The majority of Belgium’s electricity comes from nuclear, wind and solar. They have been greatly expanding wind parks in the north sea, and they’re in the early stages of deploying SMRs. But the reality is that Belgium still needs a lot of natural gas for electricity production and its large chemical industry, and that all of this gas has to be imported.
Long term there is the European hydrogen strategy which aims to convert a lot of the current natural gas storage and transportation grid to hydrogen and use that in places that currently use LNG, but this requires inventing new technologies so is not a quick fix.
This is not necessarily true for all situations. Northern Europe is planning to produce a lot of electricity with offshore wind, but laying deep sea high voltage electricity cables isn’t cheap. There’s already a lot of gas pipelines that can be retrofitted for hydrogen transport at a much lower price. At a certain point it becomes viable to just use electrolysis and transport hydrogen using excess wind power instead of transporting the electricity to land and storing it in batteries.
There are also industries like steel production that are just not going to transition to electricity. Hydrogen has a place there too.
The real problem are transport and heating. In most countries, those consume significantly more primary energy than the electricity sector and are still mostly fossil fueled. For example, more than half of the primary energy consumed in France is oil and gas. Heat pumps and electric vehicles or trains can now finally change this, but the transition is very slow.
You have to look at useful energy vs. primary energy. An ICE is 10-30% thermally efficient. Then you have all the energy wasted on getting the fuel into the tank.
For ground transport this is already solved by BEVs and rail. For ferries running fixed routes batteries also already solve it.
What we have left is aviation and longer maritime shipping. They will likely need chemical fuels for the foreseeable future, but to get to them we need to start with the easier applications first and develop the technology.
In China there is already small-scale nuclear district heating.
"China's Haiyang nuclear power plant in Shandong province has begun its sixth heating season, covering an area of nearly 13 million square metres - 500,000 square metres more than last year."
In Switzerland both Beznau and Gösgen nuclear power plant produce district heating in addition to power. Beznau makes available 80 MW of heat to industry and homes over a 130 km network serving 11 towns
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...
In Slovakia since 1987, Slovak power utility Slovenské Elektrárne (SE) has been producing heat for Trnava, Leopoldov, Hlohovec and the municipality of Jaslovské Bohunice from the Jaslovské Bohunice NPP. This plant produced 429 GWh of heat in 2023. The high ten-kilometre hot water pipe between the Jaslovské Bohunice power plant and the Trnava heating plant began construction in 1983 and was put into operation at the end of 1987. Heat project for Mochovce NPP is also planed.
Google "Messmer Plan". France built 65 reactors in 15 years as a reaction to the 70s oil crisis, and now the majority of electricity in France comes from nuclear without any significant dependency on fossil fuels. The only thing that we're lacking is political will to change things.
The French energy sector is more than 50% fossil [1]. If France decarbonizes over the next decades, it will be due to renewables, not nuclear. While the government and population have been extremely pro-nuclear for a long time, the economics just don't work out. The current plan is to barely build enough reactors to replace old ones going off-line over the next decades.
That seems to be mostly because of oil use which is coming from transportation. Electrical generation is dominated by nuclear and renewables. Electrification of transport will help, provided they don't generate the additional electricity needed by burning gas or coal...
That's why I used the word electricity and not energy. It isn't perfect, but still much better than the majority if the world and even Europe. The fact that even the French themselves cannot replicate it anymore speaks volumes about the weakness of the current political system. As a counter example, the Chinese can and do.
In 2024, China produced 8 times more electricity from renewables that from nuclear [1], and the renewable share is growing much more quickly. Nuclear is as dead in China as it is elsewhere in the world.
China has a huge advantage over the majority of Europe: abundance of mostly empty land with a lot of sunlight, it's unrealistic in places like Norther Europe. But I'm not talking about nuclear alone, it was the best answer in the 70s and 80s, nowadays we need a healthy mix of nuclear, solar and wind. But above everything else we need a government willing to make significant changes and make them fast.
Chinese population is concentrated in the East. The Western half of the country is pretty much empty. Lots of sunny semi-desertic/desertic areas, too so they do have a lot of actually empty land well suited for solar (China is more to the South compared to Europe: Beijing is about same latitude as Madrid...) and wind.
Yep. Once people experience true hardship like having to keep their house just above freezing in the winter due to the cost of energy - all of a sudden impossible things become quite possible.
The only potential issue here would be if the west had collectively hollowed out its manufacturing base so much as to make surging capacity and capability a generational thing vs. immediate.
Coasting on past success eventually brings stagnation and pain. Hopefully the pain isn’t too horrible for normal folks this time around.
And now Flamanville 3 is 7x over budget and 14 years late. Online but not commercially operational.
Their EPR2 fleet are getting an enormously large subsidy at 11 cents kWh CFD for 40 years and interest free loans. Sum freely. With the first reactor online in 2038 of everything goes to plan.
How many trillions in subsidies should we handout to new built nuclear power to ”try for real”?
Or we can just build renewables and storage which is the cheapest energy source in human history.
6-7 years. France built 40 its nuclear reactors in a decade, at 6-7 years per reactor.
Right now China is building reactors at 6-7 years per reactor.
--- start quote ---
Nearly every Chinese nuclear project that has entered service since 2010 has achieved construction in 7 years or less.
Every single conventional commercial-scale reactor project in Chinese history has achieved completion in under a decade
Since the start of 2022, China has completed an additional five domestic reactor builds, with their completion times ranging from just under five years to just over 7 years. This continues the consistent completion record of Chinese projects even despite potential disruptions from the intervening COVID-19 pandemic.
