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Hopefully it will be finished one day. It's a shame how much the world has taken a step back with the collapse of the USSR and the rise of US unipolarity. The

Hopefully it will be finished one day. It's a shame how much the world has taken a step back with the collapse of the USSR and the rise of US unipolarity. The once-great Buran space shuttles lie derelict in Kazakhstan and Russia (not even in a museum!). The huge An-225 that took it to space has been destroyed in the Russia-Ukraine war. Investment in nuclear power has collapsed as projects like this show (and Germany's recent decision to shut down all nuclear power plants). The lack of competition has also lead the USA to rest on its laurels - no longer investing greatly in STEM education, NASA, national infrastructure, etc. as they did in response to the sudden achievement of Sputnik.

dtgriscom 3y ago
> Hopefully it will be finished one day. It won't. Decay, updated power plant designs, and changing component availability would make completing it more expensive than starting afresh.
walrus01 3y ago
Given sunshine in Cuba it might not be necessary to finish. The for-profit grid feeding giant solar power station in Rajasthan, India is buying power at a rate under 3 cents per kWh, and the private capital that put up the money to build it still has an ROI that pencils out. A hundred million dollars of ground mount photovoltaics in Cuba might do a lot more good than spending money to finish a possibly obsolete design nuclear reactor.
- illiarian 3y ago
  It only pencils out when you don't have to worry where your power is coming from at night or on a cloudy day.
  - walrus01 3y ago
    Obviously you do need other base load generation as well. Air conditioner demand is also lower when there's no direct sunlight, and at night.
    - illiarian 3y ago
      Air conditioning is not the only power consumer. If your production goes from 100% to 0%, it's not just air conditioning that will be affected.
      - AstralStorm 3y ago
        In particular, one can calculate minimum base load and amortized base load. Critical infrastructure informs minimum base load. For example parts of defense grid, AC when disabling it would kill people, medical systems, certain lighting, running and monitoring the power plants, certain kind of industrial cooling, mining safety equipment like air and gas pumps, certain sluices in regions with flooding. More or less anything that if turned off would or could immediately cause a catastrophe. Amortized base load adds some other things that just cannot be off for long or you incur huge restart or lack of function costs. Examples would be microchip manufacturing, water treatment, key mass transportation, oil pumping and drilling. A lot of amortized base loads are on week scale rather than day, so they tend to be reasonably solar friendly, but less wind friendly.
        illiarian 3y ago
        What you're saying is: rolling blackouts are totally fine because no one will die if they sit in the dark for a few hours. BTW, turning a lot stuff off and then turning it back on strains the grid immensely.
  - pydry 3y ago
    It's 20% of the cost not 20% less. Matching solar and wind power with storage or peakers is still cheaper.
    - illiarian 3y ago
      You're assuming this much storage exists. And I'd love to see all the calculations that include the need to overbuild, the need for storage etc.
      - pydry 3y ago
        No, I'm assuming it can be built because the unit economics work better. Back in 2013 I remember people used to constantly trash solar and wind because it was 1-2% of the grid anywhere, max, while nuclear power was often 10-30% (or 70% in France). We're at that same point with storage. Since then we've had a decline in nuclear power due to the high cost and enormous growth in renewables due to it being 5x cheaper. Unit economics prevailed with solar and wind and theyll prevail with storage. solar + wind + 8 hours storage is not just the cheapest way to get to a 98% carbon free grid it's also the fastest. Gas is still the cheapest "battery" by far though, which is why so many countries use it as baseload and peaking. Pumped storage, batteries and syngas combined only make renewables a cheaper baseload/peaker than nuclear power.
        illiarian 3y ago
        > Since then we've had a decline in nuclear power and enormous growth in renewables. The only reason we've had decline in nuclear is politics. That's why now Germany is busy burning coal and importing electricity. > Unit economics prevailed before and theyll prevail again. Wishful thinking is no substitute for reality. Where are the calculations? That include both the need to ridiculously overbuild renewables and the need for the so-far-nonexistent grid scale storage?
        pydry 3y ago
        Germany is burning less coal than it used to 10 years ago. Somehow this fact is not only relatively unknown, most people seem to have been led to believe that the exact opposite is true. Nuclear propaganda has always had a bit of a reality problem.
gfiorav 3y ago
