No, they are "building" nuclear plant. In 2009 they planed to use French technology: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/France,-Poland-a... . In 2011 Westinghouse was already on shortlist: https://www.reuters.com/article/poland-nuclear-idUSLDE72M0ST... . And 10 year later, Poland decided it is time to select location again, throwing away all earlier preparations.

It is all as hilarious as Korean tanks purchase - we learned that Poland is going to borrow money from Korea only when Korean media announced it. No one knows actual financing conditions. But it still might turn better than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gawron-class_corvette

Nuclear plants were actually a really great idea for Iran. Iran was consuming their own fossil fuel and couldn't export it. Going nuclear was 100% the right choice for Iran.

And Iran was planning to do it safely in cooperation with the French under full view of the IAEA. However the US then came in and destroyed this plan.

And your repeated claims about the economics are based on very bad oversimplified math. Please stop spamming the same nonsense in ever post, you are simply acting like an anti-nuclear advocate rather then debating.

Are you crazy? You cant run a country on ONLY solar/wind without extreme battery storage (doesnt exist on that scale today). You need base energy that can run 24/7 (coal, oil, hydro, nuclear)

I read on HN that you can. /s

You can, have a read.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910

> Theyre certainly not doing it for economic reasons (5x the cost of solar or wind) or for the environment. They burn more coal per capita than anybody else in the EU and will likely continue to do so for the 15 or so years until this is completed.

Thanks for editing you comment with some substance...

You do realize that cost and especially viability of wind and solar varies dramatically geographically? Renewables are not as easy to deploy in Poland and the fact that we're going with nuclear is precisely to address the coal situation. (Which is what you're attacking btw...)

Not to mention nuclear is also the safest technology out there so far (read up stats on the deaths per each technology, per megawatt)

> Not to mention nuclear is also the safest technology out there so far (read up stats on the deaths per each technology, per megawatt)

Let's remove all laws where the public bear the cost of accidents then? Should be fine since it's the safest!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...

That is for the U.S., but equivalent laws exist in all countries with nuclear power plants.

Feel free to do so! I'm not interested in law in US, nor is law my point in general.

Safety of nuclear is confirmed by death stats and bills like the one you mentioned don't prove otherwise. In fact I'd say they encourage lesser safety measures if anything...

Poland's wind increased to over 10% of the electricity mix in the last decade, despite political agendas that basically ban onshore wind.

there are economic reasons (Carbon Tax). What war in Ukraine has proven is that no one is eager to shot at nuclear plants, fuel can even be transported on a plane - no gas pipelines to blow up.

> What war in Ukraine has proven is that no one is eager to shot at nuclear plants,

I think you missed some news https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/un-nuclear-watchdogs-safe... While they managed to avoid shooting directly at one of them, shelling the area wasn't uncommon and it's a bit up to luck that there were no mistakes.

you can shell* the nuclear plant directly for a week and you would still not expose the core.

* regular artillery shells, bunker busing is a different story

You can* do that without exposing the core**.

* as long as materials behave as expected, there are no existing cracks, ...

** ignoring secondary problems like vibrations misaligning elements, damage to other materials resulting in controller failures, damage to cooling system, injuries to staff not being able to respond to emergencies, ...

Sure, they should not be affected. They're also designed not to fail, and yet.

> What war in Ukraine has proven is that no one is eager to shot at nuclear plants

I don't see any real 'proof there, especially about everyone not being eager to...

Moreover whenever a weapon is used there is a risk of hitting a non-target.

> Moreover whenever a weapon is used there is a risk of hitting a non-target.

You can load a 747 with explosives and hit AP1000 and would still not destroy it.

Russia could fire 1000+ rockets, drones and cruise missles and it would not cause the next Chernobyl.

Source?

> They're likely building a nuclear plant for the same reasons as Iran.

The fuck you're sniffing

Comparing Poland to Iran? This is perfect for the "Sh*t HM says" twitter account. :D

> while solar and wind farms take 1-3 years to build, pumped storage ~10.

Yeah sure, solar and wind farms ... in Poland, probably the worst country in the EU in terms of wind potential and low solar potential. Like that's going to work.

And using which backup tech exactly? Certainly not Russian gas.

Which backup tech is nuclear using during construction?

What does that even mean? I'm talking after construction.

