Perhaps I'm mis-remembering, but I remember US policymakers repeatedly warning Europe, over many decades, about the dangers of depending on Russian energy sources. Here's an article about the discussion while Reagan was president: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/23/climate/europe-russia-gas...
In contrast, the US has invested staggering amounts of money into work on energy independence (triggered by the OPEC embargo in the 70s). This led to research in solar, wind, and fracking, which eventually led to significant improvements.
2. The energy jugular vein of parts of Europe is exposed to those who are happy to hurt Europe. I think France is mostly okay due to nuclear power (yes some are down for delayed maintenance, but they still have a lot being generated).
Yes, yes, it's all more complicated than any simple summary can make it. But lack of energy for a country can quickly lead to a lot of dead people. A country is unwise if it ignores the issue. In contrast, I think it's quite reasonable to take steps to ensure that any necessary energy will be available in the future.
It is utterly inexcusable that Germany continued to rely entirely on Russian gas after the invasion of Crimea in 2014 at the very latest. We didn't have a single LNG terminal!
Pick your mix of blind stupidity and outright corruption, but I lean heavily towards the latter.
Look no further than Gerhard Schroder (ex Chancellor of Germany). He was a strong advocate of the Nord Stream pipeline between Russia and Germany. He later became manager of Nord Stream 2, he joined the board of directors of Rosnef (biggest Russian oil producer) and 20 days before the Russian invasion he joined the board of directors of Gazprom
There have been more reasonable explanations of the causality of that.
To wit, that multinational energy deals of that magnitude require political investment and certainty to be tenable. Schroder's involvement was a tacit acknowledgement of this reality, and gesture of political good faith.
Or put another way, neither Russia nor Germany would have contemplated the project without serious indications of political support.
The whole issue is self inflicted by the German government. So far Russia adhered to the supply contracts. The stakes are high for Russia here. If Russia would not adhere to the contract even in these times, other contract partners like India and China would likely reconsider their long term contracts.
It was Europe which decided not to by cheap Russian gas anymore and to ground their own economy. Instead Europa has to buy gas now on the spot market for about ten times the price. So Russia is more than happy by adhering to the contract and watching Europe to inflicting the damage themselves.
If the West would have decided to buy their NLG somewhere else 5 years ago, Russia would have invaded the Ukraine even with less considerations.
Russia is cutting deliveries quoting supposed technical problems, and demands unilateral changes to gas contracts, viz RUB payments. They also cut supplies to 0 for a number of European countries.
I mean, i don't quite blame them, they started a war and the West is sending in military kit to kill their soldiers in Ukraine, but Russia is certainly not holding it's side of the contracts here.
But it is indeed self inflicted as everyone warned Germany that this is how it will end. But hey gas was cheap for a while.
The only time supplies were cut to zero was for the annual maintenance which happens in the summer every single year, and the pipeline is always shut down for that. Go look at the history of Nord Stream flow rates (on their website) to see that this is true if you don't believe me.
The technical problems are real. A western company (German even) received a compressor turbine, repaired it and then sat on it due to sanctions. Germany got the sanctions voided for that equipment and it was shipped it back to Russia. If the problems weren't real we can assume it would have been discovered at that point. Also remember that the whole point of imposing sanctions on Russia is to degrade their factories and ability to repair complex equipment! Industrial disruption due to inability to access foreign parts and repair services is exactly what the sanctions were meant to create and yet when it happens, media and government claim there can be no possible wear and tear on huge pieces of rapidly spinning equipment, so it must all be 4D chess.
Russia did not "demand unilateral changes to gas contracts". It's the other way around. Europe sanctioned Russia and then stole all their EUR foreign reserves, an unprecedented and highly hostile move. Because Russia could no longer transact in EUR they said, OK, you'll have to pay us for gas in rubles. Given this they could theoretically have said you're violating your contracts which say you'll pay us in EUR, so we won't supply any gas until you un-sanction us, but they didn't.
So, every claim you're making here is wrong and this can be checked against documented facts and sources that aren't connected to Russia.
This is a core part of the problem with what's happening. The media lies and simply makes things up. People believe it anyway. Did Russiagate teach us nothing? What Russia is doing is bad but telling ourselves a bunch of nonsensical fairy tales will only make the situation worse.
Well, it's economic warfare and two are playing this game. But Russia is certainly not innocent here.
Russian funds were indeed frozen, but with the exception of banks processing gas payments so that can go ahead. Russia went further than asset freezes, and nationalised swathes of Western property in Russia, like leased aeroplanos for example. By EU countries laws, frozen Russian assets are to be returned at some point and cannot eg be used by other parties in the meantime. Whereas Russia declared a lot if Western assets their own property now.
I agree it's awkward, the West couldn't expect Russia to not respond to the sanctions. So in the narrow context of gas exports it's not simply "bad Russia good West", but Russia is clearly an active belligerent in this economic conflict.
> Russian funds were indeed frozen, but with the exception of banks processing gas payments so that can go ahead.
This is not correct. You have to understand that "money" at commercial banks is not money, but only a debt of that commercial bank with the account holder. Gas and other commodities are always paid in real money, which exists only in to flavors: Paper money and accounts directly at the respective central banks. This means you can have your real USD only on accounts at the FED and real Euros only at ECB etc. The West froze Russian accounts on EZB (the contracts are nominated to be paid in EUR) and at the same time wanted to pay the gas only on these accounts, which for obvious reasons was rejected by Russia. Russia requested to have their accounts unfrozen or paid in Rubels.
There was some face saving detours introduced into the payment process, but in the end the West pays now in Rubels.
Another example of self inflicted pain was when the West made it impossible for Russia to make debt payments. It was not Russia who suffered (they saved their payments), but the western creditors who lost their money.
I know a few investors who held Gazprom and Lukoil stocks over many years. They were factually expropriated because the brokers are refusing to process dividend payments or even selling the stock back to Russia. Again, not Russia was hit but citizens in the West.
> Germany got the sanctions voided for that equipment and it was shipped it back to Russia.
Apparently there were multiple turbines, and at least one of them is in the "Germany (and Canada) have waived sanctions on it, but Gazprom refuses to accept it back because of sanctions" stage.
They claim they are refusing to accept it due to lack of delivered documents. As discussed elsewhere on this thread, we don't know what these documents are or why Canada/Germany didn't deliver them or what's really going on here at all, so it's hard to know. But if Russia wanted to use gas sanctions on the west to get western sanctions on Russia relieved, they'd need to actually make that clear instead of talking about document delivery, so it's probably real.
But tbh even since the 1970s, we know peak oil is coming. Nuclear fission and fusion plus full electrification of industry, transport and homes, and renewable energy investment should be absolutely critical. This is what taxes and governments are for!
Jumping on the US bandwagon so late is a mistake though, given the current situation it'd be best to stay neutral realistically (like Armenia, Georgia, etc.) and use the time to achieve the above. Ideology is nice, but realpolitik keeps the lights on.
Armenia gets 80% of its electricity production from a single nuclear power plant owned and operated by Russia. It also sits in a seismically active area of the world, tbn.
Your comments in this discussion are filled with desperate denial of the horrible situation your leaders have gotten yourselves into, and all you can say in response to video of Trump warning about this four years ago is "Seriously?".
Had Heiko Maas gone home four years ago and advised Merkel to listen to Trump and start weaning the country off Russian gas (and, yes, buy US gas instead), Germany would not face this existential crisis today. Instead, he laughed at the US president on camera, and is now enjoying a quiet retirement in Saarland (and, no doubt has no worries about whether he will be able to get gas to heat his home this winter). *The German crisis is 100% self-inflicted*.
There is a crisis, but it is hardly "existential", yet. Self inflicted? How so? Because nobody could predict the future?
My "seriously" comment was a reaction to a post of what basically is a meme in a rather serious discussion.
As far the "German" crisis goes, isn't it rather a European, and one could make the case, global energy crisis? Compounded by a global economy heading for a recession (the US are already in one based on two quarters with negative GDP growth) caused by too much cheap money and staggering inflation due to supply short falls caused by Covid?
But yeah, if Germany would have bought US gas instead of Russian one all would be good... By the way, Nord Stream 2 never went live over this. Before any of the current mess happened. You want to blame someone, blame Putin to do something the USSR was too smart to do during the cold war.
>My "seriously" comment was a reaction to a post of what basically is a meme in a rather serious discussion.