The US still invests heavily in defense, which props up STEM. I agree it was nicer when the goal was space though.
- paulluuk 3y ago
  I'm not sure how military spending props up STEM exactly, but I do often hear people say that military spending is good for science because so many research advances have come from the military. But if you look at how much the US spends on military versus the scientific progress coming from the military (e.g. DARPA stuff), the yield is actually surprisingly low. At the very least we can probably agree that it's not a very efficient way to fund research.
  - localplume 3y ago
    [dead]
  - hackandthink 3y ago
    It's nice that pure mathematics is funded, but it should not be funded by the army. https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2020/12/the_lie_of_its_just_math.html https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2020/12/the_lie_of_its_... My pet theory: the MIC buys goodwill and scares academics to criticize the MIC.
- goodpoint 3y ago
  "nicer"?!
actionfromafar 3y ago
On the other hand, the USSR is no more, which is a plus. But yes, I too, can have nostalgia for some aspects of USSR - US duopoly.
mrfumier 3y ago
The competition is back, with China this time.
bojan 3y ago
The USSR held back a huge part of the world. The Baltics, the whole of Eastern Europe, East Germany, all suffered immensely under their influence, and are still feeling the consequences. The USSR created ruthless regimes all over the world, some of which are still standing: Cuba, North Korea. Even after the partial collapse of that Empire, Russia degraded to openly being a terrorist state, sending Wagnerites all over the world, attacking its neighbours, destroying marvels of technology like An-225, bringing nuclear power plants to jeopardy. From the perspective of this Eastern European, the collapse of the USSR was a huge improvement for the world. I can only hope the collapse continues. I'm not a fan of the world being lead by the US, I'd prefer it very much if the EU could take that role, but even so, the US-lead world is infinitely better than the one where the USSR has any influence.
- nivenkos 3y ago
  Putin is the chosen successor of Yeltsin, who was backed by the USA. I wouldn't pin the current state of Russia on the USSR - the Orthodox Church, etc. have far more influence. Your point is definitely true for the psuedo-occupied countries like Romania, Poland, the DDR, etc. though. My point wasn't to defend the USSR but that we need competition to drive progress. For example now the EU has almost none of its own industry - Concorde failed, ARM was sold (and the UK left), there is no equivalent to Big Tech. There is almost no competition (literally the only major examples I can think of are AirBus and Volvo/VW/Renault, and then some industrial ones like ASML and Nordvolt). China poses more competition because it's chosen to actively protect its own developing industries. So they do have Baidu, WeChat, Bytedance, Huawei, Xiaomi, etc. I'm also not sure about an EU-led world - the EU isn't even democratic in its current form (the Commission makes most of the decisions, and there are no EU-wide elections). I think it's best if we don't have any leading nation at all but true competition.
  - Scarblac 3y ago
    It's the Council that takes most of the decisions, and it's made up of the leaders of the national governments. They don't want it to be different, as that would mean giving up national power. The Commission is rather toothless in comparison, they can only carry out existing policy.
dale_glass 3y ago
> The once-great Buran space shuttles lie derelict in Kazakhstan and Russia (not even in a museum!). Buran was developed under the impression that the Shuttle would have a primarily military use, to place weapons in orbit, and so was made for a similar sort of imagined mission. The Shuttle just didn't get used the way the US hoped to use it at the start, and ended up wasting a lot of resources and money. It made a lot of sense to cancel Buran then. But yes, the remains of the program could have used better treatment. One of the models was used as a roof for a bicycle rental at a public park in Moscow. So at least you could see that very easily. https://i0.wp.com/www.travelsinorbit.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/moscow_space_sights_02.jpg https://i0.wp.com/www.travelsinorbit.com/wp-content/uploads/... https://i0.wp.com/www.travelsinorbit.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/moscow_space_sights_05.jpg https://i0.wp.com/www.travelsinorbit.com/wp-content/uploads/... > Investment in nuclear power has collapsed as projects like this show (and Germany's recent decision to shut down all nuclear power plants). Investment in nuclear made a lot of sense back when countries wanted lots of nuclear missiles. As far as peaceful applications go, nuclear just doesn't compete on price. I think the tech is very cool, but nobody is going to spend tens of billions just for the sake of cool.
_2d30 3y ago
East vs West Germany seems to offer something akin to a natural experiment that suggests this view is largely incorrect.

