I've seen quite a few SMR proposals over the last couple of years and not a single one that dared to address the whole cycle from deployment to eventual decommission as a function of the total revenues - costs to operate. Most of these projects seem to be made to bilk investors or governments rather than to actually produce power. The day Italy produces the first KWh that is net profitable to the operators without counting subsidies I will be highly amazed, and that's assuming they get to operational in the first place.
I agree, I tell everyone who will listen that no country, not Russia, China, Japan, France, USA etc has ever made nuclear power profitable. And you can't blame it on the environmentalists in China and Russia.<p>That being said, many countries consider it a national security issue not to be held hostage to foreign oil.
> country, not Russia, China, Japan, France, USA<p>Are you serious when putting France in this list? Nuclear is such a cash cow here that EDF manage to make profits even while being forced by the regulator to sell a big fraction of its nuclear capacity below the operating cost and buying it back to them at market price! (We're talking about a multi-billon subsidies scheme, look for ARENH).<p>And that is despite (rather legitimate IMHO) regulatory constraints that have no equivalent in any other industry.
Yeah I’m really confused why France is in that list (also, less so, but China - they have come a great way, further than almost any western country save France, I’m just unsure I’d the metric here applies evenly).<p>I’ll stand by the only reason nuclear power is unprofitable (in most cases) is because we decide it is unprofitable.
France doesn't have an answer for decommissioning costs.
Anything is cheaper when you don't count all the costs.<p><i>In January 2017 a parliamentary committee reported: "The cost of decommissioning is likely to be greater than the provisions," the technical feasibility is "not fully assured" and the dismantling work will take "presumably more time than expected."</i><p><a href="https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france?ref=undecided.tech" rel="nofollow">https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...</a>
Yes, France is pretty much alone in making nuclear work. It's impressive. That said, it is alone.<p>IE, I don't see other nations reproducing the French institutions and culture that allowed this. Will France itself even continue them?
Is that because every country fails to adequately charge oil/coal/etc for its externalities? Are we essentially subsidizing oil, bringing the costs artificially low such that nuclear can't compete?
Nuclear has several major cost problems if it's own. Insuring against a major accident is prohibitively expensive, the kind of inspection+maintenance regime that's necessary for safety isn't amenable to cost reductions. The list goes on. Basically:<p>Nuclear isn't similar to the things that grow cheaper as the operators gain experience.
Much if fhe inspections and standards aren't "necessary for safety" but the direct product of paranoia and lobbying. Nuclear is brutally overregulated, far, far beyond what's necessary to ensure safety, and that's where most costs come from.
> Nuclear is brutally overregulated, far, far beyond what's necessary to ensure safety, and that's where most costs come from.<p>Is this really true? We seem to have a pretty large disaster perhaps every 15-20 years (3 mile island, Chernobyl, Fukushima), which makes me think that it is either correctly- or under- regulated. Of course coal and oil are worse, but that’s not exactly a high bar…
Fukushima killled a couple of people? More died that day from car crashes.
You're right but this seems difficult to estimate. From the wikipedia* article:<p>> ... Despite this, there were no deaths caused by acute radiation syndrome. Given the uncertain health effects of low-dose radiation, cancer deaths cannot be ruled out. ...Predicted future cancer deaths due to accumulated radiation exposures in the population living near Fukushima have ranged in the academic literature from none to hundreds.<p>> ...For evacuation, the estimated number of deaths during and immediately after transit ranges from 34 to "greater than 50". The victims include hospital inpatients and elderly people at nursing facilities who died from causes such as hypothermia, deterioration of underlying medical problems, and dehydration. The old people and already sick, were more likely to be injured because of being relocated than damaged by radiation.<p>* <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident_casualties" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident_cas...</a>
> Of course coal and oil are worse, but that’s not exactly a high bar…<p>It is what we want to replace with nuclear power, so that's exactly the bar we should jump over. So let's say it: all of these disasters did not cause even 1/1000 as many deaths as coal power plants.
I agree coal power plants are much worse. As an aside, I’m not convinced that’s the bar we need to clear. I would think we need to be safer than solar power, since that’s the source that’s actually growing rapidly. If we’re going to add new power generation, I think it’s probably a trade off between nuclear and solar.<p>And anyways this isn’t the claim I was disagreeing with — the parent claim is that nuclear is regulated “beyond what's necessary to ensure safety”. I just don’t think that’s the case. As dramatic as it sounds, we regularly have nuclear disasters.
Then why is the insurance for every single reactor public sector based?
No,<p>The reason that constant inspections are need is because radiation weakens everything. Since nothing is immune, everything can break prematurely and so everything must be inspected.
Fukushima and Chornobyl happened directly for a lack of paranoia, regulation and lobbing. I hope that we don't commit the same mistake again.
Fukushima happened in a highly regulated (and correspondingly expensive) environment. Improving the regulation doesn't necessarily just mean adding more of it or tightening targets far beyond any useful range. Also, arguably the evacuations as a response to Fukushima caused more harm than the radiation would have, an example of paranoia as opposed to effective regulation.<p>(Chernobyl also happened because of paranoia but that was largely the Soviet's obsession with saving face to the point of hiding a design flaw from the operators).<p>Though, I will push back on the idea that this is exclusively why it's so expensive: Nuclear has plenty of other issues with cost beyond excessive safety targets.
> Nuclear has plenty of other issues with cost beyond excessive safety targets.<p>What are they?
> the evacuations as a response to Fukushima caused more harm than the radiation would have<p>This is a convenient opinion, not a true fact. Not different than saying, "I broke my leg after running from a tiger, so not running from a tiger would had been safer".<p>People try to convert that opinion on truth by the procedure of repeating it again and again, but we are still waiting to see the facts and the logical thinking that sustain this claim.<p>The radiation could have done a lot of harm, and nobody in march 2011 knew if the plant could be stabilized. They toke the 120% correct choice with the available data. And would be still the option taken in 2026 under similar circumstances. Everything else is reckless negligence.<p>To those that repeat in 2026, "but the plants never exploded". remember that they didn't had the luxury of knowing this at the time. Also that the inconvenient facts (like cancer ratio increasing, or newborns with troubles) were hidden under the rug and ignored for as much time as they could, so any comparison is biased from the start.
The human impact of those is a fraction of fossil-fuels. So it’s not fair to judge nuclear for being expensive if we don’t hold other fuels to similarly rigorous standards
Are you saying that plutonium isn't nearly as poisonous as people claim, and watching for hairline cracks in containment walls is a waste of time?<p>Or something like that?
Not GP, but plutonium is overhyped in how scary it is.<p>Don't get me wrong, it's super deadly, but there are loads of toxins that are more deadly than plutonium. And while its radioactivity is seen as ultra scary, it's actually pretty nice, because you can at least detect it. Harder than beta or gamma, but still, it announces its presence.<p>How I wish I had a magic wand (spectrometer) that I could wave over my food to see if cyanide, ricin, mercury, or lead were there.
This. I wish people made a Geiger counter equivalent for pm2.5 and other atmospheric pollutants, people would never get to the subway again. And breathing air in any big Asian city is much more dangerous than doing the same in Prypiat.
Yeah, the problem is the overhyping of radiation's danger kind of covers-up the other problem, radiation weakens everything. Hairline cracks are a threat because the radiation is going to weaken the cement that's holding the very high pressure steam that's generating electricity.<p>Nuclear meltdowns have been common but dangerous radiation leaks rare and over-hyped, sure. But meltdowns involve an extraordinarily expensive piece of equipment irrevocably breaking and that is what has made nuclear power uneconomical, not environmentalists' hand wringing. Indeed, I'd suspect nuclear company executives love to say the environmentos killed things, much better than saying their operations weren't economical.
> plutonium is overhyped in how scary it is... it's super deadly<p>"Super deadly" sounds enough scary to me, thanks<p>There are things that are "super deadly premium" of course. Stupidity terrifies me more than Plutonium. Specially when both things come together, but in the end the result is not much different.
See nuclear topic, scroll just like 2 turns to see once again someone claiming nuclear is the one technology in all of history that doesn't improve with technology.
Yeah, let's not forget defence budgets that are spent to prop up oil availability too.
Yes, think about the US military budget.<p>I'd argue at least half of it basically functions as a petroleum subsidy.<p>And the other thing that people just simply do not understand is it's solar and wind are now cheaper than anything else, even if the subsidies are applied to them, and would be even more so if the trump tarrifs were eliminated.<p>The only justification in nuclear right now it's deglobalization and energy independence. But I would argue all the money you throw into nuclear for that, it's much better served simply building out solar and wind
That... doesn't seem true?<p><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY</a><p>Here's an Illinois professor going through the economics compared to a gas plant.<p>Nuclear power can become dramatically cheaper than other energy sources in the long run.