That you've seen the video elsewhere neither makes it a "meme", nor allows you to dismiss it as merely such. (I'm just amazed that you didn't pull the "Even a broken clock is right twice a day"/"Trump said everything about anything so was bound to get something right"/"Trump also said uncomplimentary things about NATO so should have been arrested as a traitor" canards. And yes, I've seen all three responses, almost word for word, when I in the past pointed to the Trump video.)
>As far the "German" crisis goes, isn't it rather a European, and one could make the case, global energy crisis?
This is a global crisis in large part because of Germany. Germany is the large European economy most dependent on Russian energy. Even setting aside how the German economy drives the bulk of Europe's economy, thanks to the European energy market increased prices in Germany increases prices on the rest of the continent. The UK is mostly self-sufficient in terms of gas, but prices there have risen too because producers understandably prefer selling to those on the continent willing to pay much more.
The US is also self-sufficient, but prices here have risen (not as much, but some) for similar reasons. The non-developed world is going to be hit the hardest.
America won the landgrab lottery and sits on plenty of oil and gas, which makes this kind of talk really cheap right now. Having a democratic neighbor like Canada with equal resources and 1/10th of the population also helps. Europe is not in that position and I wish people would understand that.
Seems like it should be even more of a focus than no? If North America is concerned _and_ has enough resources with teamwork, then it must be a pretty big deal. "Told you so" always feels cheap, even more so when it's right.
> "Told you so" always feels cheap, even more so when it's right.
"Told you so" doesn't solve anything in the short term, but it might spur stronger future efforts.
> America won the landgrab lottery and sits on plenty of oil and gas, which makes this kind of talk really cheap right now.
I think that misses a key point: There's a big difference between potential and actual advantages.
In the 1970s the US imported a huge amount of energy, making it vulnerable to external extortion... just like Europe now. Then OPEC pulled the trigger, and it was devastating to the US. Ordinary citizens waited in long lines to get just a little gas... which galvanized the public as well as its government. The 1970s energy crisis caused a fundamental shift in US policy. It caused a top-to-bottom focus in the US on ensuring energy and food independence. You couldn't breathe in the 1970s or 1980s without hearing about energy. Walt Disney's Epcot center had at least one pavilion dedicated to the topic. Often the US can't keep a focus on one topic over many years (it often acts like a kid with ADHD), but this is an area where it did focus continuous resources over a lengthy time.
Yes, the US has some geographic advantages, but it couldn't take advantage of many of them decades ago; investment was necessary. The US couldn't use shale in the 1970s, for example, so its "geographic advantage" was not an advantage at the time without investment. The US created an entire branch of government (Department of Energy, founded August 4, 1977) to have a long-term focus on the issue. It invested crazy sums of money, including in research, and as I noted those investments finally resulted in independence about 30-40 years later.
> Having a democratic neighbor like Canada with equal resources and 1/10th of the population also helps. Europe is not in that position and I wish people would understand that.
Yes, the US and Canada work together, and that has led to lots of benefits for both. But it is NOT true that manna fell from heaven; massive multi-decade investments were planned and executed specifically to produce these advantages.
Europe is different, but it has its own advantages. Europe has an extremely well-educated workforce and has incredible technical prowess. It also has lots of capital. And Europe has lots of countries with different strengths and weaknesses, which often leads European countries to be really good at international cooperation. Europe could have used those advantages to improve its energy security. The most obvious is nuclear: Germany is in real trouble for energy, while France has lots of nuclear power plans and simply doesn't have the same level of risk. Or drill offshore, or whatever. No option is perfect, but Europe does have lots going for it.
It's not that Europe wasn't warned. The US did so, repeatedly. After all, the US had experienced a shock, so it knew what such shocks could do. And while I think altruism played a part, it's not just that. The US & Europe are deeply linked, so serious harms to Europe also harm the US. The US has great incentive to ensure Europe doesn't spiral into a situation where many Europeans are dying from freezing or starvation. The US has repeatedly begged Europe to deal with its dependency on Russia. But in the end, the Europeans have to decide what they're going to do. I can imagine the US trying to help Europe with some energy issues, but the Atlantic is big; the US can only do so much now to help Europe in the short term.
It's possible that this will spur changes in Europe today, just like the 1970s energy crisis spurred changes in the US. But it may be a painful process in the meantime.
And yes, there should be more nuclear power plants online in France during winter. But some projections say that it won't be enough and France will depend on other countries until next year.
> It's not that Europe wasn't warned.
That may be so. However, most proposed solutions were not to be come independent, but to import oil/gas from other countries. Which is why public opinion never really changed. And its very hard to encourage people to become climate neutral if others (americans) are some much worse in respect to climate change.
Also, many Europeans have personal connections to Russia and don't trust the US. It's not all just corrupt politicians (which is obviously contributing, but its not just that). Similar story with Iran, btw.
If only Europe was on good terms with Canada and America and had LNG terminals to import natural gas from it's allies and other middle eastern countries who are happy to sell natural gas to europe instead of solely relying on russian imports...
Germny: Nuclear for electricity, gas for heating, indusyry and chemicals.
Now tell me how more nuclear power would have helped with a gas shortage (since Germany is filling up gas reservoirs atm I'm not even sure how bad the shortage really is)?
And don't say France, because we will have cooler rivers and more rain again come fall / winter.
Simple replacement. Germany also uses gas for 12% of its electricity generation. Every bit of gas not used for electricity generation is gas saved for heating and so on.
"since Germany is filling up gas reservoirs atm I'm not even sure how bad the shortage really is"
What are you talking about? It's summer, gas is used for heating, of course it's not a critical issue per se now. Germany is saving gas for the winter, when it heavily uses gas and when Russia will almost certainly cut off the remaining supplies.
And for what it's worth, Germany is already beginning rationing actions for energy starting tomorrow, so even now there is actually already some urgency, which will grow as it gets closer to winter.
The gas reservoirs don't hold enough to get through a winter. They hold enough so that with normal inflows, there's enough gas in the winter - while drawing down the stocks.
You need both ~full storage and continuing supplies to get through a winter.
Sure. And still ir stands that reservoirs are filling up faster than anticipated. I'm in supply chain, and if during a period where inventory is hard to come by said inventory is replenished faster than planned, that is usually a good thing.
Sure, and that will be done, including installation, for 80 million people before Christmas. 2022 that is. Or how much do you think such a transition will take?
In which it wont help a single bit in the short term. Like masks and vaccines during Covid, you need short term fixes until something mid to long term is put in place.
Nuclear in Germany got shut down, and Europe could have chosen the US as a trading partner over Russia (I am assuming as a non-economist, non-FP expert).
If I were on a jury to decide if European leader should have acted differently in the last decade regarding energy stability, I know where I lean.
That was during the cold war 40 years ago and the US couldn't have said otherwise at this time given how entrenched and polarised the conflict was.
The EU has been built on the concept of collaboration. It's not for no reason that Macron called a couple weeks ago for being careful not humiliating the Russian civilisation (with of course sanctions being necessary), to fend off the risk of seeing the same thing repeating itself in a few generations. History demonstrated that many times.
And with your reasoning, Hitler would have enslaved all of Europe and Japan all of Asia or the former Yugoslav nations would have massacred each other.
The Allies let Hitler annex Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia because "hey, let's not start a war with Nazi Germany", and then let Putin annex Crimea because "hey, let's not start a war with Putin's Russia", but talking and diplomacy only gets you so far and after that, unfortunately, war requires tough measures that hurt everyone, because while you sit around, more people are dying and you're setting a precedent for the future that it's ok to invade other countries and kill innocent people, because you previously let others get away with it before in order to avoid war.
You really think Trump actually figured something out, and not just parroting (without understanding) what others in Europe had been saying for decades? Really?
Those warnings from the US are usually transparent geopolitical self interest. That’s not to say it’s incorrect, just that Europe does not need the US new world bumpkins to teach them about energy policy or dictate its foreign relations. It is perfectly capable of managing and mismanaging its own interests.
> Those warnings from the US are usually transparent geopolitical self interest. That’s not to say it’s incorrect, ...
All countries speak for their own self interest... but the warnings can also be correct.
If millions of Europeans freeze or starve, that hurts the US greatly too. Their economies are deeply intertwined, and there's enough shared history that many in in the US would feel it personally.