dtgriscom 3y ago

> Hopefully it will be finished one day. It won't. Decay, updated power plant designs, and changing component availability would make completing it more expensive than starting afresh.

walrus01 3y ago

Given sunshine in Cuba it might not be necessary to finish. The for-profit grid feeding giant solar power station in Rajasthan, India is buying power at a rate under 3 cents per kWh, and the private capital that put up the money to build it still has an ROI that pencils out. A hundred million dollars of ground mount photovoltaics in Cuba might do a lot more good than spending money to finish a possibly obsolete design nuclear reactor.

illiarian 3y ago
It only pencils out when you don't have to worry where your power is coming from at night or on a cloudy day.
- walrus01 3y ago
  Obviously you do need other base load generation as well. Air conditioner demand is also lower when there's no direct sunlight, and at night.
  - illiarian 3y ago
    Air conditioning is not the only power consumer. If your production goes from 100% to 0%, it's not just air conditioning that will be affected.
    - AstralStorm 3y ago
      In particular, one can calculate minimum base load and amortized base load. Critical infrastructure informs minimum base load. For example parts of defense grid, AC when disabling it would kill people, medical systems, certain lighting, running and monitoring the power plants, certain kind of industrial cooling, mining safety equipment like air and gas pumps, certain sluices in regions with flooding. More or less anything that if turned off would or could immediately cause a catastrophe. Amortized base load adds some other things that just cannot be off for long or you incur huge restart or lack of function costs. Examples would be microchip manufacturing, water treatment, key mass transportation, oil pumping and drilling. A lot of amortized base loads are on week scale rather than day, so they tend to be reasonably solar friendly, but less wind friendly.
      - illiarian 3y ago
        What you're saying is: rolling blackouts are totally fine because no one will die if they sit in the dark for a few hours. BTW, turning a lot stuff off and then turning it back on strains the grid immensely.
- pydry 3y ago
  It's 20% of the cost not 20% less. Matching solar and wind power with storage or peakers is still cheaper.
  - illiarian 3y ago
    You're assuming this much storage exists. And I'd love to see all the calculations that include the need to overbuild, the need for storage etc.
    - pydry 3y ago
      No, I'm assuming it can be built because the unit economics work better. Back in 2013 I remember people used to constantly trash solar and wind because it was 1-2% of the grid anywhere, max, while nuclear power was often 10-30% (or 70% in France). We're at that same point with storage. Since then we've had a decline in nuclear power due to the high cost and enormous growth in renewables due to it being 5x cheaper. Unit economics prevailed with solar and wind and theyll prevail with storage. solar + wind + 8 hours storage is not just the cheapest way to get to a 98% carbon free grid it's also the fastest. Gas is still the cheapest "battery" by far though, which is why so many countries use it as baseload and peaking. Pumped storage, batteries and syngas combined only make renewables a cheaper baseload/peaker than nuclear power.
      - illiarian 3y ago
        > Since then we've had a decline in nuclear power and enormous growth in renewables. The only reason we've had decline in nuclear is politics. That's why now Germany is busy burning coal and importing electricity. > Unit economics prevailed before and theyll prevail again. Wishful thinking is no substitute for reality. Where are the calculations? That include both the need to ridiculously overbuild renewables and the need for the so-far-nonexistent grid scale storage?
        pydry 3y ago
        Germany is burning less coal than it used to 10 years ago. Somehow this fact is not only relatively unknown, most people seem to have been led to believe that the exact opposite is true. Nuclear propaganda has always had a bit of a reality problem.

gfiorav 3y ago

The US still invests heavily in defense, which props up STEM. I agree it was nicer when the goal was space though.