China successfully constructed six nuclear reactors in Pakistan in around 5.5-6 years each
> Right now China is building reactors at 6-7 years per reactor.
Thats China. In Europe, this building speed isnt going to happen anytime soon. The knowledge to build nuclear at that scale isn't in the coutry/continent anymore. You'd have to reteach an entire generation of engineers.
Besides that, part of the point of switching away from oil and gas is at least some independence. Europe isnt known for its nuclear fuel supply so now you're reliant on another country again.
Yes, most solar is produced in China but its about as low maintence as it gets and there is still enough knowledge to produce in Europe.
You are right to point out the astonishing developments in Chinese nuclear reactors technology most people are totally oblivious of. It has been standardized, is seemingly safe and far more efficient due to Chinese technological advancements; however you may be overlooking that the ability, the capacity to do that, to do what France did by installing 56 nuclear reactors due to the last oil shock, takes an industrial capacity that does not seem to really exist anymore in Europe to the same degree. I won’t even get into why that is, because it would simply turn into a book, but suffice to say, it’s a euphemistic, polite “challenge”, so to say.
But people also forget that it still takes nuclear fuel to do any of that, which France/Europe has now also largely lost access to, due to the Niger situation along with cutting itself off from Russia/BRICS. That will at some point become an issue for France/Europe, which the “remilitarizing” EU may even make one of its first contrived America-style military adventures to “protect democracy” or some other manipulative, emotive, contrived lie by the lying Epstein, Mandelson, Brunel Class.
Fun fact: Germany blew up its nuclear energy capacity with voted approval by the current EU Commission President von der Leyen, while she was in the German government ruling coalition … she has described that her own action as a “strategic mistake”. That is who is basically the dictator of Europe, someone who makes self-described “strategic mistakes” of the highest order, multi-generational, rippling, echoing, de facto permanently consequential mistakes.
Green energy is super useful for heating in winter. At this point heat pumps are better than gas in almost every way unless the temperature is well below freezing. So it's just a matter of electricity which Italy and Belgium can get from the current mix of green energy (wind and even solar) and other forms (nuclear, coal, etc...)
Then buy it from the US at a higher price? The same US that helps Israel in occupation and genocide in Palestine and in attacking sovereign countries all around?
"It's not that you refrain from doing something because it will offend Russia. If Russia is doing something that we don't want it to do, we should offend them."[0]
And that's coming from a man who said a few minutes earlier:
"There is one of the factor here that we seem to be forgetting, and we did, though it was not a legally binding assurance, we gave categorical assurances to Gorbachev, back when the Soviet Union existed, that if a United Germany was able to stay in NATO, NATO would not be moved eastward. ... It is not a legally binding, but it was, you might say, a geopolitical deal."[1]
But later on it was a repeating speaking point that it's not Russia's business if NATO decides to expand.
And should I mention the US "midwifing" the coup in Ukraine in 2014? [2]
> "It's not that you refrain from doing something because it will offend Russia. If Russia is doing something that we don't want it to do, we should offend them."[0]
Has Russia ever refrained from offending the West when it suited their interests?
> And should I mention the US "midwifing" the coup in Ukraine in 2014? [2]
It takes some really stupid arrogance to say shit like this when Ukraine literally had Russian stooge as a president at the time, installed via fossil fuel extortion. If Russia wanted truly neutral Ukraine, they should've backed the fuck off in the first place.
>Has Russia ever refrained from offending the West
Of course. Like abstaining in a UN SC vote, allowing NATO bomb Libya.
>Russian stooge as a president at the time, installed via fossil fuel extortion
Nope, Yanukovich was elected by Ukrainian people.[0] Previous pro-Western president received only 6% of votes in the first round.
>If Russia wanted truly neutral Ukraine, they should've backed the fuck off in the first place.
Enlighten me, how backing off when the US supports pro-Western coup in the Ukraine would've resulted in "truly neutral Ukraine"? And please mind your language
> Of course. Like abstaining in a UN SC vote, allowing NATO bomb Libya.
The generosity!
> Nope, Yanukovich was elected by Ukrainian people.[0]
Tell me more of those exciting stories. From your link:
>> After all ballots were counted, the Ukrainian Central Election Commission declared that Yanukovych won the election with 48.95% of the vote compared with 45.47% for Tymoshenko.
> Previous pro-Western president received only 6% of votes in the first round.
After the guy was poisoned, disfigured beyond repair all while fighting smear campaigns calling him beekeeper.
You should've linked [0] when you talk about Yushchenko, comrade.
> Enlighten me, how backing off when the US supports pro-Western coup in the Ukraine would've resulted in "truly neutral Ukraine"? And please mind your language
Quid pro quo, it's a really tough principle for Russian to understand, because they're only used to extortion.
> And please mind your language
Your attempt at patronizing is as pathetic as Russian military takeover of Ukraine.
I don’t understand where the arrogance comes in here. I see underhandedness and realpolitik, but those don’t arrogance make.
(I’ll also note that it seems very weird to use a pinky promise that the US made with a country that no longer exists as some kind of “gotcha.” You presumably don’t factor the Austro-Hungarian empire’s commitments into your geopolitics.)
2. Before 2014 almost no one in Ukraine wanted to join NATO. After 2014 almost everyone wanted to join NATO. After 2022 Sweden and Finland ran to NATO.
> it's not Russia's business if NATO decides to expand.
Countries bordering Russia literally run to NATO the moment they have a choice. I wonder why. It couldn't be Russia who's to blame, could it?