> just that Europe does not need the US new world bumpkins to teach them about energy policy or dictate its foreign relations. It is perfectly capable of managing and mismanaging its own interests.
All countries manage their own interests; no one would expect otherwise. But thinking "they're new world bumpkins, they have nothing worth listening to" is a terrible idea. Sometimes the new kid on the block has learned something. The US is often happy to steal good ideas from anyone, regardless of age. The US has lots of problems (who doesn't?), but it also has many advantages - not just due to the "luck of the draw", but due to careful investment to turn potential advantages into real ones.
Yes, along with a massive superiority complex that led the grandparent to ask “why didn’t those Silly Billies just listen to us?”
The US is not a purely good faith big brother of Europe, as much as Americans would like to think it is.
Saying bumpkins was a jest, but also true. The US has short and uneventful history in comparison to most old world countries. Its horizon ends at the ocean for the most part and for most US leaders, understanding the rest of the world is optional.
Saying “why didn’t you just invest in energy self sufficiency” is completely unhelpful. EU leaders know the value of energy, but realpolitik is a thing.
>Yes, along with a massive superiority complex that led the grandparent to ask “why didn’t those Silly Billies just listen to us?”
But that's exactly what this boils down to. Indeed, why didn't the Europeans (really, "Germans") listen to the Americans? No amount of "How uncouth of you to tell us the truth, and how unfair of you to tell us that we should have listened to you" doesn't affect the validity of the truth, or the wisdom in listening to it in the first place.
> I think France is mostly okay due to nuclear power (yes some are down for delayed maintenance
To the contrary, they have had to scale back nuclear because the rivers they use for cooling are too warm [1].
And they have resorted to importing power:
"That means France is importing power at a time it would normally be exporting it and EDF is buying electricity at high market prices, just as Europe is scrambling to find alternative energy supplies to Russia."
The problem is that high demand periods (i.e. for air conditioning) correlate with conditions (high temperatures) that are making the nuclear plants difficult to operate.
It doesn't matter so much for the summer demand if nuclear runs at full capacity in cold weather. Part of the issue is that these plants are using rivers for cooling, which by definition have less thermal mass than larger bodies of water like oceans.
The long term issue is that climate change is pushing these river temperatures consistently higher over time.
One of the reasons why nuclear goes so well together with renewables like PV. Actually said that we have more coal plants than nuclear ones in Germany. But that is hibdsight, at the time the decisions were almost reasonable.
That's very patronising. All these "warnings" were distant echoes of internal debates Europe has been having for decades. They're nothing that Europe didn't know about already.
It's like saying "European policy makers have been warning USA about the dangers of repelling the right to abortion". Playing the role of Captain Obvious isn't helpful.
Additionally, Europe isn't Europe. Europe is a collection of sovereign states. Eastern Europe has been warning some western European countries about the dangers of relying on Russia for decades (no, USA's expert advice was not required to reach this conclusion).
The difficulty here in the UK is that we're caught up in it inadvertently.
Despite common perception, only 3% of our gas comes from Russia. Half is North Sea and a third from Norway, with the rest shipped in from elsewhere in the world.
Unfortunately it doesn't matter that only 3% comes from Russia, because prices are set in a market where other countries have more reliance on Russia. The UK ends up paying more as a result.
(To be clear our energy policy is terrible; it just so happens that on this one point it isn't our fault).
here's an archive of a tweet with replies from 2018 where the idea was being mocked, fun reading if you enjoy some schadenfreude. Plus the German delegation laughing at the idea
Can someone explain to me why the US is the next source for energy rather than directly from the much geographicly closer Middle East, which the US spent a significant amount of political & military resources bringing into its sphere for its own energy needs?
> Perhaps I'm mis-remembering, but I remember US policymakers repeatedly warning Europe, over many decades, about the dangers of depending on Russian energy sources.
Thankfully the fact checkers were there to save us. "Germany only imports a fraction of it's energy from Russia" with the smug faces, silly music and everything.
What I remember is that fact checkers mostly focusing on Trump’s frequent conflation of natural gas and all energy. He would often, either carelessly or deliberately misleadingly, say things like “60% of Germany’s energy comes from Russia” when it was actually 60% of Germany’s natural gas, and natural gas accounts for only around 20% of Germany’s total energy. That seems like a reasonable distinction for fact-checkers to highlight.
Yeah, because the US wanted especially Germany to buy US LNG instead of Russian gas. The latter worked since the 69s, it worled all the wayvthrough the Reagan admin and the end of the cold war, the fall of the soviet union until Putin turned nuts. All in all, tgat bad dependency worked nicely for 50+ years.
"adapt". There's decades of pain and death for millions in your use of the word, pain and death that could have been avoided, and will undo much of whatever the that 50+ year dependency produced.
Also say what you will about US policy, we may not be altruists but we're a far lesser evil than the Russians have ever been from a European perspective. Cheap energy from Russia has been a Faustian bargain for at least the last 15 years.
Soviet gas was a reliable thing for 50+ years, that changed only in 2022. And couod you please explain how millions are going to die in Europe over the change from gas to some other renewable source of heating? Seriously curious here, because I see that shit repeatef all iver the place without any reasonable explanation whatsoever.
Obviously it won't be direct or all at once, but serious inflation kills. Economic recessions kill. Suicides and overdoses increase, and European energy prices are climbing so high people literally freezing to death might not be unheard of if winter is cold enough. And even those who can make it through will be seriously diminished economically. Peoples' livelihoods will be destroyed.
One thing's for sure, the vaunted European social safety nets are going to have a hell of a stress test over the next few years. I hope they're up to the task.
I was helping with the mis-remembering, not making a point. Trump is a clown and the fact that 'even' he got this right, just goes to show how bad it was for Germany to depend primarily on a single point of failure.
That single point of failure delivered reliable for 50+ years. Common, a crowd like the one on HN should get at least the basics right before predicting the end of western civilisation.
> Perhaps I'm mis-remembering, but I remember US policymakers repeatedly warning Europe, over many decades, about the dangers of depending on Russian energy sources.
The alternative point of view is that Europe is in an energy crisis because it decided to sanction Russia over Ukraine, and Russia responded in kind. The decision to sanction Russia, while morally justifiable, was not strictly necessary and was in part driven by EU's alliance with the US. If the EU had been a really autonomous subject it would have taken in account its own interests first in this crisis.
Cutting Russia off was pretty much the only sensible choice and the problem is entirely because they also rely on such a source for energy, had they not been so needy of Russia there wouldn't be a problem, when Russia is a problem state you shouldn't be giving them power or leverage over you at all and they were always likely to do something that would be problematic, nothing they have done is unexpected, Europe walked right into Russias hands and it was clear to see.
It's the same reason why a lot of the world needs to back away from China ASAP or else we will be in this situation again just with a range of other resources/manufacturing in the not to distant future.
>> it would have taken in account its own interests first in this crisis.
Europe did take account of its own interests
The primary interest of Europe is to put a stop to Russian aggression and genocide.
The RUS govt itself has said that it will not stop at Ukraine, which it also states has no right to exist, and that Poland and the Baltics are next.
Aggressors and autocrats will only stop when they ARE stopped by an outside force. Every other "negotiation" or appeasement is taken as a sign of weakness or permission. Destroy entire cities in Chechnya, Syria, Georgia? No opposition? OK, must be fine. Occupy and annex Crimea & Donbas? A bit of tut-tutting, but no real opposition, must be fine. So, we get the Ukranian war and threats against Poland and the Baltics, and just yesterday against the British isles.
Not being killed is the first interest of Europe.
Not being subjugated to an authoritarian regime is a close second.
Maintaining low energy pricing and high availability is definitely lower than both.
Just because the US is showing leadership and many countries agree that genocide is bad and should be sanctioned does not mean that the agreeing party is somehow not independent. Stop carrying Putin's water.
The US has invested staggering amounts of money into work on anti-nuclear lobbying in France, a country which wanted an independant Europe on civilian and military nuclear. Hallstein, a former personnality of the nazi party ironically contributed to the European energetic dependence to the USA and Russia notably.
Economic interdependence is good to maintain peace. Especially after the Cold War I can understand this incentive to strengthen the relations with Russia. The mistake was to continue to believe in it after Putin took Crimea in 2014.
>Economic interdependence is good to maintain peace.
