Nuclear power saved Armenia

https://thebulletin.org/2024/01/how-nuclear-power-saved-armenia/

by pseudolus • 2 years ago

143 71 2 years ago

BMc2020• 2 years ago

An environmentalist movement sprang up, calling for the shutdown of the Metsamor reactors. The authorities backed down, and the two reactors were turned off on February 25 and March 18, 1989.

Environmentalists defeated the Soviet Union? You would think that would have made the newspapers.

Areg Danagoulian is an associate professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT

polotics2• 2 years ago

This was a green movement perceived as useful idiots by the empire, that was in its death throes already. Accepting this pressure was a way to save face, by feigning to accept the lie that all power plants were dangerous, in spite of differences in design and management.

throwbadubadu• 2 years ago

How save? Chernobyl's exclusion zone today is 2600 km², it initially affected 150000 km², Armenia is what? 40000 km². One well planned sabotage or airstrike, and the energy independence is not only gone but also an eventual long term disaster for much percentage of that land..

It is now clear that Western use of natural gas and petroleum from aggressive dictatorships—which use cash flows from oil and gas sales to reinforce and expand their hold on power—has backfired badly.

This feels awkwardly over repeated today. Embargos as always of course don't work, still most of the West more easily than all doomsayers expected reoriented (while they ideally could have been off that much dependence already longer).. there is enough market to other countries and also circumventing embargos. Do the Armenians btw dig the uranium out of their soil and refine it?

culebron213• 2 years ago

perceived as useful idiots by the empire

The empire is not a person to perceive something -- inside the communist party and government, there were many of points of view on the eco-movements. The "empire" had no single stance on the question.

Fnoord• 2 years ago

Fukushima reestablished this green movement.

Who benefitted from the green movement then and now? Fossil fuel. Putin and his cronies, just to name an example.

culebron213• 2 years ago

Your sacrasm reveals your ignorance, not an exaggeration or a hole in the story.

Yes, environmentalist movements in 1989 were all across the country, and were significant. It was 2 years into Perestroyka and Glasnost [1] policy, and such things were not restricted from discussion, and 1989 was the year when a lot of non-CPSU new local politicians were elected in local councils and the soviet deputy council [2].

In my region, people would protest a projected Katun river dam [3]. It's not clear, whether the pressure stopped it, or financial shortages, but it was noteable -- at least I as 1st grader saw it discussed everywhere.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasnost

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Soviet_Union_legislative_...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katun_(river)

orbital-decay2• 2 years ago

To add to that, Chernobyl disaster and the subsequent coverup attempt clearly showed that Glasnost lacked actual substance. It was the one of the main reasons behind lifting the censorship regime (since the 1987 the press was essentially free to write about anything, and did so), and a major contributor to allowing competing factions inside the party. Nemtsov in particular became a prominent figure after his Chernobyl-related activism.

However, claiming that environmentalists took down the whole Union is downright silly. Yes, the fears of the crumbling infra and coverups, Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Spitak earthquake, and Ufa train disaster dominated the media of the late USSR (and especially Armenia, due to the Spitak earthquake), but that was only a small factor, the reasons were much more fundamental.

perihelions• 2 years ago

To add to that, environmental opposition to a Soviet mining project was actually a key trigger for the Baltic independence movement (hence, in part, the dissolution of the USSR),

- "The Phosphorite War (Estonian: Fosforiidisõda) is the name given to a late-1980s environmental campaign in the then-Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, against the opening of large phosphorite mines in the Virumaa region[...] In Estonia it is regarded as a catalyst that led to the destabilization and dissolution of the Soviet government in Estonia.[3]"

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

(I'm surprised this has never appeared on HN before in any context,

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Fosforiidisõda&type=comment

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=phosphorite%20war&type=comment

lawgimenez3• 2 years ago

We have a dormant (scrapped because fears of Chernobyl) nuclear power plant which politicos are currently looking to revive. This might be a good case study.

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

senectus12• 2 years ago

A very good video on how much of a huge waste of money that plant has been is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjxZwbg69Fc

*note, this is not anti nuc power, its all about how corruption, politics and really bad engineering have screwed the project from the beginning

lawgimenez3• 2 years ago

Simon Whistler is a nutcase.

7734128• 2 years ago

Never found that person to be accurate or actually informative. Go watch something he has made about something you already know a lot and ask yourself if you want his view on matters where you do not.

jhoechtl• 2 years ago

We have a nuclear power plant which was completely finished yet never went to grid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Pl...

FirmwareBurner2• 2 years ago

Anyone know why the referendum wasn't held BEFORE spending billions building a nuclear plant? Chernobyl hasn't happened at that point for the population to suddenly have a boogieman to fear.

Most theories point to Russia lobbying for Austria to stay hooked onto its gas exports, so they had to run a FUD propaganda campaign against nuclear before the referendum.

Especially that Austria isn't big on holding referendums to ask the population what it wants, like Switzerland does, and a few former Austrian ministers have worked or still do for Russian oil & gas companies.

treyd• 2 years ago

With all the other things they've found use for it, I wonder if you could convince them to host your wedding.

roenxi• 2 years ago

The part I find most interesting is that the current political elite of ... I don't quite know what to call it. The US clique? Places that speak English + Germany + Japan and maybe a chunk of the EU. Global North perhaps.

Anyway, whoever they are seem to have limited interest in energy security. Much like someone who has no interest in food security, that is going to change at some point. The anti-nuclear lobby has done terrible things and should be ashamed of the position they've put us in. We'd be so much better positioned if they had been rational instead of panicked.

It is trivial to make people better off when the energy supply is growing. It is much harder (or impossible) to improve lifestyles at an industrial scale when it is shrinking.

rightbyte4• 2 years ago

It is much harder (or impossible) to improve lifestyles at an industrial scale when it is shrinking.

The abundant consumerism wrecks peoples lifestyles. I don't see the need to jump through hoops to support planned obsolescence consuming of widgets and eating so much food obesity becomes the major health concern.

The growth worship need to stop.

asystole• 2 years ago

You make them sound like some terrorist sect.

Well, is that entirely unreasonable?

Geisterde2• 2 years ago

Define growth. I dont think you know what that term means, I dont blame you because its misused nearly 100% of the time in media, but its important to be clear.

cpursley• 2 years ago

The growth worship need to stop.

It’s easy to write that from the comfort of a western nation with reliable electricity where bellies are full and most household chores are done by machine.

The rest of the world very much would like that same standard of living (food, physical comfort and safety), and for that - they need affordable energy.

kiba2• 2 years ago

Imagine that you live in a civilization where for every billion watt we might get from the sun we only consume one watt. That's the kind of world we live in today.

In actuality, the biggest issue is the amount of pollution we emitted, not growth per se.

patall• 2 years ago

I know it is whataboutism but I think you can say pretty much the same thing about every topic:

- underfunding of journalism

- climate change

- chemicals like PFAs

- demographics

- social media

...

adrianN2• 2 years ago

Fortunately nuclear is not the only way to increase energy supply.

fsflover2• 2 years ago

But it is one of important ways to diversify it.

thriftwy2• 2 years ago

So the path of a small nation in the shadow of petro dictatorships seems to be getting that petro dictatorship to build you a nuclear plant and supply fuel, so that you can continue to badmouth them from warmth and safety.

justsomehnguy• 2 years ago

You forgot "behave like a teenager in puberty and then suffer from the own actions".

ZeroGravitas• 2 years ago

Russia also supplied the majority of their energy as gas and oil, quote from IEA:

Lacking indigenous resources, Armenia imports natural gas and oil for most of its energy needs (78.6% of total energy supply in 2020), mainly from the Russian Federation (hereafter, “Russia”). Natural gas is imported from Russia via pipeline through Georgia, but also from Iran through a barter agreement under which it exports electricity in exchange.

So the digs at Germany seem hypocritical.

Krasnol6• 2 years ago

The world is currently in the process of reevaluating its past rejection of nuclear power and is increasingly starting to view it as a reliable source of power that allows for greater energy security.

I would love to see a source on that since the statistics don't show that [0]. Production actually fell by 4% [1] and even China, THE country with the most ambitious plans for nuclear, rather goes for renewables[2].

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa...

[1] https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/World-Rep... https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nuclears-share-world...

[2] https://cleantechnica.com/2023/02/06/renewables-in-china-tre...

fsflover2• 2 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26673987 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464

Krasnol6• 2 years ago

How is this supposed to be related?

The only thing this policy does is to guarantee EU taxpayer money for rotting fleets. Especially in France where national taxpayer money has to jump in where former Governments failed to establish a diversified energy infrastructure.

loeg• 2 years ago

You can see how "starting to view" and "actual construction dollars" are different claims, right?

Krasnol6• 2 years ago

Sure.

One is an implication in the lack of evidence and the other one are actually related facts.

mpweiher6• 2 years ago

How would you "statistically show" a reevaluation that is in process?

You obviously can't evaluate by the outcomes, because the reevaluation is still in process, and in this particular case outcomes in terms of power to grid take at least 3 years after you have finished evaluating and started building. And sometimes a bit longer. And of course you do have plants reaching their end of life during that time, so you might not see a net positive total for a bit.

On the other hand, 22 countries just pledged to triple nuclear output by 2050 at COP28, so just a little over a month ago. That's a significant departure and includes countries that were getting out of nuclear power altogether, like Japan. It also includes all of the G7 except Germany and Italy.

https://www.energy.gov/articles/cop28-countries-launch-decla...

Speaking of Italy, they aren't there yet, but have just made getting back into nuclear official government policy.

https://www.montelnews.com/news/1498405/italian-parliament-b...

Germany, of course, remains a basket case, even though a majority of its citizens now oppose the "Atomausstieg".

The UK government just announced a massive (to 4x) nuclear expansion this month (January 2024).

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/biggest-expansion-of-nucl...

Poland is getting into nuclear, having just approved construction of 24 (small) reactors at 6 locations.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/poland...

France removed its legal requirement to reduce nuclear to less than 50% last year, and just committed to building 14 new reactors (up from only 6 just 2 months ago).

Unlike what some people think, France was not very pro-nuclear the last few decades, in fact nuclear was being actively sabotaged.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ePZUamAzNA4IzdR1dlkE2wtl...

That has changed. A lot has changed since the Ukraine war revealed the dirty little secret of Germany's "Energiewende", also known nowadays as the Gazprom-Wende.

Yes, China is going for renewables. That's because China goes for everything. Including more coal. Yes, they are building out renewables, but that's because they have little to none at present, so they are still at a stage where adding more renewables won't destabilize the grid. They are also massively expanding their nuclear fleet, with no fewer than 20 (twenty!) reactors currently under construction and another 70 currently being planned. That's a tripling of what they have now.

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

They are also building all sorts of next generation reactors. A thorium pebble-bed reactor was connected to the grid in 2023, a thorium molten salt reactor got its operating license last year and is supposedly close to completion.

India is also planning (and on track) to triple their nuclear generating capacity, though not by 2050, but by 2031.

https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/power/india...

Ukraine is in talks with Rolls Royce to upgrade existing coal-fired power stations with nuclear reactors. The ones Rolls Royce is planning to build in a factory.

https://www.business-live.co.uk/technology/rolls-royce-offer...

I always wondered where Rolls Royce was going to place so many nuclear reactors that producing them in factory would make sense. Old coal-powered power stations is a pretty good market, there are hundreds if not thousands of those waiting to be converted.

Krasnol6• 2 years ago

You obviously can't evaluate by the outcomes, because the reevaluation is still in process

Things are always "in the process" or "being reevaluated" around nuclear. Meanwhile, global warming is on the way and faster here than a single nuclear reactor is constructed, even if you start building today.

Meanwhile, renewables are already there, build in 1–2 years and are getting better and cheaper every year.

On the other hand, 22 countries just pledged to triple nuclear output by 2050 at COP28, so just a little over a month ago

Are there any repercussions if they don't deliver, or how is this relevant?

Let's take a closer look at your links there:

Speaking of Italy, they aren't there yet, but have just made getting back into nuclear official government policy.

Italy doesn't have the funds for any significant nuclear project. The nuclear meme the ruling parties spread is highly popular within the right wing parties throughout Europe and, just like Poland (where the meme goes back to the time of Socialism), every serious person knows: nothing at all will come of it.

Germany, of course, remains a basket case, even though a majority of its citizens now oppose the "Atomausstieg".

No they don't.

There was a rush around the time the last one closed. With the biggest tabloid BILD and the opposition (which consist mainly of the party which is responsible for the shutdown) shouting useless claims to fire up people who are unhappy with the Government. Today, just like before: nobody cares about nuclear anymore and the only polls suggesting that there might be some kind of support for the cause come from Civey and are being paid by Nuklearia. A small lobby club of former nuclear engineers and their Twitter-friends from the right-wing AfD bubble.

The UK government just announced a massive (to 4x) nuclear expansion this month (January 2024).

I'm sure that after the elections and with the complete mess that is HPC, there will be not a single new reactor being build in the UK.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/cost-of-uks-flagship-nuclear-pro...

France removed its legal requirement to reduce nuclear to less than 50% last year, and just committed to building 14 new reactors (up from only 6 just 2 months ago).

I wonder where the money for that might come from especially after the failure of EDF and the fact that despite subsidizing every single watt of nuclear energy by taxpayer money (tarif bleu) they now even have to rise the prices https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/france-fin...

But sure, something has to be done since their existing fleet is rotting away and they have not diversified anything. Let's hope those old reactors will hold up for another decade because we all know: France can't build faster.

Unlike what some people think, France was not very pro-nuclear the last few decades, in fact nuclear was being actively sabotaged.

Yeah...no. That's bs.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/750035/france-opinion-su...

That has changed. A lot has changed since the Ukraine war revealed the dirty little secret of Germany's "Energiewende", also known nowadays as the Gazprom-Wende.

What secret is this supposed to be? Because Germany got rid of Russian gas and gas prices went down again?

Or do you mean the secret that France still supports the invasion in Ukraine through their nuclear deals?

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/energies/article/2023/03/12/french...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-023-01228-5

Yes, China is going for renewables. That's because China goes for everything. Including more coal. Yes, they are building out renewables, but that's because they have little to none at present

They expand it REALLY fast though https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/29/china-wind-sol...

Faster than anyone on this planet. Meanwhile, their nuclear expansion is negligible. If your argument of putting all of them in one basket would be right, they'd have to build much more nuclear than they do and plan to do. But just like any reasonable investor, they're not stupid. Nuclear is a waste of money.

India is also planning (and on track) to triple their nuclear generating capacity, though not by 2050, but by 2031.

I wonder how well this will go in the future...

https://www.rosatom.ru/en/press-centre/opinion/alexey-zhukov...

Quite funny that in the nuclear bubble Rosatom is good while Gazprom is bad.

Ukraine is in talks with Rolls Royce to upgrade existing coal-fired power stations with nuclear reactors. The ones Rolls Royce is planning to build in a factory.

People dare to talk about SMRs after the Nuscale debacle? And especially in Ukraine where the fate of the whole country isn't even clear? Interesting. How many of those did RR build already or is their plan to test the whole thing in Ukraine because they're used to nuclear fallouts?

cycomanic• 2 years ago

How would you "statistically show" a reevaluation that is in process?
You obviously can't evaluate by the outcomes, because the reevaluation is still in process, and in this particular case outcomes in terms of power to grid take at least 3 years after you have finished evaluating and started building. And sometimes a bit longer. And of course you do have plants reaching their end of life during that time, so you might not see a net positive total for a bit.
On the other hand, 22 countries just pledged to triple nuclear output by 2050 at COP28, so just a little over a month ago. That's a significant departure and includes countries that were getting out of nuclear power altogether, like Japan. It also includes all of the G7 except Germany and Italy.
https://www.energy.gov/articles/cop28-countries-launch-decla...

Just goes to show how strong the nuclear lobby is. Building out nuclear does not make economic or environmental sense. With the price trajectories of solar, wind are on we should be investing everything into renewables and research into storage to reduce required overprovisioning.

Yes, China is going for renewables. That's because China goes for everything. Including more coal. Yes, they are building out renewables, but that's because they have little to none at present, so they are still at a stage where adding more renewables won't destabilize the grid.

What are you talking about? China had a third of worldwide installed solar in 2020 (250GW)[1]. In 2023 that had more than doubled to 530 GW [2] and that is accelerating (for 2024 they are projecting another 230 GW).

They are also massively expanding their nuclear fleet, with no fewer than 20 (twenty!) reactors currently under construction and another 70 currently being planned. That's a tripling of what they have now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China

So China has 57 GW of nuclear and want to get to 200 GW by 2035 (while also having missed their 2020 goal of 58 GW [3]). They are adding more solar every year than that every year. That just shows how completely disproportionate the economics are. The recently approved nuclear power plants (which get to 70GW i think) cost $80 billion [4]compared to $140 billion in solar which gets you 230 GW.

I am willing to bet a significant amount that China will get nowhere close to 200GW nuclear by 2035.

A side note it's funny how you state that China does not have any renewables why making nuclear sound like a huge part of their grid, while in reality just the installed solar capacity is 10 times that of nuclear.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China

[2] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/china-...

[3]https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-starts-up-worlds-f...

[4]https://thediplomat.com/2022/09/powering-chinas-nuclear-ambi...

Synaesthesia• 2 years ago

The Soviets not only ruined the image of socialism, they also ruined the image of nuclear power with Chernobyl.

mschuster91• 2 years ago

What permanently sealed off nuclear power in Germany was Fukushima and prior to that, the Brits with Sellafield.

adrianN2• 2 years ago

Even before Fukushima Germany had decided to abandon nuclear power. Fukushima sped up the process by about two or three years.

EasyMark2• 2 years ago

Communism. America's take on socialism (or democratic socialism) is largely unreasonable and they falsely equate socialism with soviet style communism, mostly because we've failed at teaching our children history and basic types of government.

thriftwy2• 2 years ago

Interesting, because I have another person on a HN thread scolding me for calling Soviet regime communism.

I would like people to either reconcile this between themselves or stop pretending like they can correct on well-defined term usage.

reducesuffering• 2 years ago

mostly because we've failed at teaching our children history and basic types of government

Or you know the whole part of the history book where 20th century communists called themselves socialists too, least of which the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)...

Lenin was in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. China calls itself "Socialism with Chinese characteristics." North Korea is an "independent socialist state." Ho Chi Minh's roots were in the Socialist Party of France before being a founder of the French Communist Party.

rob74• 2 years ago

People in Armenia, despite living more than 2,000 kilometers away from Chernobyl, started perceiving radioactive threats everywhere

TBF, radioactive threats were pretty common in the (ex-)USSR. One example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident

AtlasBarfed• 2 years ago

"The world is currently in the process of reevaluating its past rejection of nuclear power and is increasingly starting to view it as a reliable source of power that allows for greater energy security."

This thing only gets written on sharply pro-nuclear sources. Yes incumbent nuclear has a role in grid balancing. Sure, lets keep the lights on for say another decade.

But nuclear is just being eviscerated by wind/solar and storage in LCOE, aka the metric you use to plan whether to get new power sources or keep existing ones. And there is basically no way to drop the costs in the future with current commercial designs to close the gap.

Even if you started nuclear power construction, the 10 year delay is 10 years of solar/wind dropping in price (they have a LOT of runway between simple economies of scale, and solar still has the perovskite evolution to come), so nuclear projects can't even target a price to compete with (with a straight face, that is).

And as usual the pro-nuclear article whines about regulations, environmental activists, and the like. Of course the rise of ACTUAL environmental sources like wind solar destroying by a huge margin the economic basis of nuclear power just raises the zealotry. They are doing the nuclear industry no good spouting all this propaganda.

I want you to keep in mind that I am a LFTR/Orion nuthead, and nuclear power is really really COOL.

It is my opinion that solid rod nuclear plants will go the way of the dodo, that once wind/solar have reached some degree of price stability there may be complete rethink nuclear power designs that might compete. It might take a generation of people with memories of Chernobyl, Three Mile, and TEPCO dying so the regulatory framework gets a bit more sound.

Or maybe China will get a good Thorium reactor going and we have to do it out of competition (which is why there are suddenly Thorium projects cropping up again in research labs).

Anyway, yeah, keep the existing plants going while we work on swapping out coal with alternative energy. But solar/wind/storage will probably come for the nuclear plants in the "soon" sense of a decade or two.

Nuclear power saved Armenia

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