> And should I mention the US "midwifing" the coup in Ukraine in 2014?
Just like Russia is midwifing crises and elections actoss Europe and countries like Georgia and Azerbaijan? Aurely this calls for immediate invasion and hundreds of thousands of deaths.
>Before 2014 almost no one in Ukraine wanted to join NATO. After 2014 almost everyone wanted to join NATO.
Pro-Western Ukrainian president submitted request to join NATO in 2008 and the NATO response was positive.
And your statement is false, before 2014 there was significant minority that favored joining NATO and after 2014 the percentage grew but was very far from "almost everyone"
>It couldn't be Russia who's to blame, could it?
That's typical response. Now please tell me why the security concerns of these countries has to be respected and Russia's security concerns don't?
>Just like Russia is midwifing crises and elections actoss Europe and countries like Georgia and Azerbaijan
Russia has never supported any coups in Europe or in Georgia and Azerbaijan.
> Pro-Western Ukrainian president submitted request to join NATO in 2008 and the NATO response was positive.
I wonder where it came from [0][1].
> That's typical response. Now please tell me why the security concerns of these countries has to be respected and Russia's security concerns don't?
World superpower (according to Russians themselves) has security concerns about checks notes Ukraine, Baltics, Georgia, Poland, Finland. Seems about right, judging by how war in Ukraine goes.
> Russia has never supported any coups in Europe or in Georgia and Azerbaijan.
The arrogance of ignoring repeated Russian requests to stop NATO expansion and Ukraine integration into NATO, and of not stopping (well documented) US political meddling in Ukraine. This went on for many years- Mearsheimer was able to predict the war ten years in advance. The US and Europe ignored all this- the US maybe because it really stood to gain from a war, Europe because it thought it was beneath itself to seriously engage with Russia.
NATO is a defensive pact, it can't expand. Countries can and want to join it willingly.
> and of not stopping (well documented) US political meddling in Ukraine
Assuming that's true, and it's a big if, let's turn this around: Russia has been messing with Ukraine politics since the collapse of the USSR. Why shouldn't US be allowed to?
> Europe because it thought it was beneath itself to seriously engage with Russia.
Beneath itself like, checks notes, making its industry completely dependent on Russian energy exports and pretty much not doing anything when Russia attacked Georgia, occupied Crimea and attacked east of Ukraine. If Europe had a backbone and considered Russia *beneath* them, it would completely kill any trade with it.
It's up to the current members to decide who can join and who can't. That should also include considerations of opportunity.
> Russia has been messing with Ukraine politics since the collapse of the USSR. Why shouldn't US be allowed to?
The US is allowed to do whatever its military and economic power allows it to. Then actions have consequences. The consequences had been stated clearly.
> pretty much not doing anything when Russia attacked Georgia, occupied Crimea
Here, check the history of sanctions of the EU to Russia. It goes back to 2014.
> It's up to the current members to decide who can join and who can't. That should also include considerations of opportunity.
And as history showed, they did the right choice. Or war in Ukraine would be war in Ukraine + Baltics + Romania.
> The US is allowed to do whatever its military and economic power allows it to. Then actions have consequences. The consequences had been stated clearly.
So US is messing with Ukraine, which Russia doesn't like, therefore Russia attacks Ukraine, because it can't compete using its whip with the Wests cookie. Logic checks out.
> Here, check the history of sanctions of the EU to Russia. It goes back to 2014.
So pretty much ignored Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008. The only sanctions Russia understands is boots on the ground and rockets (now drones) attacking their military and refineries.
> Here, check the history of sanctions of the EU to Russia. It goes back to 2014.m
Oh no. The totally ordinary year of 2014 when nothing happened, and sanctions on Russia suddenly appeared for no reason at all.
Prior to that there was hardly a single thing the West was doing to, or against, Russia. Moreover, there were multiple "restarts", "reboots", "second chances" etc. that Russia repeatedly shat on.
NATO is a military alliance, the only ones who get a say about who is in it and who isn't are its current members. That said, of course choices have consequences, and some choices are more advisable/ appropriate than others.
I’m pretty confident that a large part of NATO (and all other military alliances) is the accession of new members. Candidate members have to want to accede, which goes back to my question: why are we talking about what the US and Russia want, when Ukraine’s wants are just as if not more important?
Look, the point is not what one wants. Everyone is free to make its own choices. The point is that choices have consequences, and when the consequences are very clear in advance and you still make that choice, you also take responsibility for the consequences. This attitude that "this is my will and I will pursue it, and I don't care about how others feel about it (because anyway I'm stronger)" is called arrogance.
The point appears to be changing. And again: it’s not clear why we’re talking about the US or NATO as primary drivers when Ukraine is a sovereign state that can litigate its affairs as it pleases. If you want to claim that the US meddles in Ukraine’s affairs that seems defensible, but no less defensible than the claim that Russia also meddles in their affairs (including kinetically, at the moment).
Edit: I’ll also note that arrogance usually means something closer to “discounting the consequences of your actions,” which is not evidenced here.
> This attitude that "this is my will and I will pursue it, and I don't care about how others feel about it (because anyway I'm stronger)" is called arrogance.
Mearsheimer was predicting Putin wouldn't do a full scale invasion of Ukraine right up until shortly after he already did , so strange choice of Cassandra to pick.
It’s never dawned on you that the lying, cheating, manipulative, murderous Epstein class government just may have lied to you? They may lie to you every day, telling you e.g., that there’s just absolutely no money for proper care of its own citizens’ fundamental needs, but then immediately approve 10X that amount to squander and personally profit from murder and military spending … but you think those people are just the most honest people that never ever lie about what happened/history???
You seem not to know what a rant is. Two questions that make you uncomfortable because they challenge your dogmatic beliefs is not it though. You are very disappointing.
The problem is, russia wants to see Europe subjugated, conquered, its lapdog ripe for governance from russia to have everything stolen by few oligarchs around that clown puttin'.
This is russian modus operandi everywhere, they don't know any better, they never knew. This comes from somebody who grew up behind iron curtain, a country effectively enslaved by russians, forcibly having massive russian military bases and atomic weapons, to be a nuclear battlefield that 3rd world war was supposed to be.
You can't have a fair dealings with them, not when they sense any kind of weakness. Former german leaders showed conjsistently such weakness and desperate appeasing, dragged rest of EU with them and look where it led to. Also, russia as a state is waging 20+ years of asymetric warfare against whole west, but especially focusing subverting EU structures.
I wish we could have normal relationships with them, we really tried in Europe, but they are fucked up as a nation, without any hope in this century for any sort of radical change.
I agree US is right now just a bully and arrogant aggressive a-hole, sowing chaos all around the world and poorest suffer the most. But there are not that many options - fucked up US with no clear leadership change (once trump's support goes to single digits I will restore some of my faith in that nation, not sooner), russia is simply the bad guy globally, consistently, and gulf states are not so reliable as we see. What remains - Venezuela, Nigeria maybe? No good choices, maybe due to resource curse but then again ie Norway managed such free treasure just fine.
AFAIK, 1970s energy crisis pushed Europeans to invent efficient small cars so let's hope this crisis pushes EU into completely abandoning fossils in favor of electricity generated by local means like nuclear, solar, hydro, wind etc. Even if the war doesn't go long enough, the contrast between Spain and Italy in energy security is stark enough to make a point.
Maybe Trump is playing 4D chess after all, pushing Europe into independence so US can spend its energy on China :)
800 lbs. gorilla: for energy generation uses (so excluding petrochem processes explicitly requiring petroleum feedstock without any closely practical substitute(s)), the goal of decarbonization is essential not just for climate change reasons.
Europe has plenty of shale gas but refuses to exploit it. Nuclear was stopped or even dismantled. There is such a lack of strategic thinking that at some point the only logical conclusion is that we like to suffer and to lose.
> Or that our political and media class are captured...
Yes, obviously that's the case, however it goes beyond that. I still vividly remember how in high school they taught us persistently how bad nuclear power is for the environment. And TBH for a very long time, I actually believed it. A lot of people in Germany never stopped believing it. At this point we have to admit to ourselves that the "Green"'s are a political ideology with good slogans, but ultimately contrary to their own messaging it is: pro-war, anti-worker, anti-independence, and generally just a basket to capture anti-empire sentiment to redirect them towards supporting it.
Hope this will be a wake up call for the countries to double down on green/nuclear energy instead of sucking Russian/Middle Eastern tit.
The majority of Belgium’s electricity comes from nuclear, wind and solar. They have been greatly expanding wind parks in the north sea, and they’re in the early stages of deploying SMRs. But the reality is that Belgium still needs a lot of natural gas for electricity production and its large chemical industry, and that all of this gas has to be imported.
Long term there is the European hydrogen strategy which aims to convert a lot of the current natural gas storage and transportation grid to hydrogen and use that in places that currently use LNG, but this requires inventing new technologies so is not a quick fix.
The long term European hydrogen strategy aims to waste a while bunch of time and money on a dead end technology.
This is not necessarily true for all situations. Northern Europe is planning to produce a lot of electricity with offshore wind, but laying deep sea high voltage electricity cables isn’t cheap. There’s already a lot of gas pipelines that can be retrofitted for hydrogen transport at a much lower price. At a certain point it becomes viable to just use electrolysis and transport hydrogen using excess wind power instead of transporting the electricity to land and storing it in batteries.
There are also industries like steel production that are just not going to transition to electricity. Hydrogen has a place there too.
The real problem are transport and heating. In most countries, those consume significantly more primary energy than the electricity sector and are still mostly fossil fueled. For example, more than half of the primary energy consumed in France is oil and gas. Heat pumps and electric vehicles or trains can now finally change this, but the transition is very slow.
You have to look at useful energy vs. primary energy. An ICE is 10-30% thermally efficient. Then you have all the energy wasted on getting the fuel into the tank.
For ground transport this is already solved by BEVs and rail. For ferries running fixed routes batteries also already solve it.
What we have left is aviation and longer maritime shipping. They will likely need chemical fuels for the foreseeable future, but to get to them we need to start with the easier applications first and develop the technology.
What about heating?
In China there is already small-scale nuclear district heating.
"China's Haiyang nuclear power plant in Shandong province has begun its sixth heating season, covering an area of nearly 13 million square metres - 500,000 square metres more than last year."
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/chinas-first-com...
Similar plans exist for Finnland. https://thinkatom.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/rauli-parta...
In Switzerland both Beznau and Gösgen nuclear power plant produce district heating in addition to power. Beznau makes available 80 MW of heat to industry and homes over a 130 km network serving 11 towns https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...
In Slovakia since 1987, Slovak power utility Slovenské Elektrárne (SE) has been producing heat for Trnava, Leopoldov, Hlohovec and the municipality of Jaslovské Bohunice from the Jaslovské Bohunice NPP. This plant produced 429 GWh of heat in 2023. The high ten-kilometre hot water pipe between the Jaslovské Bohunice power plant and the Trnava heating plant began construction in 1983 and was put into operation at the end of 1987. Heat project for Mochovce NPP is also planed.
https://www.neimagazine.com/news/mochovce-npp-heat-project-u...