False. Even before Ww2, European countries were still economically interdependent and yet still WW2 happened. What maintains peace is democratically elected leaders and separation of powers so that no single mad-man can ever singlehandedly turn a nation to war. That's why we had peace since WW2, democracy. Which Russia rever really had. So being dependent on countries with corrupt undemocratic governments where one leader can do whatever he feels like with no real opposition to stop him, was the real issue.
All the time during the cold war the rather close economic ties between the west and the USSR (grain, gas...) helped to keep communication channels open and reduce the risk of the cold war turning into a hot one in Europe. Not seeing this is quite, well, short sighted.
Grain and gas trade didn't prevent WW3, but fear of mutual annihilation from nuclear weapons did. Same how current grain and gas trade between Russian and the west didn't stop it invading Ukraine.
Sure, MAD helped. As did all those wars in Korea, Vieynam and Afghanistan (there was one involving Russia way beforw the US went there, based on the ignorance of history in this thread I thought it makes sense to add). More than one thing can be true at the same time, especially in a complex world
> Economic interdependence is good to maintain peace.
I think history has plenty of counter-examples. Interdependence also provides incentives for one to either take over or extort the other. Taiwan and mainland China are interdependent, and that situation is tense.
I think it's the other way around. If the relationships are already peaceful, then it's much safer to have interdependence. Think Canada/US, or the various countries within the EU.
Hmm, assuming your inverted causation has an interesting implication: The press currently likes to chastise european politicians for the gas interdependence with Russia. This is just an result of peace though. It does not make sense to punish them for maintaining peace. Thus, we should rather congratulate european politicians for what they achieved until now.
I don’t claim that interdependence is sufficient for peace. It is much more complicated. So counter examples are to be expected. What I still believe though: Intentionally increasing interdependence makes war less likely not more.
Ironically, Europe is now becoming dependent on Chinese LNG imports, much of which comes from Russia. The sanctions are not working.
>The more desperate Europe becomes about its energy supplies, the more China’s policy decisions will have the power to affect the bloc. As Europe attempts to wrestle out of its dependence on Russia for energy, the irony is that it is becoming more dependent on China.
Germany is neither sunny nor windy, and is maintaining an anti-nuclear stance for the moment. I'm sure it will try a renewable play, waste tons of money for marginal results, and end up burning its local coal deposits instead. That or concede to Russian demands.
40% of our electricity comes from renewables already. And it would be much higher, if the Energiewende ("energy turn (to renewables)") hadn't been sabotaged by the same parties that wanted to use coal and gas (namely CDU and SPD).
So there's clearly some creative accounting going on behind that 40% figure. Maybe it's 40% of raw power produced that then gets exported and pays for other sources or something, or maybe that 40% is strictly during the day and can't be replicated at night. But it's clear the storage necessary for a completely renewable grid is lacking by multiple orders of magnitude.
You don't need equivalent storage to energy production. I'm not sure what the ratio should be but if you're offsetting 40% of production (ie, during the day) that's pretty good.
Of course, you need baseload power generation for non-peak power, and DE really should have stayed with nuclear for that instead of pushing coal/gas.
Local coal deposits are not economical anymore, haven't been for decades. We get our coal from places like Asia and Australia.
Last time I checked Germany was among the leaders in Europe for installed PV capacity, ahead of Spain, Italy, Portugal and France. And the northern part is quite windy, ever heard of the north sea?
Instead of what? Making the switch will require tremendous effort that must come from something else, which Germany will necessarily lose (not produce). Likely this would be distributed through the economy so that there will be a bit less of everything else - shoes, haircuts, food, etc.
If China buys from Russia at discounted prices because the demand for russian oil has fallen, and then resells at a higher price to Europe, it's not quite true that the sanctions are not working. Russia's bleeding out as well.
I guess, though to me that idiom inappropriately suggests that the actions are not understood. This is direct economic warfare and it sucks but it's got clear strategic objectives.
Russia’s economy is contracting so in what sense are sanctions not working? They aren’t 100% effective but they do appear to be having an effect and long term the effects, if sanctions remain, will force Russia into a pseudo vassal client of China.
Most economies worldwide have been contracting this year, along with price inflation on commodities including food.
If the intent of Russian sanctions was to increase prices of food and fuel in USA to harm the working poor in USA, then Russian sanctions are going great.
Russia’s economy, from what I’ve read, is contracting much more with sanctions than without them. I think it’s clear and obvious that the EU did not impose sanctions on Russia for the purpose of increasing prices of food and fuel for poor people in the U.S. The EU and the U.S. have announced the reason for sanctions. There are secondary effects of the sanctions and I believe that food price increases are more a result of global supply chain issues and Russia preventing Ukraine from fully exporting its products.
The problem is that a contracting economy doesn’t faze ordinary Russians outside of Moscow and St Petersburg all that much.
They were already poor. They’ll get a little poorer. But they’ll have enough to eat and enough to heat their homes. And they’ll still believe that Russian pride is intact, and that’s all that matters.
The entire sanctions approach fails so spectacularly because the capitalist Western ideology sees everything in terms of money and wealth. Outside of the west, most people will happily suffer if they believe that their pride and identity is being protected. This is something Americans just don’t understand at all.
The European gas sanctions specifically aren't working:
1. The gas is just being arbitraged via China. It's a commodity, it makes no sense to stop buying from source A and start buying from source B if B is willing to buy from A.
2. Gazprom is now making record-breaking profits.
Europe is now facing an unprecedented and mostly self inflicted crisis of the type that didn't occur even during the cold war. The Russians claim they are willing to fill up to half of Nord Stream 2 the moment Germany decides to accept it. If that's a lie then the energy crisis is real. If it's not a lie then European leaders are manipulating the public - sanctioning Russia so they feel good and virtuous whilst simultaneously claiming the sanctions are the other way around and there's nothing they can do to get more gas.
Sanctions on non-commodities like chips, specialist tools, infrastructure access? That can work and is probably having an impact. Sanctions on a commodity that can be moved around as a liquid? That can only work in theory if everyone does it despite the huge incentives to defect.
This economic war is being fought differently from the two sides: Russia is trying to squeeze as much money as possible out of Europe for gas and oil, Europe is trying to starve Russia of every thing else.
Of course Gazprom is making record profit it is currently an unregulated adversarial monopoly. The sanction effect are thing like how the other week Russia was unable to operate some of its warship for lack of replacement parts.
Economic war? This is a new cold war with countries* being compelled to choose sides and split banking channels. The war material manufacturers are creating career paths for their grand children.
* Turkey is attempting to make money from everyone, while remaining in NATO.
Which other Russian companies supply Russian gas to Europe in significant quantities? I thought Gazprom was pretty much the only company doing this but I have only a cursory knowledge of this matter.
The point of sanctions is a combination of two things. One is to punish a country and the other is to make a moral stance. If in the course of punishing the country a particular company makes more money that does not necessarily negate the efficacy of the sanctions or necessarily negate the morality of the sanctions.
Europe doesn't only use Russian gas, large parts of it hardly rely on Russian gas at all. For example the UK only gets ~5% of gas from Russia. Europe is dotted with LNG import terminals that can import gas via ship from anywhere.
The reason there's a price spike across Europe is that Germany is suddenly trying to buy the supplies it needs from elsewhere, and gas is a (mostly) fungible commodity. So there's effectively less supply now in Europe, but with same or greater demand (to fill storage), which means the global LNG price goes up for everyone.
"The point of sanctions is a combination of two things. One is to punish a country and the other is to make a moral stance."
For as long as any country is willing to arbitrage gas it simply punishes the buyer, not the seller. From this whole thread it seems the basic economics of this seem to have got lost somewhere so let's do a worked example:
1. Russia sells $1000 worth of gas per day to Europe and $500 worth to China (or India, or wherever).
2. Europe says to Russia we don't want to buy your gas anymore. Russia is now $1000/day poorer, but has lots of spare gas. Now Europe needs to buy $1000 worth from somewhere else like China.
3. China looks at its natural reserves and thinks, well, we don't really have much more to sell from local production. But hey, we have pipelines and LNG terminals and gas is the same no matter where it comes from. Russia, would you be willing to sell us all your spare gas?
4. Russia says sure, that'll be $1000/day. China says OK, we'll take it.
5. Now China turns around to Europe and says sure, we can sell you gas. That'll be $1200/day. Europe is desperate for gas and so says yes; they don't have many other options because most sellers can't meet such a huge block of demand.