Your nuclear power plant can work alone, the wind and solar farms just can't.

What is the difference? If you build something 10 years longer than another option, you need to have another source for the said 10 years. In Poland's case this is coal. People act as if burning coal continuously for 10 years is not a problem, but having it used sporadically as backup is bad for emissions. That's backwards, the CO2 emitted continuously for the next 10 years is a lot worse.

The construction of the nuclear plant is effectively backed up with 100% coal. Thus you could have a 75/25% renewables/coal split for the next 40 years and do less damage.

Instead of getting rid of coal, renewables would reduce but insure a long term dependency to coal though which sounds even worse.

We need to stop thinking short term which is the reason why we're in trouble in the first place.

You can't back this up with anything because you can't see the future. There is a lot of research being done on that, and it's a lot less conclusive than your comment. Think about that.

What we know from the past is that nuclear in 70 years hasn't done squat to eliminate the dependency on fossil fuels. This is simply a fact.

What we need short-term is decarbonization, and renewables are the cheapest and fastest way to do that. If you can't get rid of coal completely, you can then pick the slowest and most expensive solution that is nuclear. But it needs to be the last, not the first thing you do.

>There is a lot of research being done on that, and it's a lot less conclusive than your comment. Think about that.

You can't bet the future on unknown tech which might never exist. That's just R&D. Otherwise we can talk about nuclear fusion which unlike the magical battery tech, we actually know that it exists

> What we know from the past is that nuclear in 70 years hasn't done squat to eliminate the dependency on fossil fuels. This is simply a fact.

France is the most decarbonized developed country in the world thanks to that. The country is already half way there. Nobody came even close, that's a fact.

Talking is cheap, the results regarding renewables just aren't there.

> What we need short-term is decarbonization, and renewables are the cheapest and fastest way to do that.

Running the coal and gas plants full speed like Germany does in winter isn't a viable decarbonization strategy.

They are even worse than nothing because they require tremendous investment upfront and then you are locked up with fossil fuels. There's a reason why the gas producers are lobbying for renewables.

Like I said, people more credible than you have made claims it's possible. Whether or not it's true is a matter of debate, or in the end the proof is in the pudding. That something is not possible, what you're saying is just not the case. You also have a misconception of things that exist and don't exist.

Germany does not run coal and gas plants full speed in the winter. Wind energy ticked over coal for the first quarter of 2023 [1].

Even if it did, Poland is currently backing up their nuclear with 100% coal, in the winter and summer, for the next 10 years at least. It will continue to pump co2 into the atmosphere and do as much damage as Germany will do for the next ~30 years, if Germany's coal use does not go down. But it will go down, it's on pace to reach 80% renewables in 2030. Poland is on pace to reach 30% coal in 2040. The damage done by spending money on nuclear first can never be recovered from. It might even be too late for the world by then. Think about that.

The world will deploy 400GW of solar this year alone, and the growth will not decelerate any time soon. That is about 60 1GW reactor's worth of electricity. Talk really is cheap.

[1] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2023/06...

> Like I said, people more credible than you have made claims it's possible. Whether or not it's true is a matter of debate, or in the end the proof is in the pudding. That something is not possible, what you're saying is just not the case. You also have a misconception of things that exist and don't exist.

Exactly, the proof is in the pudding and right now well, it's not there. Those magic storage solution don't exist, not even in theory.

> Germany does not run coal and gas plants full speed in the winter. Wind energy ticked over coal for the first quarter of 2023 [1].

https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/news/2022/publi...

Germany went from 300TWh of fossil fuel production to 200TWh of fossil fuel production which is only a third of the way there.

This relatively small decrease has costed around 2x the French nuclear plants in its totality already and took 15 years. Let's just say that the numbers aren't great.

And ironically, that's just the start of their problems, since the new renewables have a pretty low durability, they are 0% of the way of their 2050 goals. Everything they installed already will have to be reinstalled again, they will understand the meaning of an exponential curve pretty soon.

There's a reason they are pushing so hard for dodgy financing in the EU, they see themselves the curve ahead.

> The world will deploy 400GW of solar this year alone, and the growth will not decelerate any time soon. That is about 60 1GW reactors worth of electricity. Talk really is cheap.

Well no that isn't because those panels require dirty backups and will only last 1/4 of the lifetime of the plant and I'm being generous.