There are many plans and ideas for advanced uses of nuclear heat for industrial applications.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-nucl...
Europe could produce plenty of gas but refuses to. Let's not forget that.
Nuclear takes like 15 years to build, it's being worked on but it won't be much more relevant soon.
Green energy isn't very useful for heating in winter.
Google "Messmer Plan". France built 65 reactors in 15 years as a reaction to the 70s oil crisis, and now the majority of electricity in France comes from nuclear without any significant dependency on fossil fuels. The only thing that we're lacking is political will to change things.
The French energy sector is more than 50% fossil [1]. If France decarbonizes over the next decades, it will be due to renewables, not nuclear. While the government and population have been extremely pro-nuclear for a long time, the economics just don't work out. The current plan is to barely build enough reactors to replace old ones going off-line over the next decades.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France
That seems to be mostly because of oil use which is coming from transportation. Electrical generation is dominated by nuclear and renewables. Electrification of transport will help, provided they don't generate the additional electricity needed by burning gas or coal...
That's why I used the word electricity and not energy. It isn't perfect, but still much better than the majority if the world and even Europe. The fact that even the French themselves cannot replicate it anymore speaks volumes about the weakness of the current political system. As a counter example, the Chinese can and do.
In 2024, China produced 8 times more electricity from renewables that from nuclear [1], and the renewable share is growing much more quickly. Nuclear is as dead in China as it is elsewhere in the world.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...
China has a huge advantage over the majority of Europe: abundance of mostly empty land with a lot of sunlight, it's unrealistic in places like Norther Europe. But I'm not talking about nuclear alone, it was the best answer in the 70s and 80s, nowadays we need a healthy mix of nuclear, solar and wind. But above everything else we need a government willing to make significant changes and make them fast.
China has a larger population density than the EU. There is more empty land in Europe.
> There is more empty land in Europe.
Truly empty? Or nature reserves?
Chinese population is concentrated in the East. The Western half of the country is pretty much empty. Lots of sunny semi-desertic/desertic areas, too so they do have a lot of actually empty land well suited for solar (China is more to the South compared to Europe: Beijing is about same latitude as Madrid...) and wind.
Yep. Once people experience true hardship like having to keep their house just above freezing in the winter due to the cost of energy - all of a sudden impossible things become quite possible.
The only potential issue here would be if the west had collectively hollowed out its manufacturing base so much as to make surging capacity and capability a generational thing vs. immediate.
Coasting on past success eventually brings stagnation and pain. Hopefully the pain isn’t too horrible for normal folks this time around.
And now Flamanville 3 is 7x over budget and 14 years late. Online but not commercially operational.
Their EPR2 fleet are getting an enormously large subsidy at 11 cents kWh CFD for 40 years and interest free loans. Sum freely. With the first reactor online in 2038 of everything goes to plan.
How many trillions in subsidies should we handout to new built nuclear power to ”try for real”?
Or we can just build renewables and storage which is the cheapest energy source in human history.
> Green energy isn't very useful for heating in winter.
Solar energy isn't the only 'green' energy. The wind, tides, geothermal vents, rivers etc all continue to work as well or better in winter.
Plus there's a lot of room for improvement elsewhere, like insulation.
> Green energy isn’t very useful for heating in winter.
Why? Your usefulness is driven by economics. As prices have continued to fall or becomes easier to overbuild, sizing solar panels for winter needs.
> Green energy isn't very useful for heating in winter.
We do manage quite well to use green energy for heating during winter in Sweden.
Do we? I see plenty of complaints about high electricity prices and criticism of shutdown of nuclear reactors
>Green energy isn't very useful for heating in winter.
Citation very much needed, or "yes it is"
Heat pumps are very common in the Nordics and can be used for almost the entire year.
> Nuclear takes like 15 years to build
6-7 years. France built 40 its nuclear reactors in a decade, at 6-7 years per reactor.
Right now China is building reactors at 6-7 years per reactor.
--- start quote ---
Nearly every Chinese nuclear project that has entered service since 2010 has achieved construction in 7 years or less.
Every single conventional commercial-scale reactor project in Chinese history has achieved completion in under a decade
Since the start of 2022, China has completed an additional five domestic reactor builds, with their completion times ranging from just under five years to just over 7 years. This continues the consistent completion record of Chinese projects even despite potential disruptions from the intervening COVID-19 pandemic.
China successfully constructed six nuclear reactors in Pakistan in around 5.5-6 years each
https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/chinas-impressive-...
--- end quote ---
> Right now China is building reactors at 6-7 years per reactor.
Thats China. In Europe, this building speed isnt going to happen anytime soon. The knowledge to build nuclear at that scale isn't in the coutry/continent anymore. You'd have to reteach an entire generation of engineers.
Besides that, part of the point of switching away from oil and gas is at least some independence. Europe isnt known for its nuclear fuel supply so now you're reliant on another country again.
Yes, most solar is produced in China but its about as low maintence as it gets and there is still enough knowledge to produce in Europe.
> Thats China. In Europe, this building speed isnt going to happen anytime soon.
It wasn't going to happen in China either. China also disn't have the knowledge. And yet...
You are right to point out the astonishing developments in Chinese nuclear reactors technology most people are totally oblivious of. It has been standardized, is seemingly safe and far more efficient due to Chinese technological advancements; however you may be overlooking that the ability, the capacity to do that, to do what France did by installing 56 nuclear reactors due to the last oil shock, takes an industrial capacity that does not seem to really exist anymore in Europe to the same degree. I won’t even get into why that is, because it would simply turn into a book, but suffice to say, it’s a euphemistic, polite “challenge”, so to say.
But people also forget that it still takes nuclear fuel to do any of that, which France/Europe has now also largely lost access to, due to the Niger situation along with cutting itself off from Russia/BRICS. That will at some point become an issue for France/Europe, which the “remilitarizing” EU may even make one of its first contrived America-style military adventures to “protect democracy” or some other manipulative, emotive, contrived lie by the lying Epstein, Mandelson, Brunel Class.
It sure does look like Niger really could use some democracy, don’t you? Their women can’t even show off their orifices for money on Onlyfans! Oh, they happen to have rich uranium ore, well isn’t that just an odd coincidence of doing good by sharing Our Democracy©, as decreed by the unelected EU Commission.
Fun fact: Germany blew up its nuclear energy capacity with voted approval by the current EU Commission President von der Leyen, while she was in the German government ruling coalition … she has described that her own action as a “strategic mistake”. That is who is basically the dictator of Europe, someone who makes self-described “strategic mistakes” of the highest order, multi-generational, rippling, echoing, de facto permanently consequential mistakes.
no one ever talks about how nuclear presents glaring massive military targets.
a few missiles and your vaunted "green" plants are now spreading death, mutation and radiation for hundreds or thousands of years.
even when they operate "clean" their waste storage is also growing military target.
Its not a green solution, its a kick the can down the road solution.
Green energy is super useful for heating in winter. At this point heat pumps are better than gas in almost every way unless the temperature is well below freezing. So it's just a matter of electricity which Italy and Belgium can get from the current mix of green energy (wind and even solar) and other forms (nuclear, coal, etc...)
[flagged]
> for Europe to stop allowing the US and Israel to do what they want
Yes.
> starting from the US arrogance that led to the war in Ukraine
No.
> We should go back buying gas from Russia
Hell no.
Then buy it from the US at a higher price? The same US that helps Israel in occupation and genocide in Palestine and in attacking sovereign countries all around?
> starting from the US arrogance that led to the war in Ukraine
What arrogance would this be?
Like this:
"It's not that you refrain from doing something because it will offend Russia. If Russia is doing something that we don't want it to do, we should offend them."[0]
And that's coming from a man who said a few minutes earlier:
"There is one of the factor here that we seem to be forgetting, and we did, though it was not a legally binding assurance, we gave categorical assurances to Gorbachev, back when the Soviet Union existed, that if a United Germany was able to stay in NATO, NATO would not be moved eastward. ... It is not a legally binding, but it was, you might say, a geopolitical deal."[1]
But later on it was a repeating speaking point that it's not Russia's business if NATO decides to expand.
And should I mention the US "midwifing" the coup in Ukraine in 2014? [2]
[0] https://youtu.be/ZHm_7T7QNl8?si=3j_teBKN1sFVOGSL&t=925
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHm_7T7QNl8&t=706s
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
> "It's not that you refrain from doing something because it will offend Russia. If Russia is doing something that we don't want it to do, we should offend them."[0]
Has Russia ever refrained from offending the West when it suited their interests?
> And should I mention the US "midwifing" the coup in Ukraine in 2014? [2]
It takes some really stupid arrogance to say shit like this when Ukraine literally had Russian stooge as a president at the time, installed via fossil fuel extortion. If Russia wanted truly neutral Ukraine, they should've backed the fuck off in the first place.
>Has Russia ever refrained from offending the West
Of course. Like abstaining in a UN SC vote, allowing NATO bomb Libya.
>Russian stooge as a president at the time, installed via fossil fuel extortion
Nope, Yanukovich was elected by Ukrainian people.[0] Previous pro-Western president received only 6% of votes in the first round.
>If Russia wanted truly neutral Ukraine, they should've backed the fuck off in the first place.
Enlighten me, how backing off when the US supports pro-Western coup in the Ukraine would've resulted in "truly neutral Ukraine"? And please mind your language
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Ukrainian_presidential_el...
> Of course. Like abstaining in a UN SC vote, allowing NATO bomb Libya.
The generosity!
> Nope, Yanukovich was elected by Ukrainian people.[0]
Tell me more of those exciting stories. From your link:
>> After all ballots were counted, the Ukrainian Central Election Commission declared that Yanukovych won the election with 48.95% of the vote compared with 45.47% for Tymoshenko.
> Previous pro-Western president received only 6% of votes in the first round.
After the guy was poisoned, disfigured beyond repair all while fighting smear campaigns calling him beekeeper.
You should've linked [0] when you talk about Yushchenko, comrade.
> Enlighten me, how backing off when the US supports pro-Western coup in the Ukraine would've resulted in "truly neutral Ukraine"? And please mind your language
Quid pro quo, it's a really tough principle for Russian to understand, because they're only used to extortion.
> And please mind your language
Your attempt at patronizing is as pathetic as Russian military takeover of Ukraine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005%E2%80%932006_Russia%E2%80...
I don’t understand where the arrogance comes in here. I see underhandedness and realpolitik, but those don’t arrogance make.
(I’ll also note that it seems very weird to use a pinky promise that the US made with a country that no longer exists as some kind of “gotcha.” You presumably don’t factor the Austro-Hungarian empire’s commitments into your geopolitics.)
>no longer exists
Russia is legal successor to the USSR.
Somehow the West hadn't written off the debts of "a country that no longer exists" and Russia paid out all of them.
> Somehow the West hadn't written off the debts of "a country that no longer exists" and Russia paid out all of them.
Shall we make concessions to Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany too?
> NATO, NATO would not be moved eastward.
1. Which Gorbachev himself said never happened
2. Before 2014 almost no one in Ukraine wanted to join NATO. After 2014 almost everyone wanted to join NATO. After 2022 Sweden and Finland ran to NATO.
> it's not Russia's business if NATO decides to expand.
Countries bordering Russia literally run to NATO the moment they have a choice. I wonder why. It couldn't be Russia who's to blame, could it?
> And should I mention the US "midwifing" the coup in Ukraine in 2014?
Just like Russia is midwifing crises and elections actoss Europe and countries like Georgia and Azerbaijan? Aurely this calls for immediate invasion and hundreds of thousands of deaths.
>Which Gorbachev himself said never happened
He lied.[0] No one wants to look like a fool.
>Before 2014 almost no one in Ukraine wanted to join NATO. After 2014 almost everyone wanted to join NATO.
Pro-Western Ukrainian president submitted request to join NATO in 2008 and the NATO response was positive.
And your statement is false, before 2014 there was significant minority that favored joining NATO and after 2014 the percentage grew but was very far from "almost everyone"
>It couldn't be Russia who's to blame, could it?
That's typical response. Now please tell me why the security concerns of these countries has to be respected and Russia's security concerns don't?
>Just like Russia is midwifing crises and elections actoss Europe and countries like Georgia and Azerbaijan
Russia has never supported any coups in Europe or in Georgia and Azerbaijan.
[0] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017...
> Pro-Western Ukrainian president submitted request to join NATO in 2008 and the NATO response was positive.
I wonder where it came from [0][1].
> That's typical response. Now please tell me why the security concerns of these countries has to be respected and Russia's security concerns don't?
World superpower (according to Russians themselves) has security concerns about checks notes Ukraine, Baltics, Georgia, Poland, Finland. Seems about right, judging by how war in Ukraine goes.
> Russia has never supported any coups in Europe or in Georgia and Azerbaijan.
My fucking eyes, lmao.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia#...
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005%E2%80%932006_Russia%E2%80...
The arrogance of ignoring repeated Russian requests to stop NATO expansion and Ukraine integration into NATO, and of not stopping (well documented) US political meddling in Ukraine. This went on for many years- Mearsheimer was able to predict the war ten years in advance. The US and Europe ignored all this- the US maybe because it really stood to gain from a war, Europe because it thought it was beneath itself to seriously engage with Russia.
NATO is a defensive pact, it can't expand. Countries can and want to join it willingly.
> and of not stopping (well documented) US political meddling in Ukraine
Assuming that's true, and it's a big if, let's turn this around: Russia has been messing with Ukraine politics since the collapse of the USSR. Why shouldn't US be allowed to?
> Europe because it thought it was beneath itself to seriously engage with Russia.
Beneath itself like, checks notes, making its industry completely dependent on Russian energy exports and pretty much not doing anything when Russia attacked Georgia, occupied Crimea and attacked east of Ukraine. If Europe had a backbone and considered Russia *beneath* them, it would completely kill any trade with it.
> Countries can and want to join it willingly.
It's up to the current members to decide who can join and who can't. That should also include considerations of opportunity.
> Russia has been messing with Ukraine politics since the collapse of the USSR. Why shouldn't US be allowed to?
The US is allowed to do whatever its military and economic power allows it to. Then actions have consequences. The consequences had been stated clearly.
> pretty much not doing anything when Russia attacked Georgia, occupied Crimea
Here, check the history of sanctions of the EU to Russia. It goes back to 2014.
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/sanctions-agains...
> It's up to the current members to decide who can join and who can't. That should also include considerations of opportunity.
And as history showed, they did the right choice. Or war in Ukraine would be war in Ukraine + Baltics + Romania.
> The US is allowed to do whatever its military and economic power allows it to. Then actions have consequences. The consequences had been stated clearly.
So US is messing with Ukraine, which Russia doesn't like, therefore Russia attacks Ukraine, because it can't compete using its whip with the Wests cookie. Logic checks out.
> Here, check the history of sanctions of the EU to Russia. It goes back to 2014.
So pretty much ignored Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008. The only sanctions Russia understands is boots on the ground and rockets (now drones) attacking their military and refineries.
> Here, check the history of sanctions of the EU to Russia. It goes back to 2014.m
Oh no. The totally ordinary year of 2014 when nothing happened, and sanctions on Russia suddenly appeared for no reason at all.
Prior to that there was hardly a single thing the West was doing to, or against, Russia. Moreover, there were multiple "restarts", "reboots", "second chances" etc. that Russia repeatedly shat on.
Oh look, in 2011 they were discussing visa-free travel to the EU: https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-russia-agree-steps-toward...
And according to Putin himself he floated the idea of Russia joining NATO: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/stone-interviews-p...
Oh, and Putin himself claimed that Ukraine is free to do whatever it wanted with regards to NATO: https://youtu.be/BeDW5C7Sbb0?is=Kdp75p9dCL6kAkVh
On its face, this suggests that only Russia and the US have any autonomy vis a vis who gets to be in NATO. What about what Ukraine wants?
NATO is a military alliance, the only ones who get a say about who is in it and who isn't are its current members. That said, of course choices have consequences, and some choices are more advisable/ appropriate than others.