Result: Russia makes the same money as before and doesn't care, China takes a profit off the top, Europe ends up shooting itself in the foot. But at least its politicians can feel virtuous.
What's happening isn't as pure cut as that example. Obviously, Europe is trying to get gas from lots of alternative locations, only some is being arbitraged via third party countries. And in reality the arbitrageurs would pay less because there's greater supply, pushing down the price. But in any situation where you're trying to buy something that is a fungible commodity sanctions like that only make sense if there are no groups that break them. The moment someone does they make huge profits. So it doesn't make sense in an international market, it'd be like trying to sanction oil or grain. Someone will just buy it at the new lower price, relabel it and sell it back to you.
As for the moral stance argument, German politicians have no moral authority to bankrupt the poor throughout Europe or break down the electricity grid. They were not elected to do that, and it is deeply immoral to do that even if it worked which it does not. The working classes of Europe are not cannon fodder to freeze to death so Scholz can take a "moral stance".
So Gazprom is a monopoly within Russia. Germany is not solely the reason for the EU sanctions. Other countries were involved in the sanctions decision. The Baltics and Poland, etc. have been far more vocal about wanting sanctions.
The fact is Russia hasn’t been stably non expansionist for centuries and it is they who have been aggressors in Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia. At some point it’s a reasonable response by those threatened by Russia (the Baltics) to respond by demanding action by their allies. Russia alone is at fault and it alone deserves ire.
The moral imperative clearly lies with those desiring sanctions. Europe is going through the painful process to divest itself now of Russian resources. This will pay dividends in the future.
But it would change the equation a lot. Russia in very reliant on its fossil fuel exports both to finance its imports and its internal economy; the EU would like sanctions to affect both of those fields, but one is better than zero.
If China pays less it just means the above situation works out to China's advantage even more than with my toy numbers, and even less to Europe's. Regardless of what numbers you use, Europe loses more than Russia. Sanctions only "work" (by the very low standards of workingness they're held to) if the sanctioned party needs to sell a lot more than the sanctioner needs to buy. With Europe that's clearly not the case - Russia can easily sell to others but Europe faces more or less immediate collapse. The advantage here is Russia's and the inability of the EU to recognize that they miscalculated threatens its population with dire levels of deprivation of economic destruction.
My understanding is that the gas China is reselling is not from Russia, or at least mostly, rather Middle East. Russian energy exports to China are small and without an obvious immediate way to increase it. It is also had that China has no use for si they are a beneficiary too.
Maybe it's because I'm not American, but having someone talking about how much worse it is in Europe compared to the US while saying things like what I quote below, doesn't really entice me to continue watching the video much further, no matter how much I agree that Europe is fucked at the moment.
> (31:36) You guys wanna see what the Chinese and the Europeans are bitching about, 'cause this is so much fun. (all laughing) Europe's already in recession.
> We are looking at an energy induced depression that is affecting multiple continents probably already, but not here. This is a good problem.
> This gives us a competitive advantage in everything.
Is it generally considered funny and/or OK to shit on others misfortune while laughing about it? Bragging about how much better it is for you that others feel pain about something?
>Is it generally considered funny and/or OK to shit on others misfortune while laughing about it? Bragging about how much better it is for you that others feel pain about something?
The video is from a talk at an Iowan Pork Producer Industry event, not an academic presentation. His audience (the Iowan Pork Industry) was likely very happy to hear this news, given that it is bad for their competitors.
>Maybe it's because I'm not American
I wouldn't extrapolate Iowan pig farmers to all United States citizens.
Because it's part of the economy! All sorts of non-intellectual goods make up the economy. We eat sausage, sausage comes from abroad, Germans can't make sausage because of Russian gas drop off, etc.
America's Pork Producer Industry is quite knowledgeable about producing pork, which involves competing with global Pork Producers. The LNG section of the video contains insights you may apply to other aspects of your life.
Personally, I was unaware of the differences in the price of LNG between Europe/China and North America, and I was completely blindsided by how much recent developments in the Ukrainian conflict have exacerbated the differences!
Then linknto a detailed analysis of said LNG market, and note some key note to a, from an non-US piint of view, irrelevant meeting of an irrelevant industry association.
Probably catering to his audience. His books are much more even, and when he's gone on podcasts he points out how he'd like to be wrong about what he sees. That particular laugh also came off as rather forced.
Simple fact is though that America is the big winner in a European energy crisis. We get to sell Europe all the excess energy we can pump out while simultaneously gaining all the European industry that can leave/requires cheap energy.
That's assuming the crisis passes relatively quickly. If energy prices remain inflated for years, and your business model depends on cheap energy, and perhaps the US government awakens from its drunken stupor one morning and starts offering incentives on top of that...
An other if: The countries currently hosting those industries do nothing to hold them. By the way, German energy prices for industry were among the lowest in Europe up to the current FUBAR situation. The brunt of electricity price increades due to the Energiewende is born by consumers.
True, but you sacrifice global competitiveness if you force a company to operate uneconomically, and Germany is an export-driven nation, even more so if German consumers are being eaten alive by inflation.
Not that said countries won't try or that the industries are leaving tomorrow, but at the end of the day the energy has to come from somewhere, and every day it doesn't those businesses are losing money, or the taxpayers are losing money subsidizing them. In the worst cases you end up like that Soviet company that exported industrial furnaces to then West Germany and was held up as a bastion of Soviet global competitiveness, when the West German buyers were literally melting down the furnaces for the raw metals because they were just so cheap and the metals so comparably valuable in the global market.
Norway is also raking in money on gas and to a lesser extent electricity, only problem is that we also get the insane electricity prices (or to be more precise, most of us. Electricity is up to 1000% more expensive in the south than in the north). The government is getting richer while the population is sucked dry from the "smart" electricity meter.
Isn't shitting on U.S. culture (e.g. "oh at least we don't do x!") while driving home with a Big Mac one of the most Euro things to do? I've seen various shades of this in the U.K., France, Italy etc. I'm not sure I would be getting out the small violins tbh as the friendly animosity is kind of funny. Western Europe is essentially NA-lite economically and politically anyway.
"Is it generally considered funny and/or OK to shit on others misfortune while laughing about it? Bragging about how much better it is for you that others feel pain about something?"
No it isn't. I'm American btw. Sorry, some people are jerks.
I'm Indian, not any of the groups mentioned by him, and I too found him way too cringe-inducing. He came across too strongly as trying to push some agenda. I did not feel like sticking around long enough to find out what the agenda was.
>Maybe it's because I'm not American, but having someone talking about how much worse it is in Europe compared to the US while saying things like what I quote below, doesn't really entice me to continue watching the video much further, no matter how much I agree that Europe is fucked at the moment.
Watch the video from the start. He takes a similar "ha ha serious" sarcastic view toward everything, including (for example) the potential for Russia to use nuclear weapons (7:35).
Basically, this is an inside look at American nationalism. Most Americans would not cheer at the misfortune of allies and major trading partners, but there is a segment of nationalists, probably voters of a certain you know who.
Funnily enough, if we look at the most dumb recession criterion (2 consequent quarters of negative growth), the EU is definitely not in a recession while the US is.
> Is it generally considered funny and/or OK to shit on others misfortune while laughing about it? Bragging about how much better it is for you that others feel pain about something?
This is consistent with the American stereotype in several places… Though it is not consistent with my experience with American, but then I don’t tend to hang out with loud obnoxious jerks.
So I watched basically every bit of video that includes Zeihan and I have never once been able to actually confirm the stats he says. That paired with how convenient it is that as the world is going into turmoil we have an academic-ish person taking a bold pro-american stance I am very wary of trusting/promoting him.
If you want to take away that global supply chains are fully breaking down and that demographic trends are going to lead to labour shortages I do think that is pretty unassailable.
But he also says that the Chinese navy is only a coastal force and can't power project into the Indian Ocean to protect its trade routes, which is utterly wrong. Or the bit where he says about only ~10% of German electricity comes from wind + solar (while claiming they built out wind + solar to a theoretical 200% of daily capacity, and it's mostly just idle). It's actually 33% which is too wide of a miss for me to trust any numbers he states.
(Aside: His arrow at the start of the clip points to Waterloo, not Marshalltown.)
I was thinking about Peter Zeihan as well when I saw this item. I'd be keen to find someone who communicates as well as he does but has opposite conclusions, because he certainly seems to string a lot of real data into interesting narratives. He seems to be the geopolitical answer to Adam Curtis.
I agree - his narrative is largely a lullaby about how great america is. He gets somet things very wrong, like e.g. how china cannot produce anything of high quality. But many of his points are well justified, like this energy crisis or the looming pensions/welfare crises in europe. Europeans seem to care less about these than zeihan does. His predictions are not to be taken verbatim (they are linear extrapolations based on demographics trends), but some of them will surely pan out. (Some of them will not, like e.g. how japan was not ruined despite its abysmal demographics).
He does get some basic macro facts very right - stuff that gets overlooked in most analysis.
It is true that America has no immediate physical threats, that it has vast tracts of incredibly fertile land, that its demographics are healthier than nearly all of the developed world’s, and that its gigantic landmass makes it easier to build out solar and wind power capabilities.
I'm willing to entertain the idea that I find him engaging because he reinforces a narrative that I'm drawn to. But he comes with reasonable sounding receipts so its hard to see how he overstates his case.
The NYT is… not great in its European coverage. Often pushing a narrative along the lines of “look how much it sucks compared to here”. I don’t follow CNN or Fox News, and definitely not the White House’s press releases.
If you want decent coverage in English, the BBC and the Guardian are better, though not without blind spots.
The NYT has a pretty strong anti-EU bias. I suspect it has a lot to do with American interests and the ownership of the paper. Just about every article about EU affairs has a very negative and skeptical stance. They REALLY hate the EU certification of PDO for food labeling, which in itself I think is a big clue about who’s interests it represents.
>Often pushing a narrative along the lines of “look how much it sucks compared to here”.
Which seems nonsensical considering their readership is strongly correlated with the subset of Americans who think we should do things like Western Europe. I'm sure they have metrics and have A/B tested it but still, seems weird...
> Which seems nonsensical considering their readership is strongly correlated with the subset of Americans who think we should do things like Western Europe.
In a somewhat myopic way. Social security is great, but laïcité is bad. Scandinavians can do nothing bad, but the rest of Europe is a big mess. Free speech (as it is seen in the US) is a fundamental right, but not for those who criticise organised religion (like those European blasphemers).
Reports of anything in places like Germany, France, Spain, or Italy is always ambivalent.
From my experience this reflects the majority point of view in American liberals.
Every time Peter Zeihan is brought up there's a comment like this, and every time said comment lacks any examples of actual misinformation. Sometimes the occasional mention of one of his past predictions that didn't/hasn't (yet) come true, but no actual examples of misinformation.
This lends his argument more credence in my mind, not less.
I would feel better about Zeihan's predictions if he ever directly addressed criticism of them. For example, his "China can only do low-end chips, anything you find in a cell phone or a laptop is made in the US" claim he regularly repeats.
Also he's clearly speaking in generalities as a rhetorical device. Obviously China can do "some" high-end chip work, and obviously not all cell phone and laptop chips are made in the US. But he is correct that the high end IP and design work is US-centric, with a decent chunk of manufacturing as Intel maintains US fabs.
It's the same as if I said "France doesn't produce oil, all the world's important oil supplies come from the Persian Gulf nations!". That's technically wrong, as France is currently world's 72nd largest oil producer (https://www.worldometers.info/oil/france-oil/) and the US/Russia/North Sea/others are a large chunk of global markets. But it is correct in that the world writ large cannot function without middle eastern oil, whereas it can function without French oil.
The reason the US doesn't build low-end chips at scale is economics. The reason China doesn't build high-end chips at scale is capability.
The reason China doesn't build high-end chips at scale is capability.
Does it matter though? Sure, China might be three or four years behind the bleeding edge, but does that gap actually make as much of a difference as Zeihan thinks it will? If you replaced all my electronics with an equivalent that was five years older I would be mildly inconvenienced but my life wouldn't change at all.
He also ignores some pretty big things. Like I've read all his books and watched probably twenty hours of his talks and not once has he brought up the fact that American Millennials and Gen z-ers are not having children.
When you look at the theoretical capabilities of 5G networks and potential first-mover advantages it might matter quite a bit. It also matters from a standpoint of military tech, which given the Taiwan question could make a big difference. Is it the be-all-end-all? No, and perhaps he's overstating it as a factor, but it is a substantial factor economically.
I don't know what talks you've seen or if you've read his latest book, he's brought up quite a bit that Gen-Z is tiny, and that American Millenials only buy the US an extra few decades, and that current millennial fertility rate is extremely low (I've only seen this last point on more recent podcasts, to be fair). We don't get to escape mass-aging, we just get to watch the rest of the developed world go first and hopefully gain better position/draw some lessons on what to do about it.
When you look at the theoretical capabilities of 5G networks and potential first-mover advantages it might matter quite a bit.
I don't see how. Has 5G changed anything at all? People today are using their smartphones with 300mbit 5G connections for the exact same things they were using them for with 30mbit 4G connections and largely the same things they were using 3mbit 3G connections for. What's changed since 2012? Do you use your smartphone any differently than you did a decade ago?
It's not so much about consumers as businesses and infrastructure. 5G speed and device capacity increases have the capability to truly bring about pure wireless communication infrastructure that's cheap, efficient, reliable and performant enough that we could actually get some legit cyberpunk-ish tech built on top of it. Comparing 4G LTE to 5G is like comparing traditional oil wells to shale. Your gasoline may not change except perhaps in price, but the business and geopolitical side is completely transformed and there's a new surge in economic growth.
5G speed and device capacity increases have the capability to truly bring about pure wireless communication infrastructure that's cheap, efficient, reliable and performant enough that we could actually get some legit cyberpunk-ish tech built on top of it.
What? Multiplayer VR does not require that much bandwidth.
efficient, reliable
To me this is where 5G is worse than useless. The advent of 5G means companies have effectively stopped expanding 4G networks. The places I go with no data connectivity are exactly the same as they were five years ago and ten years ago. Where does 5G exist that 4G didn't exist beforehand?
4G LTE can support around 4000 devices per square km, 5G can support around a million, all with faster speeds and far reduced latency. You want cars that can talk to each other? Stoplights that can talk to cars in real-time? Wireless cellular internet so you have an alternative to whatever your apartment complex provides, or whatever ISP decided it was worth it to wire your street 20 years ago? 4G was incapable of that with any real population density due to congestion. 5G, fully realized, handles it easily. Now apply those types of communications to literally every sector in range of a 5G cell tower. Forget the stupid VR headsets, look into the stuff in the walls, underground and along streets and inside office buildings/hospitals/factories.
Part of the reason the Internet of Things sucks so hard is that 4G communications are insufficient to reach the scales/speeds/latency required to do anything at scale or requiring low-latency communications with it. You've likely experienced this while trying to browse the internet on your data plan in a crowded area, where you then switch to an unsecured public wifi hotspot out of frustration. That's why we've largely seen the sector stick to overpriced consumer toys and other non-critical applications.
At any rate the rollout is just beginning, to the point where 5G is still more of a marketing term (I think T-Mobile was selling 5G capable phones before it even rolled out any hardware), and supply chain issues are biting everything. But the business incentives are there, give it a few years.
I didnt say he was spreading misinformation, I said he was saying what his audience wanted to hear. Like his audience from 2005-15 wanted to hear that China was going to collapse in the next 5 years.
Did that happen? No. Does that make it misinformation? No. Why was he so confident though? Why did his audience believe it?
Because theres a whole lot of misinformation around. I think his basic pitch is that fossil fuels are amazing, America has lots so it will win and the rest of the world but especially China will collapse when it runs out.
Can you think of any hot topics of misinformation that might affect your reception of such an argument when China is the world leader in wind, solar, battery, EV, Rail, electrolizer, green hydrogen, HVDC, Hydro, Nuclear etc.
No - that's way too narrow of a view of his overall assessment which is basically that a couple of things matter to a country:
1. Access to key resources (food, energy, other products/services). That includes being able to manufacture
2. Demographics
His general position is that the current state of the global economy for #1 is due to risk free global trade due to American guarantees on shipping safety post-WWII. He thinks this is unlikely to continue forever, and he works through the scenarios for individual countries if supply chains have to become more regional/local.
He basically says some countries are in good positions (France, Norway, Sweden, US, most of Southeast Asia) because they have decent demographics, enough military (mostly naval) power, and enough access to critical resources. Other countries are in bad positions (China, Korea, a bunch of others I'm forgetting)
He's "pro-America" mainly because the US is energy independent, food independent, capable of manufacturing anything (and if they can't, they already have alliances with the rest of the Americas to do it), with decent demographics, geographic isolation from other countries that have issues, and a good military to protect shipping. He's "anti-China (and Korea)" because they have rapidly aging demographics, limited access to a bunch of supplies, and no naval power (and in Korea's case, they are stuck in the middle of a bunch of other potentially hostile powers).
I think the US audience is definitely more likely to accept his messages, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong. He could be completely wrong, but it's at least a very interesting perspective (and I think the basis for some of Elon's recent comments).
Meh, it's not gonna be the end of the world. Prices for consumers will increase (maybe around 3x), but if the poorest are helped accordingly it's not so bad and will actual push people to be more responsible.
This whole crisis actually mostly show how absurd our energy grid is, and the poor strategic choices made in the previous decades. It also pushes for much needed reforms and investments (300 billions in renewables announced a few days ago).
> but if the poorest are helped accordingly it's not so bad
Prices for consumers increasing thricefold will send a major part of the population deep into debt (e.g. >20% of the German population have no financial reserves at all, living paycheck to paycheck) and drop a major part of the middle class down to the living standard of the (pre-2020) lower class.
I mean, sure, you're right, it's not the end of the world, we will recover from this and hopefully emerge with renewables everywhere, but even if we manage this crisis optimally, the next few years will be quite rocky both politically and economically here in Europe.
And I'm quite scared what happens if we should fuck up, because...
> and will actual push people to be more responsible
... this whole mess can also, alternatively, push people to extreme, simple "solutions" offered by more extremist parts of the political spectrum instead. :/
>Meh, it's not gonna be the end of the world. Prices for consumers will increase (maybe around 3x),
No, more like 10X.
>but if the poorest are helped accordingly it's not so bad and will actual push people to be more responsible.
This is not a case of "government can cap the bills" or "government can provide subsidies to help pay for higher bills" or, even, "government can ration electricity". Setting aside the inflationary and other side effects of doing so, *SUBSIDIES AND RATIONING DON'T MATTER IF THERE IS NO SUPPLY*.
Define 'poorest' because gas and electricity bills are predicted to reach an average of £5000. That isn't affordable for even some in the middle class.
I get where this comes from, but at least in France and Germany it's not questioned that there will be assistance and even direct intervention from the gouvernement on the electricity market. We're talking about democracies with strong socialist components after all.
And also, Macron will definitely do everything to avoid another Yellow Jackets episode...
YES! Jesus christ it shows how shortsighted parlementary democracies are. And many individuals: Becoming semi-powerindependent has been possible and cheaper for a long time with Solar Panels. It doesn't heat your house though. But really, who needs to heat so much anyway? Just heat one room, wear a jumper, and visit your friends or the pub instead.
But no, instead of calling for behavioral change, what do the politicians say now? Subsidize!
Thank god I live in Switzerland. The most democratic country in the world, and Europe's least dependent on Russian Gas.
Almost half of the Swiss gas imports are from Russia, and let's add to that a part of the EU imports - which probably more than half originate from Russia as well. But making extraordinary claims was always at the heart of Swissness, right?
"Geopolitical tensions around the Ukraine conflict between Russia and a not truly consistent US/European conglomerate are straining and the word “sanctions” is being touted with rising frequency. But by analysing flows it’s clear that any material sanctions on Russian oil and gas exports are unlikely to materialise. If this were to happen, Europe would have much more to lose than Russia. In this insight we’ll explore why."
Basically, Russia depended on Europe for about half of its fossil fuel export market in 2020, a steep drop from 2010 when Europe made up about 80% of the exports.
Unfortunately the geopolitical prediction was a bit off:
> "Given just how huge the ramifications would be for Europe, as well as how toothless flow sanctions would be without blocking Russian exports, which in turn would put the entire world into a different place, we deem it most likely that current tensions will be solved diplomatically."
As a European, we know - we've already lost ~25% of the value of our savings and purchasing power between double-digit inflation and the Euro crashing >20% in less than a year.
But our governments are so committed to this path, there's no way back.
Personally I don't care whether it's Ukrainian or Russian oligarchs charging the gas transit fees, I just want peace and stability. Then we can invest heavily in nuclear fission and fusion and renewable energy sources.
Peace and stability is how we are in this mess. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Western Europe did nothing, to keep the peace. Russia was emboldened to continue the campaign to annex the rest of Ukraine because they knew no one was going to stop them. And outside of monetary and weapons aid they were mostly right, the Ukrainians are in this fight by themselves. Everyone else is making excuses about keeping the peace and not letting the price of gas get too high.
When Russia annexed Ukraine nobody anything, including the US. Besides, of course, working with Ukraine behind the scenes to prepare for a potential similar event. And that oreparation worked, didn't it?
I like how HN ignores the historical context when it comes to Russia, gas and Europe. This history goes much further back than 2014...
>When Russia annexed Ukraine nobody anything, including the US.
The US began under Obama an intensive program to retrain the Ukrainian armed forces away from the Soviet-era tactics that had failed miserably against Russia in the east, and provide equipment. Trump and Biden continued this.
Without this, Russia's gambit of seizing Kiev and defeating Ukraine in 72 hours in the February war might have succeeded.
>As a European, we know - we've already lost ~25% of the value of our savings and purchasing power between double-digit inflation and the Euro crashing >20% in less than a year.
We've lost a lot more during the covid money printer bull run of 2020-2022 when house prices went though the roof. Good luck affording a house now that our wages are worth less and our energy bills are higher.
As a European, I want this tumor at our doorstep excised. We fooled ourselves into believing trade would magically bring Russia in line; absolutely nothing bears this out. Russian rulers have been a horrible influence on humans in our continent for centuries (remember, Russians have to live there largely in squalor every day for as long as the country exists).
I do hope future generations don't suffer the consequences of our need for 'peace' (a more factual description would be self-delusion). Actual peace means an excision like we did with Nazi rule. There can be no trace left, or else it'll keep festering for more centuries still.
The issues with these articles is that they focus on money, and the price of energy, which leads people to believe either consciously or not that something can be helped with money. It can't. There is a fundamental supply constraint that has nothing to do with money.
People will consume less, either because prices rise and they choose not to pay them, or by rationing, or by random blackouts (gas-outs?).
I still feel like I don't after reading the article.
Somewhat tragic that energy conservation, in the age of climate change, requires Russia stopping supplies in the middle of a gas shortage to be politically viable.
If you go there, every barge is covered in solar panels (at least in Germany, Belgium where I was recently). Lots of wind farms, great public transportation and train systems. Etc etc.
Europe is doing well compared with Russia or red american states, but they got seriously swerved off course for about a decade there due to populist pro-fossil fuel movements and are now trying to course correct, like more solar manufacturing, EV and batteries.
Again, they're relatively doing well but not up to their previous own high standards.
> “Because of the Ukraine war, every single molecule that was available in our region has been purchased by Europe, because they’re trying to reduce their dependence on Russia,” said Pakistan’s Petroleum Minister, Musadik Malik.
In Switzerland we should be mostly fine with nuclear and hydro.
I don't drive a car and I can afford some amount of raises in price.
So I not really doing anything.
Switzerland made the brain dead choice to stop all nuclear research and eventually remove all nuclear plants. I just hope to god that we can reverse that absurdly tragic choice and start planning for a next generation reactor.
I would love if Switzerland could plan for a GenIV reactor to replace its aging fleet. We really don't have any other decent option. Importing coal power from Germany seems to be an alternative.
Maybe the single worst popular vote in my lifetime. Except maybe some of the immigration votes.
Actually Switzerland released a Study today that they can cover the entire electricity demand in the country by building 3000 additional windmills. So maybe the nuclear power plants aren't needed after all. But of course, what will actually happen is that the power plants will be closed while the windmills are on the bureaucratic drawing table.
When you say "less deadly" in regards to nuclear compared to windmills, you mean "less deadly for birds", right?
Not that it diminishes your point, being less deadly for birds is a legitimate factor. I am just curious if you omitted the "for birds" part or if windmills are deadly for humans in some way as well.
No I mean humans. I mean neither is very deadly but I believe far more people would die constructing and reconstructing 3000 giant towers rather then having a single GenIV nuclear plant running for the next 60 years.