He mixed some units there, mostly by translating Chinese costs into OECD/USA costs. China does indeed take 5 years to build a reactor. That's what happens when you build a couple a year for decades. After 20 years, that might be true in the OECD/USA too, but for now you are looking at over 10 years, $10B/GW, and over 8% interest.<p>None of that is the real issue though. The real issue is for at least 8 hours a day, but probably more like 16 hours a day, renewables can generate power at well under 1/2 the price of what he calculated. So they won't sell the 9 units of power he forecast - it will be at best 4.5 units, and the nuclear plant even at his optimistic assumptions never makes money.<p>If you look at South Australia [0] - they are at 80% renewables now. At 80%, the average wholesale is cheaper than what nuclear can supply. The percentage will go higher, probably to around 90%..95%. They are and will achieve that with very limited (ie, cheap) storage.<p>But obviously that isn't 100% - so it becomes a question of what can fill the gap of 60 days or so a year the cheapest. Nuclear has no hope. Generating and storing ammonia using excess renewables and burning it when needed is one of the most expensive forms of energy available - but if you only need to do it for 60 days a year, it is still far cheaper than nuclear, because nuclear's primary cost is it's interest bill, not fuel.<p>The good professor paints gas fuel cost as a disadvantage. But when you are only burning it 60 days a year, then compared to paying nuclear's interest bill 365 days a year it's cheap.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.energymining.sa.gov.au/consumers/energy-grid-and-supply/our-electricity-supply-and-market" rel="nofollow">https://www.energymining.sa.gov.au/consumers/energy-grid-and...</a>
Which should we expect will find more cost reductions in the next couple decades? Nuclear or battery storage?<p>Looked at it that way, I'm skeptical of all these new nuclear projects. No one has made SMRs work economically, yet we're seeing incredible improvements in batteries, and there's enough unexplored chemistry possibilities we don't have a reason to think we're near the end of the road on that.
This must at least partly be region-dependent right?<p>In the darker northern parts of Europe, the German transition to renewable haven't really been a cost-saving success story (right?).<p>From my (very) casual Swedish vantage point, the wind build out here was a very government subsided race to zero marginal prices that barely helped anything?
This really should be a top level comment. It accurately explains the broken economics of nuclear, and is the real reason effectively no nukes will be built going forward. Not the usual tired points about regulations and safety fears and Chernobyl or whatever
To be fair South Australia is:<p>* <i>Incredibly</i> sunny<p>* <i>Incredibly</i> sparely populated<p>* Functionally winterless<p>Like it's the perfect setup for solar.<p>Somewhere like Denmark, Japan, even the US Northeast does not have those.
Precisely. France built out its current nuclear fleet over decades. The first reactors were expensive, but then costs came down. Of course, then they stopped and are now trying to restart again with new reactor models. It's been expensive and it's not clear they'll start building en-mass again.
Some people have irrational exuberance around nuclear technologies, and the numbers in that overly long explanation are an example of that. $5B for 1GW of nuclear?! HAH!<p>There's a systematic bias among all energy professionals to both vastly underestimate the cost of building nuclear, and overestimate the cost of solar, wind, and storage.<p>Go back 5 or 10 years, look at the numbers projected, and it's just <i>wild</i>. I've never seen any other industry where there's such a mass hallucination among people that otherwise consider themselves "serious people."
Yes, thank you. Eroi ist the only thing which matters from a hard physics stand point.
That’s just not true.<p>An energy source with an EROI of 20 but which requires thousands of highly skilled people to tend it is going to lose to an energy source with an EROI of 15 that sits in a field and just works for 30 years.
It turns out that economic cost of labor and inputs also factors into energy considerations. It's rather soft thinking to ignore them, and leads to very bad conclusions.
Profit is not everything.<p>> That being said, many countries consider it a national security issue not to be held hostage to foreign oil.<p>Spot on. That, plus... peak oil.
Maybe you could give numbers because french nuclear industry is completely profitable. If you like numbers like me: there were more subsidies to wind and solar energy the last twenty years in germany than the price of the whole french nuclear program (300 billions) since its inception (250 billions since the 1974).<p>The reliability of french electricity benefits both France and Europe as a whole. I cannot say the same about what germany is trying to do.
Why then was EDF nationalized in 2023? A year after making an €18B loss? Why was EDF forced to buy the massively loss-making Areva/Framatome in 2017? How will Flamanville 3 - the latest reactor - at a cost of €24B to deliver 1.6GW ever be profitable, given it will need to earn €138 per MWh over 60 years just to break even? This is over 2.5 times the average wholesale price of the market it will be selling into and twice the €70/MWh state mandated nuclear electricity price cap.<p>- <a href="https://www.powermag.com/flamanville-3-europes-hard-won-nuclear-milestone/" rel="nofollow">https://www.powermag.com/flamanville-3-europes-hard-won-nucl...</a><p>- <a href="https://www.techniques-ingenieur.fr/actualite/articles/epr-de-flamanville-la-rentabilite-n-est-pas-assuree-142457/" rel="nofollow">https://www.techniques-ingenieur.fr/actualite/articles/epr-d...</a>
Anything is cheaper when you don't count all the costs.<p><i>In January 2017 a parliamentary committee reported: "The cost of decommissioning is likely to be greater than the provisions," the technical feasibility is "not fully assured" and the dismantling work will take "presumably more time than expected."</i><p><a href="https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france?ref=undecided.tech" rel="nofollow">https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...</a>
There’s tons of costs associated with coal, oil, and natural gas extraction, processing, and use, which are neither priced into up front costs nor the price that customers pay for the product. If those were priced in, then fossil fuels would have to become more expensive. Those costs currently get diffused into various other areas and paid for by a wide net of payers, including both the customers and non-customers, and a big one is the government (taxpayer).
> The reliability of french electricity<p>Except for the winter of 2022 when more than half of French reactors were not running, which was especially critical because of the Russian War against the Ukraine. Coal reactors had to be reactivated in Germany so lights didn't turn off in France.<p>Or summer when reactors have to be shut down because the rivers are too hot or running low.
So many reactors off was a special event of delayed maintenance, things are done so that does not usually happens.
And it's not true to say that Germany reactivated coal reactors for French lights.<p>Germany activated coal to reduce dependance on gas, and Germany exported energy to France because of the maintainances ; you know, the old correlation =/= causation.<p>That one occurence over 4 decades, I would say we can dare to call it pretty reliable
Until the rivers run low.<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungarys-paks-nuclear-plant-could-shut-down-thursday-or-friday-pm-says-2026-07-30/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungarys-paks-nuclea...</a><p>> Nuclear plants along the Danube river in Hungary and Romania were forced to cut output this week and could be shut down completely in the coming days due to record low water levels.
You know when rivers run not-low? In winter when we need to heat all those freezing homes. Crazy how that works. Yup, it's not ideal in a summer heat wave... but that's precisely when solar can shine.<p>We need both until we've solved storage. There's no need for more false dichotomies and FUD.
I’m curious why profitability is the concern here? I was under the impression that abundant clean energy would be of higher concern than profitability of energy companies - unless you mean that profitability concerns will reduce the willingness to invest and develop more nuclear?<p>I guess we could argue that these sorts of operations should be state owned?
But many nuclear power plants in europe are running on russian uranium - so I don't get the argument that you are "hostage" to foreign oil just to become "hostage" of foreign uranium.<p>Something like wind and solar combined with batteries would be a more sovereign form of energy generation that is (as a bonus) more decentral and less prone to attacks.
Plenty of uranium available from Canada, Australia, and Namibia<p>FWIW Russia produces less than either Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan
canada has raw uranium. russia runs the centrifuges, im pretty sure on canadian uranium, too<p>has fossil fuels been profitable? or just had most of the costs externalized? same with solar and wind - the negatives have been written off as free, whereas the environmentalists from russia have pushed to make sure that nuclear has every possible cost counted against it
Canadian reactors don't use enriched uranium. Also many countries have centrifuges - Germany, Netherlands, Japan, Brazil, and of course all the nuclear armed states. Further, enrichment plants can be built anywhere.
Even in Spain we have Uranium, but the politicians made it illegal to mine it, lol (I wanna cry)
Why? Isn’t it in the national interest of a government to preferentially use foreign sources of uranium to preserve domestic sources?
there is a strong environmental reason for this without even considering that there are plenty of alternatives to nuclear energy that do not require destroying the environment, because everything has consequences. destroying entire ecosystems puts many species at risk, mining requires huge amounts of water, money, and often involves legal slavery. plus, the extraction and processing process releases significant amounts of CO2 due to heavy machinery and refining. So thankfully, your country took a good decision
Mining isn't a great argument against nuclear. Uranium fuel has an incredibly high energy density so a relatively small amount of high grade ore can be converted into a large amount of electricity so even when compared to the one time input from mining required to produce all of the components that go into making a PV installation it can still perform favourably. Uranium mining is also transitioning away from open pit mines to using in-situ recovery where a liquid solution is injected into a uranium ore formation to dissolve the uranium before recovering the solution, about 55% of current uranium production uses this method already.
Mining uranium in Spain would destroy environment and involve legal slavery?
Slavery is obviously not an issue in a country like Spain, but any kind of mining operation here seems to be heavily opposed by the people that live around the potential sites, for environmental reasons.
Nuclear fuel is available from lots of countries, including Canada and Australia, plus deposits in Europe that aren't being minted because uranium is very cheap.<p>Plus you can stockpile it super easy.
Wrong uranium you can easily stock for 10years inadvance
Nuclear power plants refuel on yearly cycles.<p>That's plenty of time to source alternative uranium supplies presuming you haven't stockpiled.<p>Plus: Australia has an absolute ton of the stuff.
>I agree, I tell everyone who will listen that no country, not Russia, China, Japan, France, USA etc has ever made nuclear power profitable.<p>This is comparing to the base case of fossil fuels. But those have tremendous negative consequences.
This is false. Nuclear power plants are very profitable, if streamline the regulations that are choking them to death with bureaucracy and no safety.
why is profit the right descriptor?<p>wouldnt you instead count the net benefits to the whole economy from having that cheap and plentiful electricity?
I am generally of the opinion that nuclear power is not justified on the basis of base economics.<p>But I thought South Korea made a good swing at it, but I haven't kept up on things much
Why the myopic focus on profitability? Only one nation has succeeded in making healthcare profitable, please tell us how that has led to the best outcome for society?
Power is an input. If it isn’t profitable it needs to be subsidized from elsewhere.<p>Healthcare is the same. It just turns out subsidizing it from wages works because healthy people are more productive.<p>Profitability isn’t a hard limit. But if something isn’t internally profitable, it requires an external partner to get going.
Because for power creation there are alternatives, but for healthcare there aren't. Renewables are cheap now and they also solve the sovereignty issue. Ideally we could use land currently dedicated to energy crops to install solar panels that operate at a significantly higher efficiency.
Because for healthcare profit isn't a motive to begin with (or at least, it shouldn't be) and there aren't many different alternative sources for it either.
Neither it is for nuclear. It fixes the externality
Healthcare is profitable like schools are, or roads, or public transportation, or sanitary systems: the goal is for us a society to live better.<p>When something is profitable in the sense that a few oligarchs make more an more money, I see it as a bug, not a feature.
And in a society that hasn’t made health care profitable (Italy), I waited 12 hours, literally on the floor, with a broken arm and <i>covered</i> in my own blood, before I was seen after a motorcycle accident.<p>I literally would’ve been better off flying to New York. I still have scars and nerve damage from the incredibly poor care in Italy’s medical system.<p>In the US, I was rushed into the ER in an ambulance and seen immediately after a car hit me while I was bicycling — and that was just because they were worried about the speed at which the accident occurred. They had me patched up within the hour. I was fine, road rash and sore for a couple weeks.<p>There’s no silver bullet here, but I’m very sure that healthcare is not a good analogy for nuclear power.<p>I’m also very sure that anyone that advocates for government healthcare should try actually using it in one of these countries. I hope you enjoy waiting and long-term adverse health effects from poor, delayed, and inaccessible care.
I had an non urgent injury in Spain last week. Went to A&E and was seen by a doctor, x-rayed, and given advice and the results within 90 minutes. I paid zero euros for that on top of my taxes. Maybe it's an Italian problem... And for sure Spain has its own issues as well, but private is not always necessarily better.
I've lived in Spain a couple years ago. I've seen the quality of its health care. Its easily 20 years behind the US and that's being charitable. The family that lived next to me had a man who had the exact same break I had had 20 years before. He had worse, more primitive care than I did in the US decades before. I had to explain to them why it was a bad idea for him to sit in his wheelchair all day because nobody in the Spanish system seemed to know how to care for a simple broken leg. You got what you paid for...<p>PS Spanish taxes are absurdly high...insurance in the US is still cheaper than the difference in taxes between the two countries. All that and an actual working economy and energy system.
Sometimes it works — but the overall quality, speed, and care outcomes remain, on average, very poor when compared to the US.<p>The price is only good if you ignore the outcomes and what you’re paying on the backend through taxes.
>I’m also very sure that anyone that advocates for government healthcare should try actually using it in one of these countries<p>I actually do since I'm Italian lol<p>Don't get me wrong, what has happened to you feels at best a bad practice, at worst something that goes on the news or that has a legal proceeding afterwards. I've known people with good and bad experiences, I can't complain too much about it. Can I ask in which region? Italian Healthcare is somewhat region-dependant
Uhhh, some nerve damage, news worthy? Ho qualche dubbio al riguardo.<p>Fellow italian here, let's not act like our third rate ERs never leave people suffering for hours without caring that it may have lasting consequences. I understand it's partially due to understaffing, but this is the reality. My dad had this happen to him as well. Thanks
This was at the Ospedale San Carlo di Nancy in Rome.
> I waited 12 hours, literally on the floor, with a broken arm and covered in my own blood, before I was seen after a motorcycle accident.<p>So literally just a broken limb. Non-life threatening, can wait. Sorry, triage is a bitch. Some patients will literally die within minutes/hours if not actively treated. Go figure.<p>> In the US, I was rushed into the ER in an ambulance<p>The second they dispatch an ambulance, you owe them how much exactly these days? $5000?
A broken limb, fractured elbow, deep cuts/lacerations/abrasions on my legs, elbow, and arms. I was in pain, my wounds were filled with gravel and dirt, and I just closed my eyes and laid on the floor and disassociated for twelve fucking hours. My girlfriend was losing her shit trying to advocate for me.<p>Subjectively applied, uncaring triage that leaves people poorly cared for is <i>exactly</i> what happens when you lack sufficient capacity, aren’t paying your staff enough to care, and staff's incentives aren’t sufficiently tied to their outcomes.<p>My father, an ER doctor in the US, was losing his shit over their quality of care when I FaceTimed him afterwards.<p>Your lack of compassion is also exactly what produces these kinds of systems. Who cares about the actual outcomes or the affected individuals, as long as your ideological ideals aren’t challenged.<p>> The second they dispatch an ambulance, you owe them how much exactly these days? $5000?<p>My insurance covered all of it. The driver’s insurance reimbursed my own.<p>And even if they hadn’t, I’d rather be in the hole financially than spend 12 hours in pain and have persistent issues caused by free health care doing a hack job putting me back together.<p>The US healthcare system isn’t perfect, but I’ve got at least another four decades left on this planet, and the cost of US healthcare is nothing compared to the cost of living out those decades in a body that’s not as healthy as possible.
You lost any credibility with the $5000 comment. You have no idea how the american system works and I'm not even american.
Your snarky tone is absolutely disgusting, I would love for you to receive the same answer when talking about some health issue caused by terrible healthcare.<p>Terminally online people like you who lose all empathy when something they believe in is criticized are very funny and sad at the same time.
I am not sure what you mean by profitable here?
Yes, while we’re looking at expenses, add the military to oil.
What exactly does it mean for a powerplan in china or russia to be profitable?
The same thing it means anywhere else?<p>Any argument that environmentalists run amok is the sole cause of nuclear's failure to launch has to address the fact that these two places, where environmentalists are a lot more likely to get a club to the head than a say at the table, are largely <i>not</i> expanding their nuclear power that much versus, say, solar in China.
This is wrong, Germanies Konvoi where immensely profitable. The greens complained about these as money printing machines.
China, Russia and the USA all have massive and vested interests in fossil fuels. In the US for example we’ve been subsidizing the everloving hell out of fossil, eroding regulations that would hold them accountable for externalities…<p>…and then people wonder why nuclear isn’t competitive. When you hold one thing under a microscope because “radiation” scares people, we end up with millions dead per year from air and water pollution due to fossil fuels.
China has some coal reserves but overall they're a major net fossil fuel importer. They're quite short of crude oil and natural gas reserves relative to demand. This is a serious national security risk which is why they've been rapidly electrifying their economy and building solar, nuclear, and hydro power plants (along with coal fired power plants).
They’ve been building out every form of power generation they can. Nuclear, solar, wind and fossil. It’s all skyrocketing.<p>The talking point that they’re going green doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.<p><a href="https://www.globalelectricity.org/china-electricity-production/" rel="nofollow">https://www.globalelectricity.org/china-electricity-producti...</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China</a>
That link is out of date. China's coal share fell under 50% this year (your link says 58%), and their CO2 emissions dropped 1% the first half of 2026.<p>So yes, it can be reasonably claimed that China is greening. "greening", not "green" -- 49.7% coal is still a lot of CO2.<p><a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/energy/articles/china-pushes-coal-miners-lift-071500851.html" rel="nofollow">https://finance.yahoo.com/energy/articles/china-pushes-coal-...</a>
Maybe emissions fell because industrial activity fell instead? Maybe oil and gas have been used less because the cost has risen. Maybe that explains coal as well depending on how it is used. I’m speculating coal might be used in the production of steel - what if that product is highly tariffed in the US and EU so China had to cut back?<p>China is “greening” but we should be skeptical that it’s out of some lofty moral goal. If it was they wouldn’t be hoarding the production of rare earth minerals and would be freely giving away technology for the sake of the planet.
