.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Sep 16 05:29:42 It's amazing but seb does not understand how democracy works. Or the consequences of laws and regulations. He does not understand the causal chain from the 80 and 90 when dozens of western nation, phase out, ban and severely limit and try to slowly bleed to death their nuclear infrastructure (many of them leading industrial nations with high capability on the nuclear front), led to diminishing the western nuclear industry. Thus allowing midwits like him, today, to point out the obvious first hurdle, "it's all gone!" as some kind of paralyzing unassailable hurdle. Yet, at the same time, not understand how we got there in the first place. Activism, accidents, and uneducated voters that are easy to scare. That is a tried and test formula for complex issues being dumbed down, resulting in dumb policy with far reaching consequences, across decades.
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Sat Sep 16 05:30:37 80's and 90's*
Seb Member	Sun Sep 17 07:38:23 Nim: "Because it is." It's nonsense. Aside from outright bans on nuclear power (which we can come to in a second), the regulatory and environmental frameworks are not meaningfully different between countries that have sucessfully built lots of power plants quickly and those that have struggled. The main differences are those that succeed do it by the state directly aggregating the demand for reactors one way or another, the state picking a standardised fleet, and the state providing access to cheap finance. As to "bans" which are not an example of the supposed "difficult planning and excessive regulation delaying projects" - they are an entirely different thing - straight up prohibition on nuclear power. It is very very easy to ban something when nobody in the private sector is interested in building them, and there is only a very small and dwindling workforce of employees associated with the jobs. This has been gone over a million fucking times with you but you seem to be unable to grasp the concept, and instead go "ah. see, part of the green alliance, why do you hate growth" bullshit. Nim, you are just too stupid to understand the complexities of industrial policy.
Seb Member	Sun Sep 17 07:42:16 Basically, if you want nuclear power, you need to look at building a whole industry, not a power plant or two. And that means abandoning the economic consensus of free markets for a planned economy when it comes to electricity. And that is the principle barrier here. And because until that happens, it is a niche industry full of delays and failures, which means it is easy for the greens to get their preferred policies because generally, nobody cares to oppose them. If it hadn't been for Russia demonstrating why gas dependency on them is stupid; the nuclear shut down in germany would look like a bad, but not catastrophic decision. Sure, a bunch of wasted capex that could have provided energy, but there was no serious proposals or desire to replace the existing fleet: even if that would have been a good idea.
Seb Member	Sun Sep 17 07:42:18
Seb Member	Sun Sep 17 07:43:11 And in fact, if someone had come along and said "hey, lets have the state effectively nationalise baseload electricity supply" it would have been huge opposition from all existing players in the power market.
	show deleted posts

Your Name:
Your Password:
Your Message: