Slashdot Mirror
Italy Votes To Abandon Nuclear Power
ElementOfDestruction writes "Italy has joined Germany in halting the production of energy from atomic power generation. This differs from Germany in that the Italian decision was made by a public vote, rather than a government mandated shutdown. 57% of Italian Households voted in this public measure. While democracy should trump all, is it wise to hold majority opinion so high that it slows down progress?"
We did it de facto instead of de jure but the fact that we haven't built any new plants in 30 years means we have ultimately also given up on nuclear. The politicians caved to public fear and so made the process of permitting a plant to be so expensive as to make it economically impossible to continue to build new facilities. We will ultimately shut down our current plants and shift that generation to something else, it will just take longer.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The summary is a bit misleading. In 1987 after the Tschernobyl disaster Italy had a public vote to abandon nuclear energy. The last reactor was shut down in 1990. This was only a vote against a re-entry into nuclear power, something Berlusconi was pushing forward.
"Die endgueltige Teilung Deutschlands - das ist unser Auftrag." - Chlodwig Poth
They're in a particularly sunny climate, there are already rolling out solar thermal storage systems so that their solar can generate 24 hours per day, They have tidal sources which France used to generate hundreds of megawatts back in the 60's out of a single installation -- ignoring the efficiency increases of what we can do today.
Fuel is finite, so fuel based sources are out of date. Meanwhile, renewables just keep coming down in price. Solar dropped 20% last year alone, and is expected to drop another 20% this year. Meanwhile, nuclear keeps increasing in cost. Costs for implementation, fuel, owner's costs, massive grid tie-ins, and let's not even discuss the fact that they don't pay for their own insurance and push that on to the public purse in the event of a catastrophe.
So "progress?" I don't think that word means what you think it does. The first world has made it's decision and you can flog the dead horse of nuclear, but the only new adopters will be the third world and powers that want to refine for nuclear weapons, such as arabic countries, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
There is more to this decision than simple "anti-scientific" feelings.
First of all there is the trust we can have in people managing these beasts, i.e. zero. Our administrators are not the ones with public safety in mind. Google some info about two years' ago earthquake to see how well regulation on constructions works.
Second and related, public works in Italy (and many private ones) are often just a way to throw money at your business friends. It is unlikely that something so big will be done in the most efficient and quick way. Most probably it will never recover the expenses, if it ever gets built.
Third there is the timing problem. We are late to the train. Other countries alread recovered the initial expenses and only have to keep mantaining/improving. They can undercut us easily and we would end up buying from them anyway. (also notice we did not have plans for an erichment plant, so we would have to buy enriched uranium...)
Fourth and related, the plants will arrive in no less than 20 years. Then this is essentially a bet on the price of uranium in 20 years. With many developing countries building plants I think this bet is a losing one...
But yes, I am stupid and I only want to slow progress down, laugh at me.
While many Slashdotters happily wave away its real-world problems (waste, decommissioning, uninsurability, capital intensiveness, fuel supply, terrorism, non-distributed grid model, construction lead time and yes, slight potential for massive damage to life and property in a large geographic area) as irrelevant, many others are less sanguine. And that is not just because they are idiots--they look at the factors, weigh them and draw different conclusions.
And there are alternatives that might well be better. A recent study by the California Energy Commission that looks at estimated costs of 21 types of energy generation facilities estimates that a gen-3 Westinghouse AP1000 1,000 MW Pressurized Water Reactor would generate electricity in 2018 (the first year any of them could be expected to reach operational status) for between $0.17/kWh and $0.34/kWh.
The cost of solar PV today is already competitive with the high end of that range, and is dropping at a rapid pace.
This comes on the heels of another new report showing that the free-market insurance costs for nuclear would add from ($0.20/kWh) to a staggering $3.40/kWh.
If costs are the same or lower for renewable energy technologies that have numerous benefits and far fewer risks, why would rational people choose nuclear?
Where will you get power now? France's nuclear plants?
we already do. I live in Turin, next to france, and we DO import nuclear energy from france: the total represents about 7% of energy consumption; the dominant energy producer, ENEL, operates nuclear plants in Spain and Slovenia (Link), and France is Upwind from us, so I would laugh my head off if it wasn't sad.
Italy operates a few small research reactors, and part of the energy bill that I receive bimonthly has an Item called "sovrapprezzo termico", i.e. the part that I pay ENEL to compensate it for the added costs of dismantling the reactors that were stopped after Chernobil, plus the lost income due to fossil fuel use. But hey, it's democracy, honey.
For all it's worth, two other referenda were worse still; we voted out compensation for capital expenses incurred in mantaining and building water infrastructure, which call the question of who will put up the money required to reduce the water losses that the acqueduct has (about 20~25% here).
Just the other day, my wife came in while I was brushing my teeth and closed the water tap, saying "the TV said to save water!"; I said "good Idea, let's reach the same level of eccellence of the water company: let's leave the tap open overnight."
coming back to Nuclear energy: the incumbent italian operator gets a sizable part of its energy production from fully or partly owned and operated nuclear plants, but all of them are abroad, and all except one (in slovenia) are too far to make exporting energy to Italy viable. To add insult to injury, many people said "we italians are incapable to guarantee the orderly functioning of nuclear plants". Maybe the spanish public ain't so picky.
Now i want to see how they will sell to the public on building coke or gas turbine plants for baseline operations; as most Slashdotters know, renewables are uneconomic unless someone pays the piper.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
And while I totally agree with the sentiment - I'd say that it is hard to consider Keith objectively when he has always been against fossil fuels at seemingly any costs (which he should be). So in the spirit of actually contributing something to the conversation:
Risks from reactor accidents are estimated by the rapidly developing science of "probabilistic risk analysis" (PRA). A PRA must be done separately for each power plant (at a cost of $5 million) but we give typical results here: A fuel melt-down might be expected once in 20,000 years of reactor operation. In 2 out of 3 melt-downs there would be no deaths, in 1 out of 5 there would be over 1000 deaths, and in 1 out of 100,000 there would be 50,000 deaths. The average for all meltdowns would be 400 deaths. Since air pollution from coal burning is estimated to be causing 10,000 deaths per year, there would have to be 25 melt-downs each year for nuclear power to be as dangerous as coal burning.
From: http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm
Absolute Democracy is the exact opposite of freedom. You cannot have a Right when all laws are subject to the will of the majority. The act of voting doesn't make a policy moral or even "effective." When your rights are violated it is little consolation whether it was done by a vicious dictator or by the voting of your neighbors. Both pure democracy and pure dictatorship are morally vacant and eventually, self-destructive. The only useful form of government is one that recognizes the individual and their inalienable rights.
Yes, Japan is advanced.
No, Fukushima was not. First criticality at Fukushima was in the 1970s, meaning that construction started in the late 60s, meaning that they place was designed in the late 50's.
I don't think we can call anything that is 60 years old in design "advanced." Please stop distorting facts with your bias.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.