> China is “greening” but we should be skeptical that it’s out of some lofty moral goal<p>Why does the "why" matter? Tons of carbon are tons of carbon, right? That's what people say when you tell them about per-capita emissions.<p>> they wouldn’t be hoarding the production of rare earth minerals and would be freely giving away technology for the sake of the planet.<p>You can freely buy as many cheap panels and batteries and EVs and heat pumps from China as you like (unless your country is stupid enough to tariff or ban them). Those come with minerals. When they reach end-of-life they can be recycled.<p>What exactly are they "hoarding" that the planet needs to go green? It hasn't prevented Pakistan or Vietnam from going ham on PV deployment.
> Why does the "why" matter?<p>Well it doesn’t entirely matter but we should just acknowledge that it’s a geopolitical strategy and not really something they are doing for the planet.<p>> You can freely buy as many cheap panels and batteries and EVs and heat pumps from China as you like (unless your country is stupid enough to tariff or ban them). Those come with minerals. When they reach end-of-life they can be recycled. What exactly are they "hoarding" that the planet needs to go green? It hasn't prevented Pakistan or Vietnam from going ham on PV deployment.<p>Are you unfamiliar with China’s restrictions on rare earth exports for example due to alleged “dual use” as they continue to apply military pressure on democratic Taiwan? I’d encourage you to read up on these restrictions with respect to Japan for example who is alarmed by Chinese and North Korean provocations.<p>You can buy so many cheap panels practically only from China because they subsidized the industry so other countries couldn’t compete and build their own solar panels. For some these tariffs and bans are responses to these anti-competitive strategies. It’s not just the US, by the way. The EU is tariffing China too.<p>They are entitled to pursue these strategies but we are also entitled in the west to recognize them and combat them how we see fit.
Oh you're correct, the same thing is happening in India without any of the nonsense fanfare.<p><a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-china-and-india-for-first-time-in-52-years-after-clean-energy-records" rel="nofollow">https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi...</a><p><a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/span-style_font-size_0.94em__Coal-power-drops-in-China-and-India-for-first-time-in-52-years-after-clean-energy-records.png" rel="nofollow">https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/span-...</a><p>You can see the same dips hit at the same time for the same reason.<p>In terms of Chinese coal though there's a reason boosters always talk about percentages and not absolute number... one goes down, but the other keeps rising. Even if China continues on the current course in terms of tonnage burned they won't reach "peak coal" until at least 2030.
To add to this, China’s overall greenhouse gas emissions have been flat or declining for a couple of years now: <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-have-now-been-flat-or-falling-for-21-months" rel="nofollow">https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...</a>
Your own link says the following:<p>> After the first three quarters of the year, China’s CO2 emissions in 2025 are now finely balanced between a small fall or rise, depending on what happens in the last quarter.<p>And then goes on to describe how the largest drop (3%) is happening at a time when it just happens that fuel is increasingly expensive and scarce, shipping is increasingly expensive and slow, and the global economy has spent months grinding increasingly towards a terrible outcome.<p>People might as well brag about their incredible weight loss journey through amputation.
I never claimed that China is "going green" (whatever that means), merely that they're gradually reducing their dependence on imported fossil fuels.
Fossil is flat or declining. Everything else is skyrocketing.
China can be going green while also refusing to constrain it's economic growth on the short term.<p>When you actually build things, throwing up a coal plant for 10 years because you need it while you grow your solar and battery industries or wait for reactors to cover your base load is just sensible.<p>All narratives about China always have this static world baked into them: "they're currently like this, and that's all they'll ever be". But China develops fast. Shenzhen was a farming village by a ditch. 10 years ago buying a Chinese car was inconceivable - I took delivery on one yesterday, etc.<p>At some point in the very near future China is going to hit a cross over point on their emissions and they'll start falling fast because reactors + renewables will be building out fast enough they'll want the coal plants gone - no one likes ruling over a polluted wasteland.<p>Edit: it can also be the case that they don't care at all about going green...but renewable energy technology is the most sovereign possible energy security. No one can take away your access to the sun.
China also? How is that? China is a big importer of oil, and is heavily burning coal (more than 50% their energy mix), that is also partly imported. They are fighting for a cleaner energy not because they are green but because they don't want to be dependent on imports, and some people even accuse them of undercutting solar panel pricing to get all the world market.<p>They are installing nuclear power like no other country (1 GW yearly since 2014), and Wikipedia says that 50% of all nuclear capacity being built is in China (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country</a>): 37 new reactors, followed by India with 6 and <i>Russia</i>, Egypt and Korea with 4. USA and France, which are both pro-nuclear or nuclear neutral, are building 0 reactors. But yeah, China has interests against nuclear power.<p>You are not helping your case by spreading misinformation and calling other people misinformed by making a strawman ("radiation scares people"). I am against nuclear (or rather not pro-nuclear) because it is not economically sound, because it is massively subsidized by Governments for the private sector to profit.
Coal's share of electricity production in China fell below 50% in 2026 for the first time ever. This is despite idling nat gas plants due to the war in Iran messing up shipments.<p>Nuclear's share of electricity in China is below 4% and dropping. They do not use a significant amount of nuclear. That this insignificant amount of nuclear is more than any other country is quite telling.
If china that is the number one producer of solar panels and batteries is investing in nuclear perhaps that shows that indeed it's not such a bad bet? Specially taking into account the military applications of such capabilities.<p>It would also seem that investing into it may perhaps render significant gains into the future as R&D becomes more involved with actual running systems and funded (skin in the game?)<p>It seems the only ones who lost by abandoning their nuclear programs were European countries (specially Germany) in detriment of Russia and other Oil trading countries... It's even probable that much of the "bad press" nuclear has had for the past decades was in fact instigated by oil-producing countries doesn't it?
People who know how much effort it takes to constantly measure and contain radioactivity and what a mess it is to mine for Uranium in the first place also don't wonder.<p>If not, reading a list of this helps:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nuclear_disasters_and_radioactive_incidents" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nuclear_disasters_and...</a><p>But sure, oil leaks can be bad as well. Solar leaks on the other hand seem bearable.
I believe burning coal realease far more Uranium and radioactive material than nuclear ever did.
Listing the plane crashes over the last century wont buldge the statistics of the safety of this mean of transportation.
Did I imply anywhere anyhow that I am a fan of coal?<p>I just don't think it is a good idea to replace something dirty with something else dirty that is indeed quite safe if all goes well, but is horrible if something goes wrong.<p>Italy has lot's of sun and wind (and geothermal potential).
Everything is a comparison to what exists, not your dreams. The alternative to coal today isn't <i>just</i> renewables, and thinking in those absolute terms is in large part what's handed the fossil fuel lobby decades of default victories.<p>We don't have time for perfect solution, do all of what you said AND THEN ALSO MORE.
"We don't have time for perfect solution"<p>Exactly. You can buy and deploy solar, wind and batteries as much as you want now.
If you care about strategic independence, build factories for them.<p>But a nuclear reactor takes a long time to get build. And is likely way more expensive. If italy manages to do it fast and cheap - other countries will follow, but I believe it when I see it.
I am someone who knows, hence my disgust. Time to learn about the radioactivity of coal fly ash and how carefully that’s managed.
Oh, I know and am in favor of shutting coal down asap and before nuclear. But you seem to imply handling radioactivity is not a big problem compared to fossils, but I believe it is, considering how faulty and corrupt individual humans are, or corporations or government bodies doing the oversight.
Off topic, but this guy on youtube is a knowledgeable (pro-nuke) resource.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/@tfolsenuclear" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/@tfolsenuclear</a>
Why does electricity need to be profitable? Are roads, justice systems, or armies profitable?
Most electricity and infrastructure is profitable. But not after carving it out in a way that looks at it in complete isolation. Just like train infrastructure creates a lot of business around the area of the train infrastructure, even if the train itself may seem not self sustained.
They are not profitable. They add taxes to gas so that it pays for it.
Sure, but then that's not "profitable" in the direct sense of "makes rich oligarchs richer".<p>I'm all for improving the quality of life for society. In the end the goal is to live well, not to destroy our living conditions for a few oligarchs to make more money. But "profitability" is not generally optimised like this, unfortunately.
I'm fairly sure that the total economic value that we get out of roads far exceeds the cost it takes to create and maintain them, yes. A similar argument can probably be made for justice systems and armies.<p>If a power generation system costs more to operate than the value of power we get out of it, it's probably not very useful. I think that's what we're talking about here.
I think that for your analogy to work, you also need to consider the total economic value that we get out of electricity as opposed to just revenue from electricity bills...?
> If a power generation system costs more to operate than the value of power we get out of it, it's probably not very useful.<p>There is more than money. There is stability (not depending on foreign oil, peak oil, etc), there is climate change, etc.
Notice how for roads you compare the total economic value of all roads against the cost of them. But for electricity you compare a single power generation system. You are not comparing the same thing. A fair comparison would be the total economic value of having electricity against the cost of all electricity infrastructure. Sadly this fair comparison is irrelevant in this thread.