paulluuk 3y ago
I'm not sure how military spending props up STEM exactly, but I do often hear people say that military spending is good for science because so many research advances have come from the military. But if you look at how much the US spends on military versus the scientific progress coming from the military (e.g. DARPA stuff), the yield is actually surprisingly low. At the very least we can probably agree that it's not a very efficient way to fund research.
- localplume 3y ago
  [dead]
- hackandthink 3y ago
  It's nice that pure mathematics is funded, but it should not be funded by the army. https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2020/12/the_lie_of_its_just_math.html https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2020/12/the_lie_of_its_... My pet theory: the MIC buys goodwill and scares academics to criticize the MIC.
goodpoint 3y ago
"nicer"?!

actionfromafar 3y ago

On the other hand, the USSR is no more, which is a plus. But yes, I too, can have nostalgia for some aspects of USSR - US duopoly.

mrfumier 3y ago

The competition is back, with China this time.

bojan 3y ago

The USSR held back a huge part of the world. The Baltics, the whole of Eastern Europe, East Germany, all suffered immensely under their influence, and are still feeling the consequences. The USSR created ruthless regimes all over the world, some of which are still standing: Cuba, North Korea. Even after the partial collapse of that Empire, Russia degraded to openly being a terrorist state, sending Wagnerites all over the world, attacking its neighbours, destroying marvels of technology like An-225, bringing nuclear power plants to jeopardy. From the perspective of this Eastern European, the collapse of the USSR was a huge improvement for the world. I can only hope the collapse continues. I'm not a fan of the world being lead by the US, I'd prefer it very much if the EU could take that role, but even so, the US-lead world is infinitely better than the one where the USSR has any influence.

nivenkos 3y ago
Putin is the chosen successor of Yeltsin, who was backed by the USA. I wouldn't pin the current state of Russia on the USSR - the Orthodox Church, etc. have far more influence. Your point is definitely true for the psuedo-occupied countries like Romania, Poland, the DDR, etc. though. My point wasn't to defend the USSR but that we need competition to drive progress. For example now the EU has almost none of its own industry - Concorde failed, ARM was sold (and the UK left), there is no equivalent to Big Tech. There is almost no competition (literally the only major examples I can think of are AirBus and Volvo/VW/Renault, and then some industrial ones like ASML and Nordvolt). China poses more competition because it's chosen to actively protect its own developing industries. So they do have Baidu, WeChat, Bytedance, Huawei, Xiaomi, etc. I'm also not sure about an EU-led world - the EU isn't even democratic in its current form (the Commission makes most of the decisions, and there are no EU-wide elections). I think it's best if we don't have any leading nation at all but true competition.
- Scarblac 3y ago
  It's the Council that takes most of the decisions, and it's made up of the leaders of the national governments. They don't want it to be different, as that would mean giving up national power. The Commission is rather toothless in comparison, they can only carry out existing policy.

dale_glass 3y ago

> The once-great Buran space shuttles lie derelict in Kazakhstan and Russia (not even in a museum!). Buran was developed under the impression that the Shuttle would have a primarily military use, to place weapons in orbit, and so was made for a similar sort of imagined mission. The Shuttle just didn't get used the way the US hoped to use it at the start, and ended up wasting a lot of resources and money. It made a lot of sense to cancel Buran then. But yes, the remains of the program could have used better treatment. One of the models was used as a roof for a bicycle rental at a public park in Moscow. So at least you could see that very easily. https://i0.wp.com/www.travelsinorbit.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/moscow_space_sights_02.jpg https://i0.wp.com/www.travelsinorbit.com/wp-content/uploads/... https://i0.wp.com/www.travelsinorbit.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/moscow_space_sights_05.jpg https://i0.wp.com/www.travelsinorbit.com/wp-content/uploads/... > Investment in nuclear power has collapsed as projects like this show (and Germany's recent decision to shut down all nuclear power plants). Investment in nuclear made a lot of sense back when countries wanted lots of nuclear missiles. As far as peaceful applications go, nuclear just doesn't compete on price. I think the tech is very cool, but nobody is going to spend tens of billions just for the sake of cool.

_2d30 3y ago

East vs West Germany seems to offer something akin to a natural experiment that suggests this view is largely incorrect.