I’m pretty confident that a large part of NATO (and all other military alliances) is the accession of new members. Candidate members have to want to accede, which goes back to my question: why are we talking about what the US and Russia want, when Ukraine’s wants are just as if not more important?
Look, the point is not what one wants. Everyone is free to make its own choices. The point is that choices have consequences, and when the consequences are very clear in advance and you still make that choice, you also take responsibility for the consequences. This attitude that "this is my will and I will pursue it, and I don't care about how others feel about it (because anyway I'm stronger)" is called arrogance.
The point appears to be changing. And again: it’s not clear why we’re talking about the US or NATO as primary drivers when Ukraine is a sovereign state that can litigate its affairs as it pleases. If you want to claim that the US meddles in Ukraine’s affairs that seems defensible, but no less defensible than the claim that Russia also meddles in their affairs (including kinetically, at the moment).
Edit: I’ll also note that arrogance usually means something closer to “discounting the consequences of your actions,” which is not evidenced here.
> This attitude that "this is my will and I will pursue it, and I don't care about how others feel about it (because anyway I'm stronger)" is called arrogance.
So literally Russia invading Ukraine.
> NATO is a military alliance, the only ones who get a say about who is in it and who isn't are its current members.
And they repeatedly rejected Ukraine and are still doing it? What's your point?
Mearsheimer was predicting Putin wouldn't do a full scale invasion of Ukraine right up until shortly after he already did , so strange choice of Cassandra to pick.
> we
Who's 'we', comrade?
Is that you? https://i.redd.it/0vgfxkqo7p0d1.jpeg
No
> starting from the US arrogance that led to the war in Ukraine
The US arrogance of Russia claiming Ukraine is a country that shouldn't exist and invading it?
It’s never dawned on you that the lying, cheating, manipulative, murderous Epstein class government just may have lied to you? They may lie to you every day, telling you e.g., that there’s just absolutely no money for proper care of its own citizens’ fundamental needs, but then immediately approve 10X that amount to squander and personally profit from murder and military spending … but you think those people are just the most honest people that never ever lie about what happened/history???
Okay. Now you've ranted.
You have anything more substantative than rants?
You seem not to know what a rant is. Two questions that make you uncomfortable because they challenge your dogmatic beliefs is not it though. You are very disappointing.
The problem is, russia wants to see Europe subjugated, conquered, its lapdog ripe for governance from russia to have everything stolen by few oligarchs around that clown puttin'.
This is russian modus operandi everywhere, they don't know any better, they never knew. This comes from somebody who grew up behind iron curtain, a country effectively enslaved by russians, forcibly having massive russian military bases and atomic weapons, to be a nuclear battlefield that 3rd world war was supposed to be.
You can't have a fair dealings with them, not when they sense any kind of weakness. Former german leaders showed conjsistently such weakness and desperate appeasing, dragged rest of EU with them and look where it led to. Also, russia as a state is waging 20+ years of asymetric warfare against whole west, but especially focusing subverting EU structures.
I wish we could have normal relationships with them, we really tried in Europe, but they are fucked up as a nation, without any hope in this century for any sort of radical change.
I agree US is right now just a bully and arrogant aggressive a-hole, sowing chaos all around the world and poorest suffer the most. But there are not that many options - fucked up US with no clear leadership change (once trump's support goes to single digits I will restore some of my faith in that nation, not sooner), russia is simply the bad guy globally, consistently, and gulf states are not so reliable as we see. What remains - Venezuela, Nigeria maybe? No good choices, maybe due to resource curse but then again ie Norway managed such free treasure just fine.
More world problems. Thanks America.
AFAIK, 1970s energy crisis pushed Europeans to invent efficient small cars so let's hope this crisis pushes EU into completely abandoning fossils in favor of electricity generated by local means like nuclear, solar, hydro, wind etc. Even if the war doesn't go long enough, the contrast between Spain and Italy in energy security is stark enough to make a point.
Maybe Trump is playing 4D chess after all, pushing Europe into independence so US can spend its energy on China :)
How many different types of Dementia are there?
Are there 4?
800 lbs. gorilla: for energy generation uses (so excluding petrochem processes explicitly requiring petroleum feedstock without any closely practical substitute(s)), the goal of decarbonization is essential not just for climate change reasons.
Europe has plenty of shale gas but refuses to exploit it. Nuclear was stopped or even dismantled. There is such a lack of strategic thinking that at some point the only logical conclusion is that we like to suffer and to lose.
> at some point the only logical conclusion is that we like to suffer and to lose.
Or that our political and media class are captured...
> Or that our political and media class are captured...
Yes, obviously that's the case, however it goes beyond that. I still vividly remember how in high school they taught us persistently how bad nuclear power is for the environment. And TBH for a very long time, I actually believed it. A lot of people in Germany never stopped believing it. At this point we have to admit to ourselves that the "Green"'s are a political ideology with good slogans, but ultimately contrary to their own messaging it is: pro-war, anti-worker, anti-independence, and generally just a basket to capture anti-empire sentiment to redirect them towards supporting it.
> There is such a lack of strategic thinking
Is a result of decades of russian effort
Nuclear was stopped? Look at France.
The nuclear programme was effectively stopped in France and it is struggling to be revived.
As things stand now it won't be able to compensate for the closure of older reactors.
> The nuclear programme was effectively stopped in France and it is struggling to be revived.
You're describing France from 2010 to 2020, not today.
Since 2020 it is struggling to revive its nuclear programme. Lots of fancy plans and announcements but let's see how reality unfolds.
New operational reactor in 2024 was the first in 25 years so hardly "since 2010"...