If every government had subsidized and pushed forward a transition to ~100% nuclear power back in the 70s it would have effectively solved climate change. Electricity, industry and heat production account for >50% of CO2 production.<p>Then there's all the other effects of not having a high demand for hydrocarbons including less Middle East entanglement, less mining and drilling, more abundant and cheaper oil for uses other than burning it, etc.
It does not. But there are so many sources that can be. And easily at that. So why go this route?
Those things you pay for indirectly via taxes. Electricity you pay for directly. you can build unprofitable economically uncompetitive power, like nukes, and your rates will go up. People tend not to like that, but you can do it.
Why would we choose a more expensive form of energy rather than cheaper forms?<p>There are good reasons to choose more expensive things, but "nuclear sounds cool" is not a good reason. There must be some sort of rationale and benefit beyond that.
Emissions.
Batteries and solar and wind are a lot cheaper, faster to deploy, and scale a ton better.<p>Nuclear is far too slow to solve our emissions problems, there's no chance of us being able to scale the nuclear industry to be able to confront climate change on the time scale necessary.<p>In contrast, batteries, solar, and wind are scaling on their own, without the massive government subsidies that would be needed to deliver nuclear too late to help.
Not sure about profitable but the lower the cost is the generate electricity, the better off the world will be. Cracking energy is, to state the obvious, a huge unlock.
Because in their wisdom the politicians have created energy markets.
The costs for generating electricity needs to be paid for somehow.<p>Having the consumers of the electricity pay for has a lot of advantages!
Does it really matter if it's profitable? We're destroying the planet. Heaven forbid we lose money on something that gives us a chance.
Yes, because profitable enterprises are able to grow faster than unprofitable ones. If you think something is good, and want more of it, making it profitable is conducive to your goals.
Are fossil fuels net profitable after subsidies, wars, and externalities are considered?
Also, dealing with the nuclear waste can be problematic. Even if you recycle it like France, it still costs to re-enrich it and still produces waste itself.
Treat power plants as public infrastructure. No need for high returns or insurance of every risk.
We’re at the point now where this has to be a problem for the future.
That's why I think lifters are really the only true path to cost reasonable nuclear power... They "burn" almost all fuel and have separation procedures for the other fission products, and I believe they can consume nuclear waste since it's a breeder reactor.
Do you mean nuclear isn't profitable compared to coal, whose costs are externalized, or compared to other renewables?
In most sunny places a decentralized per-home solar policy is cheap, sustainable, and more robust to severe local weather events.<p>While fission reactors are still the cheaper initial energy choice (like a future cancer patients love of cheap cigarettes.) Small Modular reactors are a fools errand for most places, as they have all the same security, labor, and maintenance issues of full sized installations. Thus, instead of repairing one of four turbines every few years, the contaminated components must now be reprocessed or safely hidden away on mass.<p>Maybe fine for submarines or aircraft carriers, but for massive infrastructure it is trivial to prove it causes major long-term problems.<p>Anyone that has ever purchased a property with an old leaky heating-oil tank nasty surprise site-reclamation cost... will understand the initial unit price never covers the actual clean up cost. =3
They didn't because the taxpayers will finance that and no politician would be able to sell this.
Yes, it is part of Trump's tariff deals forced on e.g. Japan:<p><a href="https://www.neimagazine.com/news/us-japan-in-smr-deal/" rel="nofollow">https://www.neimagazine.com/news/us-japan-in-smr-deal/</a><p>Italy should be buying proven French technology instead.
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I'm Italian and I'm super happy with this.<p>The referendum that made nuclear energy illegal in Italy was held right after the accident of Chernobyl; people voted with their gut, not with their mind.<p>Curiously enough, some Italian town signs still have a small sub-sign reading "denuclearized municipality" (example: <a href="https://live.staticflickr.com/1421/712461235_e46a2c7db5_z.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://live.staticflickr.com/1421/712461235_e46a2c7db5_z.jp...</a> )
As someone who thinks nuclear is both less efficient and much more expensive than renewable energies - would you mind sharing a bit why this makes you happy?<p>Since all plants in Italy are closed since the 90s won’t it take decades and billions of tax euros to get them back operational again?
If it's actually inefficient, there's no need to have laws against it.
It’s not either or, you need both. We haven’t solved energy storage so renewables can’t be the only source of energy. If you look at Value-Adjusted Levelized Cost of Electricity (VALCOE) it changes the calculation quite a bit. We have negative energy prices a few times per year in Europe as it is.
We’ve solved both. The research has moved on from VALCOE to whole system modeling. Including transmission, storage, backup, firming and modeling it hour by hour.<p>Studies are converging on renewable energy systems being cheaper in climates ranging from Australia to the Nordics:<p>Some recent ones:<p>Finland, 2025: nuclear scenarios 71–84% higher system cost; unrestricted least-cost optimization builds zero new nuclear.
<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544225042720" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422...</a><p>Denmark, 2026: system-level LCOE including storage, flexibility and system integration; renewables substantially cheaper than nuclear.
<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544226009837" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422...</a><p>Australia, CSIRO + AEMO GenCost 2025–26: whole-system modelling including transmission, storage and firming; renewables + storage remain the lowest-cost net-zero pathway.
<a href="https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/Electricity-transition/GenCost" rel="nofollow">https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/Ele...</a>
I do a lot of work in this space, including all that modeling you mentioned. "Solved" is a bit of an overstatement. The system works, and it can work with renewables+storage (modulo total supply of BESS is not there yet). However, there is high tail risk to not having steady baseload power.<p>And, even under ideal conditions, baseload is still quite hard. Especially in Southern Europe (e.g. which has quite a bit less land than Australia, and less wind than the nordic countries).<p>Fundamentally, I agree that it boils down to cost, and the people writing $XXB checks are generally pretty good at financial modeling. If nuclear makes sense, and the regulations allow it, they will build it. However, it's fighting against a highly variable, zero-marginal-cost renewable market with something that is high capex. Same reason people don't build new coal in the US despite certain politicians trying to popularize it.<p>My guess... If it does take off, either it will have to be wildly cheap (unlikely), or there are geopolitical concerns about the gas backup that Italy currently relies on so heavily to make the renewables work.
I'm interested in why people think this is wrong, in case this is the reason for the downvotes.
Because what is true for these 3 countries is not true for all countries. There are counter-examples where nuclear is cheaper.<p>In most countries which don't have the advantages of Australia or Finland, you do need a mix as the OP was saying
I didn't downvote but it's nonsense, nobody can sustain a winter with batteries and other storage.<p>I only checked the first paper and it doesn't seem talk about what would happen if a 3 weeks bad wind event would happen in winter, and a rough look at the figures makes me think it just wouldn't work at all. I didn't check the other papers.<p>And the proof is in the pudding anyways, if it's that cheap and feasible to do, well let's see who's doing it.
It is Simon Michaux that throws out the figure that you need 2TWH of storage to make it through he worse of Winter.<p><a href="https://www.ecoshock.org/2024/02/why-renewables-cannot-power-your-world-simon-michaux.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.ecoshock.org/2024/02/why-renewables-cannot-power...</a><p>I think he points to a valid point but completely over plays his hand. Everyone that has argued these kinds of points have brought valid arguments but have completely under estimated the pace of change.<p>Do keep in mind that Michaux is a fan of being a little contrarian. He likes the attention it being to him.<p>He might be right, and him pointing to the issues may actually be something that helps us avoid these issues. Generally, knowing about a problem is a much better position than being slammed by something you didn't anticipate.<p>I tend to think long term we are going to a much lower energy world, that we made the mistake of building a world and our expectations to the paradigm of fossil fuels. But I also think that we are not going back to the stone age and that renewables will do better than the pessimists. Good chance we will hit a reasonable mid-ground even if it means living standards change, possibly a smaller, slower but more intentional world. It may be nice even if it means you can no longer get a slab of Coke for an hours wage.
About the last question, i don't think the old plants will play any part in this eventual return.
The idea is to go to new-generation SMRs, not revive decades-old plants, which is actually impossible.
Whether it's more expensive or not depends on how you measure "cost", and including intermittency and storage costs for renewables seems to favor Nuclear in many cases[1][2]. Based on real-world examples of countries that traded one for the other, like Germany, renewables look quite bad economically. I know there's a lot of hand waving about how this has to do with how electric auctions work, but this seems like a convenient excuse.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544222018035" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03605...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#Bank_of_America_(2023)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...</a>
Thanks for sharing those links, very interesting.<p>I guess ultimately the nuclear vs renewables discussion is coloured a lot by feelings nowadays.<p>Resources like this help a lot to form a more nuanced understanding grounded in reality - but otoh I have to admit that a lot of this goes over my head - like even trying to understand how the economy works around this is mind boggling complex. I’ll need a deeper look to understand it better and build a more informed opinion tbh
can you link to data to prove the economics are bad?