Talk is cheap indeed, the results just aren't there.

> The damage done by spending money on nuclear first can never be recovered from

The damage one by spending money on renewables can never be recovered, the country is then locked to fossil fuels to smooth out the load. Fossil fuels and renewables are two sides of the same coin and go together.

That's the reason why all the major gas producers are onto it.

Those numbers are great because when Germany started the costs for renewables were astronomic. Even in 2012 when Germany deployed a then unthinkable 10GW+ of solar it was probably the most expensive electricity source. But now it is the cheapest -- and fastest way to deploy clean energy. So in that case, what lock in? If you decarbonize a lot more a lot faster, you will have more money to spend on nuclear. Lock in happens with nuclear first -- by the time you're done you're broke, didn't accomplish as much and it's anyway too late. That's rational only if you're really bad with numbers.

The renewables industry is on an astronomic trajectory. From zero to saving the world, and it will succeed where nuclear has failed for 70 years. Precisely the reason why fossil fuels and nuclear are two sides of the same coin: highly dependant on lobbying and corruption. Nuclear failed even before carbon emissions were an issue and this green relabeling is its last lifeline. But because it already failed, it won't suddenly miraculously succeed. All of the former climate deniers are now on the nuclear bandwagon because they know this will buy the most time for fossil fuels. Here is one: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/09/renewable-energy...

I am an engineer he says, nuclear is the only option. Ten years ago he was a high member of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition that sued the government to prevent it from claiming climate change is dangerous.

Nuclear requires dirty backup during construction which is always very long. I don't understand why this is so difficult to understand. It's doubtful if it can ever make up for that delay between deploying renewables and nuclear. So it's a net negative.

> So in that case, what lock in?

The lock in to fossil fuel in Germany and other renewable heavy countries is pretty clear and nobody can deny that. The Russian war was a slap in that fossil fuel oriented strategy, it's time to learn some lessons about past failures.

> The renewables industry is on an astronomic trajectory. From zero to saving the world, and it will succeed where nuclear has failed for 70 years. Precisely the reason why fossil fuels and nuclear are two sides of the same coin: highly dependant on lobbying and corruption.

Haha, may I remind you what happened in Germany and France? The Russian government financed renewable lobbying to keep the dependency on the Russian gas, and unfortunately for us, that worked. Even Greenpeace themselves sold Russian gas as part of their renewable strategy.

> But because it already failed, it won't suddenly miraculously succeed.

Germany's renewable strategy failed multiple times already, and every time it fails, they double down financially. We're pretty deep into sunken cost fallacy and I hope other countries aren't stupid enough to follow them in the hole they dug themselves in.

> Nuclear requires dirty backup during construction which is always very long.

And renewable require dirty backups as long as they exist, easy to see why it's worse and why gas producers are pushing for it and hate nuclear plants.

The Russian war has only accelerated renewables deployment on the EU level, including making it easier legally to get permits. Because now also politically there is no time to wait to get off fossil fuels. Your data is faulty and you make bad judgements.

The Energiewende has brought real change not only to Germany, but to the whole world. It's pretty much the reason all developed countries deploy only renewables and do that for the last couple years. Considering it's the only real chance the world has right now, it was a huge success.

Oh yeah sure, for Germany I don't doubt it, they are doubling down and want to build even more gas pipelines. I think it's a lost cause and I don't think they will wake up until a real grid failure happens. For the other EU countries, there's now some pretty big thinking on the gas+renewable strategy which was promoted during the past decade and now came to a dead-end.

The EU will add around 70GW [1] of renewables this year, again a strong increase to last year, which again was a strong increase to the year before. You can come up with any conclusion if you don't know the facts.

What's crazy though is that smart people predicted this would happen before it happened [2]. I am not that smart, but it takes also a certain talent to live in the present and not realize what is happening. You will wake up in a very different world a few years from now.

[1] https://www.pv-tech.org/eu-to-add-69gw-renewables-capacity-i... [2] https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/putins-war...

This is clearly some very bad news, these will lock-in fossil fuel removal and will prevent decarbonization.

I was thinking that the full gas+renewable strategy was over but indeed maybe not yet...

I guess the visit Von Der Leyen to the Azerbaijani dictator also sets up the tone of the strategy for the future, swapping one dicatatorship to the other to keep the gas running.