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It's cheaper if you stop caring about safety, right? In the USA it's now illegal for reactors to have adequate shielding - "as low as reasonably possible" is officially "woke"
"as low as reasonably possible" is a massive overkill.<p>US killing the linear no-threshold model is a good thing. LNT model assumes that absolutely no amount of radioactivity is safe, which is provably wrong.<p>It has nothing to do with safety if the model that required "as low as reasonably possible" is bullshit per se.<p>The maximum allowed annual radiation dose for US radiation workers is 50mSv/year. It's just 16x the global average background radiation. And that's the average. In reality it's more like 5x - 25x.<p>For cancer specifically we're seeing marginally increased risk at 100 mSv/year, but it doesn't really become worrying enough until we're at 300-500 mSv/year.
Two words: base load<p>And no you’re not solving it with a buffer (batteries or any kind of other energy storage for that matter)
Is there something unique to Italy that makes it an intractable problem? Where I live we've been able to shift a huge amount of our fossil fuels over to batteries in a relatively short time. It's nice that nuclear has power production 24/7 but it seems unnecessary when there's already a glut during the daytime
The fact that nuclear is good at the easy part of power production is not a point in favor of nuclear. Grids are built to peak needs; any grid that can handle peak load can handle base load.
Can you use more than 2 words in your explanation next time? Reciting known talking points offers little.
lol because nuclear reactors are so damn stable: <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2026/07/13/france-shuts-down-nuclear-reactors-as-heatwave-intensifies" rel="nofollow">https://www.euronews.com/2026/07/13/france-shuts-down-nuclea...</a>
Six words: base load generation is economically obsolete
In my country, we also have a dormant nuclear plant because of Chernobyl and political reasons.<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/world/asia/philippines-bataan-nuclear-power-plant.html?eafs_enabled=false" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/world/asia/philippines-ba...</a>
Where in Italy would you put reactors?<p><a href="https://maps.eu-risk.eucentre.it/map/european-seismic-risk-index-viewer/#7/42.743/13.574" rel="nofollow">https://maps.eu-risk.eucentre.it/map/european-seismic-risk-i...</a><p>Sardinia?
I think that there are plenty of blue areas on that map
Anywhere on this map. And you'd call it earthquake-proof, and when the next earthquake causes Fukushima 2, you just blame the contractors or something.
we had a referendum in 2011
>Rather than reviving the large reactors of the past, the government is focusing on small modular reactors, or SMRs, and other advanced technologies that supporters say could be safer, more flexible and quicker to build.<p>>The legislation does not authorize the construction of any reactors. Instead, it creates the regulatory foundation needed before future projects can be proposed, assessed and approved.<p>Giant step for SMRs. I'm hopefull for greater NATO collaboration regarding energy security if SMRs prove commercially viable.
It is sad that this has become a topic of the culture wars. Nothing good comes out of this, certainly not a rational weighing of the pros and cons of nuclear power.<p>I’m particularly interested in how they plan to finance reactors in a grid dominated by solar. I wouldn’t be surprised if they legally allow the building of new reactors but then fail to find investors. But perhaps they plan on using them as some sort of strategic assets and will just run them at a loss?
> I’m particularly interested in how they plan to finance reactors in a grid dominated by solar.<p>Solar is 15% - a lot but not yet dominated. Solar works at day and demand is also highest during the day so solar should not be an enemy of nuclear.
It is actually an enemy of nuclear, economically. Solar is so cheap, it will naturally grow until it satisfies 100% of the daytime load. This pushes nuclear off the grid during the day - it’s power costs too much. But nukes need to be running and selling at 100% 24/7 to have any chance of breaking even.<p>This is what the OP means - they make no economic sense on most modern grids.
Citation:<p><i>France's EDF Warns Solar, Wind Surge Straining Nuclear Fleet Costs</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47037839">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47037839</a> - February 2026<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20260217122120/https://www.edf.fr/en/the-edf-group/dedicated-sections/journalists/all-press-releases/the-edf-group-shares-the-key-findings-of-its-report-on-the-modulation-of-its-fleet" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20260217122120/https://www.edf.f...</a><p>Related:<p><i>Wind and solar generated more power than fossil fuels in the EU for the first time in 2025</i> - <a href="https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/wind-and-solar-generated-more-power-than-fossil-fuels-in-the-eu-for-the-first-time-in-2025/" rel="nofollow">https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/wind-and-solar-gener...</a> - January 22nd, 2026<p>> Wind and solar overtaking fossil fuels in 2025 can be largely attributed to a staggering rise in solar power. Solar grew by more than a fifth (+20.1%) for the fourth year running. It generated a record 13% of EU power in 2025, above both coal and hydro. This trend was widespread: all EU countries saw growth in solar generation compared to the year before, amid a huge expansion in EU solar installations. Solar provided more than a fifth of electricity in Hungary, Cyprus, Greece, Spain and the Netherlands. Renewables provided nearly half of EU power (48%) as unusual weather conditions caused hydro generation to fall by 12% and wind by 2%, but boosted solar generation. Wind remained the second largest EU electricity source at 17% of EU power, generating more than gas. Signs of a structural shift are clear across the EU, as wind and solar generated more electricity than all fossil sources in 14 of the 27 EU countries in 2025. Over the past five years, wind and solar have experienced massive growth (from 20% in 2020 to 30% in 2025). Fossil fuels have fallen from 37% to 29% in the same period, while hydro and nuclear remained stable or slightly declined.<p><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capacity" rel="nofollow">https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...</a> (installed solar energy capacity goes brrr)
> certainly not a rational weighing of the pros and cons of nuclear power.<p>Nuclear has no real cons other than time/cost of deployment, and it should be a no brainer for a place like Europe without significant energy resources. Once the power plant is built, it provides 50+ years of nearly free energy. It's that or buying gas from Russia.
> it should be a no brainer for a place like Europe without significant energy resources.<p>The uranium needs to be regularly replaced. Europe currently imports virtually all of the uranium used by its nuclear power plants. While Europe has some decommissioned uranium mines, they would have to be reopened, but the known deposits are estimated to cover less than the 50 years you cite, at current levels of nuclear production (much less when expanding production).<p>So if this is about energy independence rather than cost, I’m not sure that it would be such a great win.
Nuclear fuel rods get used for 1-2 years before they need to be replaced. This is much longer than it takes to burn a shipload of liquefied natural gas, though it's much shorter than it takes for solar panels or grid scale batteries to need replacement. Both nuclear energy and renewable energy are less sensitive to supply shocks than fossil energy, even if Europe doesn't reduce the percentage of its energy needs that depend on imports.
Australia and Canada are top producers of uranium ore, and uranium ore is a small fraction of total lifecycle costs. Given a ~2 year refuelling cycle and the possibility of stockpiling uranium, this is very far from an interruption to oil and gas flows - which you need a continuous supply of. Security isn't just a function of autarkic raw material supplies.
Idk we can import uranium from lots of places; i think currently mostly from Canada.<p>But I just don’t get why it’s being discussed at all - its obviously so much more expensive and time consuming to build than the alternatives
Yes no real cons if we exclude the small con of being completely economically unviable.
Cost and time seem like a pretty important con to me.
Cost of deployment is a <i>massive</i> consideration in our not-yet-post-scarcity society.<p>It takes billions to certify a nuclear power plant, and it takes billions more to re-certify it every few decades, to say nothing of the costs of modernization.<p>To be clear, I consider myself generally pro-nuclear power, but let's not ignore the <i>massive</i> upfront and ongoing capital and operational costs that really undermine this idea that it's free power.
>Nuclear has no real cons other than time/cost of deployment,<p>That's not true. It's extremely expensive to operate for one, so expensive in fact that nobody in the private sector wants to do it without having nation states basically guarantee profits for the lifetime of the plant or accept all liability. Which in several countries means that he operator is the nation state. Like in France.<p>The profits are guaranteed by collecting extra taxes from the population, not by increasing the price of electricity. Which is why people believe France has cheap electricity when they really don't.<p>Also of course each nuclear plant carries a nonzero chance of a trillion dollar incident (we've had two so far) as well as a nonzero chance of millions of casualties. Both these cons are entirely unique to nuclear power plants. No hydro plant, solar plant, wind farm, coal, oil or gas plant can cause as much damage as a nuclear plant.<p>>t's that or buying gas from Russia.<p>Not at all, there are many options (including buying gas from someone else). Some options got viable so recently people still haven't realized it. Like batteries. They're cheap now, you know, and China can build as many as we want. China has also caused a severe drop in the cost of hydrolyzers, used to create e-fuel. E-fuel means you can use solar power in winter and during night, which removes the remaining weakness of renewable sources. Europe should spend every eurocent in that direction instead of nuclear. That's the path to true energy independence.<p>And anyway, europe still gets 70% of it's nuclear fuel from Russia. How is that better than gas?
> Also of course each nuclear plant carries a nonzero chance of a trillion dollar incident (we've had two so far) as well as a nonzero chance of millions of casualties. Both these cons are entirely unique to nuclear power plants. No hydro plant, solar plant, wind farm, coal, oil or gas plant can cause as much damage as a nuclear plant.<p>The Banqiao dam failure killed 250,000 people in a single incident. Pollution from coal plants running <i>normally</i> causes 1 million premature deaths <i>per year.</i> The deepwater horizon spill was a $100 billion disaster with an environmental impact greater than any nuclear incident. The Centralia fires in PA are still burning after over 60 years and lead to a town being abandoned. Nuclear is not uniquely risky by any rational metric.
How about nuclear fuel still being dependent on either russia or us? and that is just one reason.
It's not.<p><a href="https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/conversion-enrichment-and-fabrication/uranium-enrichment" rel="nofollow">https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...</a><p>Orano and Urenco are European and have massive enrichment capability.<p>Canada, Australia and Namibia have massive Uranium reserves.<p><a href="https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/mining-of-uranium/world-uranium-mining-production" rel="nofollow">https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...</a>
Conspiracy hat time: I think this is the main reason it's being pushed so hard. The US and Russia feel threatened by the rise of renewables and will do anything to get countries dependent on them again.
> Nuclear has no real cons other than time/cost of deployment<p>... and cost of operation and the fact that you have radioactive material you need to securely and safely store for quite a bit (which no one has figured out yet)
> and the fact that you have radioactive material you need to securely and safely store for quite a bit (which no one has figured out yet)<p>It's perfectly figured out. Just entomb it in concrete and store it on site. All spent nuclear fuel to date combined would quite comfortably fit in an average Walmart parking lot. It's a complete non-issue. And if we'd get really desperate, the spent fuel could be re-enriched.
> It is sad that this has become a topic of the culture wars. Nothing good comes out of this, certainly not a rational weighing of the pros and cons of nuclear power.<p>For at least the past decade, about all I've seen argued about nuclear is that it is not economical. I've been arguing that for around 15 years now.
People have been arguing nuclear is too expensive and soon renewables will be so cheap they will push fossil fuels out of the grid for 30 years, if not more. Meanwhile during those 30 years, while waiting for the price of renewables to drop sufficiently, the world has built massive amounts of fossil power generation and emissions have been going up and up.<p>That being said, it seems finally solar+wind+storage+a little bit of other stuff is becoming cheap enough that it's starting to make a dent in the emissions. Which is fantastic, don't get me wrong. But it's also sad we've lost decades.
We need to increase energy output by an order of magnitude in order to upgrade civilization to the next level. Does solar offer a pathway to doing that today, once you account for the costs of battery storage?<p>Nuclear, moreover, keeps us on the tech tree for space exploration. I don’t think solar is going to lead us to fusion or antimatter powered spaceships.
To produce 10x the current power demand with nuclear you’d need breeder reactors or perhaps thorium unless you want to run out of fuel rather quickly. That’s not what is being proposed here.<p>I also don’t believe that fission, fusion or antimatter are on the same branch of the tech tree.
> I also don’t believe that fission, fusion or antimatter are on the same branch of the tech tree.<p>I mean, you need to radiation-harden your structural materials and electronics for both fission and fusion, and some hypothetical antimatter reactor is probably using an evolutionary version of EM confinement techniques from fusion.<p>But, yes, fission reactors are ultimately kind of ooga-booga (put a pile of metal in some water and run a steam engine) that's hard to characterize as on track for something sci-fi like an antimatter reactor.
> upgrade civilization to the next level<p>Why?
What does "Upgrade to the next level" even mean? What next level? Where is the dividing line? Why should we, beside all other concerns there are?
Sir I'd like you to step out of the car and breathe into this Kool-Aid detector.<p>Planets aren't going to be colonized like colonies were on this Earth. Economic growth and prosperity have decoupled not only from fossil fuels, but it's no longer a function of energy consumption in general. Humans simply do not flourish without the Earth ecosystem. The future you paint here is only credible to 13 year-old boys who just finished their third Jerry Pournelle book.
This is not how people are expected to converse on HN.
> The future you paint here is only credible to 13 year-old boys who just finished their third Jerry Pournelle book.<p>My mom is in her mid 70s and grew up reading Jules Verne and H.G. Wells as a child in Bangladesh. She still imagines a Star Trek future is inevitable. If anything it’s Gen Z that has a small and narrow vision of what’s possible.
It isn't about space travel. The AI boosters use it as a pretext for powering more data centers.
> upgrade civilization to the next level<p>What does that even mean? Will we have no more wars? Will we overcome capitalist ownership structures? Will we save our planets ecosystems from extinction? Will we finally be able to eradicate hunger and homelessness?<p>Or are we just talking more fancy gadgets for the rich at the expense of all of the above?
Is musk's stream of consciousness leaking?
Total world energy usage is about 1/10,000 what the sun provides. Bumping that up an order of magnitude means 1/1,000 instead. Seems reasonable for solar.<p>I don’t see research into fission power doing anything useful for spacecraft. The big bottleneck right now is getting stuff to orbit. The rest is easy, relatively speaking. And getting stuff to orbit is not practical with nuclear unless you use something like Orion, which has some downsides to put it mildly, and is already doable with 1950s tech.
Nuclear power plants are uninsurable in the private market. There is no natural investor base for a product that is uninsurable. Unless you are an imagining a culture war where real capitalists are fighting corporate welfare queens, it's not a culture war issue.
Time and demographics are also a component. Italy is old, has worker shortages for living wage work (and is currently issuing ~500k work visas over three years to attract labor to the market), and a new nuclear generator takes at least ten years to build. Each year, an additional 1TW of solar will be deployed globally. Solar panel prices have fallen by around 20% every time global capacity doubled.<p><a href="https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/italy/" rel="nofollow">https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/italy/</a><p>> 49% of Italy’s electricity was generated from low-carbon sources in 2025, below the EU average of 71%. As of 1 January 2026, Italy was aiming for 69% of renewable electricity generation by 2030. For the country’s latest renewables targets, see our 2030 Global Renewable Target Tracker.<p><a href="https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/IT/fifteen_minutes" rel="nofollow">https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/IT/fifteen_minutes</a><p>Record 2026 summer heat impaired nuclear generation in France, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria, so I'd be curious how they intend to solve for that as the climate continues to warm (reduced capacity factor from reduced output due to cooling constraints impairs the economics).<p><i>France to Upgrade Heat Wave Modeling After Record Nuclear Curbs</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49790006">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49790006</a> - September 2026<p><i>Europe's Heatwaves Are Putting Nuclear Power Under Pressure</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49466909">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49466909</a> - August 2026<p><i>Bulgaria's Nuclear Plant Plans First Output Cut Due to Low Danube</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49376860">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49376860</a> - August 2026<p><i>Record heat is drying up Europe's major rivers, as these striking images show</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49283344">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49283344</a> - August 2026<p><i>Bloomberg: Hungary Casts Doubt on Nuclear Plant Expansion After Danube Low Levels</i> - <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-13/hungary-casts-doubt-on-nuclear-plant-expansion-after-danube-woes" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-13/hungary-c...</a> - August 13th, 2026<p><i>Italy to issue half million non-EU work visas over next three years</i> - <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/italy-issue-half-million-non-eu-work-visas-over-next-three-years-2025-06-30/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/world/italy-issue-half-million-non-e...</a> - June 30th, 2025
115 $/MWh.<p>Thats what EDF's stating their NUWARD SMR (up to 400MW) will cost in France, just as comparison. Not cheap for the taxpayers in Italy.<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/frances-edf-plans-10-small-nuclear-plants-europe-by-2035-2026-09-18/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/frances-edf-plans-10...</a>
Italy is hugely dependent on natural gas for electricity, so it actually makes economic sense.<p>South Korea has a lot of nuclear power for related reasons - they can't risk being too dependent on LNG imports, lest some of their more volatile neighbours capture the shipments.
That's about half of the average cost right [1], so literally it will make electricity cheaper. Also, it will be cost that will not go up willy nilly when someone decides to do something absolutely stupid<p>1: <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/italy/electricity-price" rel="nofollow">https://tradingeconomics.com/italy/electricity-price</a>
Hopefully Germany will follow next. It’s absurd that they rely on fossil fuel and coal when they can build modern nuclear plants that can provide stable energy for the energy heavy industries.<p>It would take 5-10 years to build the power plants and maybe with Chinese aid even faster
Where in comparable countries (= in europe) did new reactors take less than 10 years (from scratch even)? So we are at at least 10 years. But more realistically, taking recent megaprojects into account, its 20 years. In that time, batteries are way ahead and you can overbuild _so_ _much_ renewables and people even do it without subsidies (strangely, nobody builds nuclear plants without subsidies).<p>regarding the "stable energy" point: germany has one of the most (if not _the_ most) stable grids in the world and that is even with 50+ % renewables. And given it sits in the center of europe with grid connections all around, it's far cheaper to buy from whomever has the most favourable weather anyways (and sell to them if they don't). Thats why one of the biggest issues right now is not nuclear, but grids.
I don't think that nuclear projects of any size could pass current environmental impact assessments.<p>Only a severe energy shortage could motivate politicians enough to temporarily skip these, like they did for the LNG terminals. But you can't build a nuclear power plant of any size within a single legislative period so its just not going to happen.
No thank you, we will happily continue with our investment in wind, solar and battery storage.
hopefully not
The enduring fascination of isotopes and neutrons zipping in and out...<p>Taking a look at the costs (not to mention genuine safety and sustainability in the long run):
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source</a><p>In the current landscape—with the costs of solar and wind power steadily falling and storage technologies emerging, driven by the expansion of electric vehicles—I really don't know what kind of commercial future nuclear energy has (in terms of delivering lower energy costs).
Most of oil and gas money goes to fund terrorism. Boycott it as much as possible
There should be a shared EU nuclear consortium, a public version of Airbus but for nuclear energy spearheaded by France.
Brace yourself, every large nuclear accident has been preceded by the Italian considering nuclear again. (Well at least Tchornobyl and Fukushima, ”which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice”)
As an Italian, I know exactly how this playbook plays out.<p>Nuclear energy is a big business for intimates friends, so on the trend that it's a green tech (apparently no carbn footprint, but what about the depleted fuel?) they approved the reopening of this technology.<p>Why going for SMR?<p>Well, it's the penalties business model and SMR is ideal because they are on paper, no valid proven commercial implementation.
A company wins the contract, in this case i'm not sure if they'll go for a open bid, the contract include research, design, building and so on. At some point the political wind changes, contract canceled and hundreds of milions in contractual penalties to pay. It is essentially a mechanism to transfer public money to private friends, with zero obligation to ever break ground.<p>It's from 19th century that they are thinking about a bridge between Sicily and mainland. The last time the project was revived, the playbook went exactly as described above: years of studies, cancellation and massive state penalties paid out to contractors for a bridge that still doesn't exist (Sicily and mainland are on different tectonic plates).<p>No mention there is no national deposit for nuclear waste, especially in a highly sismic territory.
>It is essentially a mechanism to transfer public money to private friends,<p>I agree completely and would go so far as to claim that presently in 2026 that money-transfer mechanism is the real motivation for any nuclear project in any country. Renewable options are the better path now from a technical point, but politicians and their buddies can't easily make as much money from that.
Analisi molto lucida.
Fun fact: in the 60s Italy was after the US and UK the county with the most advanced nuclear energy plants. These days still North Italy produces key parts of nuclear reactors in other countries.
I don’t know why commenters here are treating energy technologies as winner-takes-all. Solar is cheap and getting cheaper, and that’s fantastic news for everyone, but that doesn’t mean it suits every country, every niche, and every application. There are plenty of places that don’t have massive tracts of spare flat land, or the right latitude, or favorable weather. Even if nuclear isn’t ever the cheapest option, the world energy market is so huge and diverse that it still makes sense to have nuclear as an option.
When it comes to <i>Italy</i> however, nuclear does not fit that niche of a plausible technology.<p>Finland? Sure! Italy has far better, cheaper, routes.
>massive tracts of spare flat land, or the right latitude, or favorable weather.<p>Italy has all that right across the pond.<p>And no energy source can beat solar on the speed of build out. And when it comes to the energy the next few years is all about build out [for AI]. Countries who get it right - like China, look at their solar and new datacenters getting powered by it, may be US if the required thinking wins - are going to lead the world in the near to mid-term future, the rest are going to be struggling seconds.<p>Building nuclear today in the energy field is like building tanks in military whereis solar is like drones - i.e. we have choice between 2 classic paradigms - very limited vertical scalability with extremely costly units vs. unlimited horizontal scalability of extremely cheap units.
Has there been a single SMR deployed and working yet? There were lots of talk about GE BWRX-300 and Rolls Royce SMR but none of them seems to have even started construction.
Can someone explain to me why nuclear HAS to be profitable?
If a power source is profitable on its own, it can be financed by private investors. If it is unprofitable, it needs to be financed at least in part by the state, so it would come at the cost of the taxpayer.
I wonder how much of a factor is that nuclear plants are effectively "unbombable". Ukraine's thermal plants have taken a beating, but their nuclear plants are still generating.
This is somewhat strange. Italy has a lot of sun, and a lot of mountains for these pumped storage hydropower plants. It is way harder to store output from PV on Great European Plain.
Can someone explain me like I’m a middle age person why Italy, and France, bet on nuclear fission?<p>It’s not competitive on cost anymore and we don’t have a good track record.
Anyone found a permanent repository, yet?
Voting for it is easy and I hope it catalyzes innovation. But still, completing a damn reactor without insane budget overruns is the problem.
Enrico Fermi will stop spinning in his grave
> after voters *twice* rejected it in national referendums<p>Democracy is just lovely.<p>Have your citizens answer to a straightforward question on a topic twice, have them reject it, both times.<p>And the government will still go its way.<p>I'm not against nuclear per se, I'm just baffled at the "democratic" process.
The referendums were in 1987 and 2011, respectively. Asking once every 15+ years seems fine, the population changes and opinions change.<p>It’s much less frequent than the usual democratic election cycle, where people are also allowed to reevaluate their positions.
The government was elected by the people - if they disagree with this decision it will have consequences in the next election.<p>I think the public opinion and sentiment has changed quite significantly since 2011 when the last referendum was held.<p>The current Italian government is massively populist so they wouldn’t do this if they thought people would disagree.<p>I don’t see any problem with the democratic process here - sure it’s a flawed system but I believe it’s still the best we came up with so far
Shouldn't people be allowed to change their minds?<p>A party can lose three election, and if they win the fourth, they still get into power.
David Sacks had an interesting stance on SMRs on Oct 19, 2024, before the election. Notice how he stands up for the downtrodden, poor population:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye012kzWJ3A" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye012kzWJ3A</a> (1:10:10):<p>"I'm virtue signaling because I'm Pro nuclear yes it's a luxury belief you're promoting something nuclear power is a luxury belief you heard it here first because <i>they're going to put these things in poor communities and so it's never going to affect your life</i> they're putting them next to Data Center in like Oregon like it's easy for you to say oh I support nuclear look how Progressive I am look how smart I am you haven't internalized the downsides [...]"
Even if it passes, you'll see the first nuclear power plant not before 15 years.<p>And it will not pass before the next legislature in 1 year.
Really good news for Italy and for the whole of Europe (if not the world)!<p>The atomic revival of Europe
Sweet. Minimum 20 years and $20Billion before any electricity is produced.<p>I wonder how much solar, wind and batteries you could get for that, and how quickly it would be deployed
So their plan to burn oil and keep the AC mandated no cooler than 24°C in their homes didn't work out? Huh.
Nature is healing.
I just don't get people saying how terrible climate change is going to be for the world and then refuses to support nuclear.<p>If climate change is such a critical problem, then let's try everything to get this solved even if it costs more to do it. If you are only willing to do some solutions because it is cheaper then I don't believe you when you say it is important to solve.<p>And frankly, we don't know the full impact of climate change, so having as many alternatives as possible just makes sense. Hydro can be impacted by droughts which will be more common. Solar may be impacted if there are increased storms. Wind may be impacted due to stilling (slowing of wind due to an increase in co2).<p>Why not throw nuclear into the mix to ensure we do not run out of power?
> Hydro can be impacted by droughts which will be more common<p>You did read the news this summer? Like <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/03/europe/hungary-nuclear-plant-shutdown-heatwave-intl" rel="nofollow">https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/03/europe/hungary-nuclear-pl...</a> ?<p>Most of the environmentalists will tell you that it's dumb to shut down nuclear, but building new plants just takes too long and is too expensive. Why then not just put the money into things that are cheap now and will get even cheaper tomorrow?<p>Hedging against downtime is comparatively easy, just diversify by location and improve the grid, which is way less expensive than building out power plants.
Every source of power has pros and cons. They all have risks and benefits.<p>If there is a push to do a specific clean energy I think we should go for it regardless of the cost. If you think the climate issue is going to be a very severe issue then you should take every option at our disposal and encourage every push for an alternative to fossil fuels. Since you are refusing this, then I assume you don't think it is severe.<p>Large countries may be able to hedge against downtime, but smaller countries can't. Also, like I said, we don't really know the impact of all of this which is why we should diversify as much as possible. One of those diversifications should be nuclear as well as solar, wind, and hydro.
Because having a solution would put the climate change organisations out of a job.
HN is full of solar salesman.
Always funny to see how plutonium pilled hn is. Nuclear power in Italy is idiotic. They won't even be able to cool the damn reactors. Europe is <i>drying out</i>.
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Maybe not them, but their children could do it. Italy's capability to assimilate is underrated.
Agreed on your second point, but why couldn't you make it without the blatant racism?
<i>Presidente</i> Giorgia Meloni is awesome and it’s amazing to see a woman empowered by the democratic process and serving the will of the Italian people<p><a href="https://youtu.be/sNhPplje7xM?is=h5VtnMe9wva-VKGM" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/sNhPplje7xM?is=h5VtnMe9wva-VKGM</a>