Ah, it is constructions related. I didn't even think about that at all, I assumed construction was pretty much casualty-free at this point.
Good point, thanks for bringing it up. I was legitimately confused how windmills manage to result in operational deaths, with the construction never even entering my mind.
The number of deaths per terrawatt-hour is 0.04 for Wind vs 0.03 for Nuclear (compared to 25 for coal and 2.4 for natural gas). The figure for nuclear includes deaths resulting from the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters, which distorts the numbers. The death rate for nuclear during normal operation (which is how wind, coal, and gas are measured) is vanishingly small.
Not sure how to count but most of the death in Fukushima were because of unnecessary actions by the government that resulted in far more problems then the radiation itself.
Chernobyl I think shouldn't even be counted, its such a different technology stack.
Neither is very deadly. I would just really like to see a nice modern nuclear plant.
Got some plane tickets out of Europe for late September. Plan to come back in March next year. It will be cheaper for us to go on vacation for a few months than it will be to stay. Many of my friends have already departed.
France is really not the worst in Europe at the moment. It’s probably one of the large countries that can the best withstand the next couple of years, if they can get their heads out of their arses.
Heatpumps had been trendy for a while now in NL, and if you can supply and install them, you are having a great time right now.
I managed to snap up one of the last relatively favourable long term energy contracts that controls the damage a bit, and fortuitously I had solar panels installed a year ago. For a heatpump we'd need to replace all radiators as well, so it's something I'll have to get done before the contract is up.
Nothing, because German gas recervoirs are being filled up right noe. Switching from gas heating to a heat pump is not feasible time and budget wise. The first gas consumers to be cut off will be public pools and offices. Prices will go up, but not to a level tgat will hurt us, those that will be hurt will get public subsidies.
By chance I moved to a country with mild winter, close to the seaside (which helps regulate the weather, both in summer and in winter). I just had my open fireplace (which wastes 80% of the burned wood's energy and which requires me to constantly refill) replaced with an efficient closed one (which moreover looks gorgeous). 5 K EUR investment which I'll regain on energy bills in no time.
Buying wood is great, especially so if you happen to have an efficient way of burning it (which an open fireplace certainly isn't).
I'm, so far, one of those who still can deal with crazy energy price raises but I wouldn't want to suffer actual gaz or electricity shortages preventing me from warming the house during the few cold months.
A fireplace and reserves of wood, medieval style, should help.
I'm in one of few electricity markets in Europe with below average prices at the moment (we don't use gas for heating here), but just in case shit hits the fan here as well I've bought two pallets of firewood. If that's not enough I've got access to more at my family's cabin.
Bought a limestone fireplace for 6K euros or so a few years ago, if we get the same crazy prices the rest of you got it might have paid for itself in a couple of years. :)
I just ordered myself a paraffin camping lamp, I already had stacks of candles but they were more for mood. And of course I have a torch, but I always worry about batteries, so another backup isn't so bad.
I'm not anticipating major blackouts or anything, just made me think back to my childhood when blackouts did occasionally happen, and we had one of those lamps and it was more versatile than candles.
They are talking about possible blackouts here, but it's early days.
It’s not like we won’t have heat at all. Bills and prices will just become super high. The fact that everyone knows this will blunt impact. I’m seeing lots of city lights out or turned down. Smart energy use will probably become a bigger topic.
I live in a big Polish city though, so someone will just take care of it and charge me. For people who own houses and live outside cities I have heard of friends’ parents stockpiling coal, fuel, wood etc. And that it can be difficult to buy those at reasonable prices.
However I think it is important to remember at moments like this that we live in the 1st world and in 2022. We have gotten used to cheap luxuries. Headlines would like us to have great fear in losing even a little tiny bit. But I don’t think this is the case. Normal people aren’t afraid at all, they’re just pissed that everything is expensive.
Everyone understands that there is a war going on, and that there are very important values which we represent as the EU. In this attack the enemy intends to cripple those beliefs by creating discomfort for us. They want to prove to themselves that we are these decadent materialists that go into a mass hysteria at first sign of trouble.
But we got hit by a huge wave of refugees, and instead of lashing out at them, we’ve made them feel welcome. I suspect something similar will be the case here - people will just do what they can to conserve energy.
You got some downvotes for being flippant about money, but think this perspective is valuable as it shows the Polish worldview well. Lines at the coal mine near me are more than 2 weeks long with people sleeping in their cars trying to stock up for winter. This country has a hard history and a little cold is not going to stop it. If this is an attack, the country is ready to defend.
Yeah definitely that sentence was taken as a comment on what everyone should be doing. I meant what I’m doing personally. I live in a “commie block” myself and it’s the energy bills that will rise for our building. I don’t have to think about fuel directly.
We are ready to defend - our only weakness are the incompetent people we have elected into power. In a very quiet way they have done nearly everything possible to weaken us strategically.
Yeah, tell that to people in Eastern Europe where pensioners will have to decide between paying for heating and paying for medicine.
Maybe boomers in Western EU countries like Netherlands or Germany will be fine with their 3 houses they rent out to supplement their "measly" 2k Euro pensions, but in eastern Europe boomers don't have it too good with their 200 Euro pensions living in uninsulated shacks or commie blocks.
I think you misunderstood my meaning - it was a direct response to the question of “what are you doing to xyz”. I am trying to make more money to pay for the bills.
Being in Eastern Europe myself I would comment that families support each other with this. No reason to call our homes “commie blocks” and “shacks”
The wave was small compared to what's yet to come. And we can already perceive a rise in authoritarian governments and decline of left institutions. Putin is accelerating a declining process well underway and though we still will be here afterwards, we might not recognize ourselves in the mirror. War is to force your enemy to change his behavior by force. Putin might actually on the verge of victory here.
Signed a 3y contract with my energy supplier and turned the thermostat down a bit. Likely we will just absorb the extra cost. Our household expenditures also went up significantly due to food inflation too I think
Contracts doesn't matter. Our energy supplier rose prices (600%) a month before end of contract. It was something like "accept or leave without penalty". So I left.
Most of my country's power comes from nuclear and coal power plants, and most of heat is district heating using waste heat from the plants. We're going to be impacted by electricity prices but that's about it.
The biggest way this affected me is I started to despise Germans. They cause this with their anti-nuclear bullshit. They emboldened Russia. At least half of Ukrainian blood spilled is on German hands.
Yes, but that's not the point. Germany never used electricity to heat, we always used gas. And we always got a significant amount of that gas from the USSR and then Russia. So the German ramp-down of nuclear power has nothing to do with the current energy, including heat and electricity, situation.
And saying half of the Ukrainian blood is on Germany's hand is such a strong argument that some explanation, besides personal feelings, would be helpfull. Besides, I call those things out every time I see them, be that Gorbatchev and Afghanistan, the US and Iraq, France and Algeria...
Germany chose to use Russian gas for heating. You are the richest country in Europe, you could have been on heat pumps long ago. You instead decided to keep using gas, to give more money to Putin.
We decided to continue to use reliable and cheap supplier of gas for heating and industrial purposes, mostly chemicals if memory serves well. Sure, we could have moved to heat pumps faster. Believe me so, even for a consumer gas was just much cheaper than PV powered heat pumps. If heating goes renewable much faster it is a very good thing actually. Saying it was a mistake to not do so because of the war in Ukraine is hindsight. It was a mistake when it comes to climate change, one among a lot of mistakes and by no means the biggest ones. When it comes to climate change the botched Energiewende, closure of nuclear plants and increased coal plant capacity have much more impact.
We most certainly do, I mean, some of us that live in Europe. Politicians and technocrats almost surely know, also, but they’re still acting like everything is just a-ok.
Let's not beat around the bush. Those directly responsible are mostly pretty much everyone who has "smelled" power in CDU and SPD in the last 2 decades.
Second place goes to those responsible for nuclear mismanagement in France. It takes a lot of negative talent to have more than half of your nuclear reactors have corrosion problems at the same time.
I am pretty sure no "prophylactic" to stagger the effect was possible at all. Who has ever heard of replacing parts prior to them hitting their "shelf life"?
Price for natural gas is 10 times the ordinary. Can this increase in price allow for shipment of gas e.g. in liquid form from USA? Or from other sources? Can this difference allow rapid transition towards electric uses?
if only european leaders invested in LNG terminals and capacity to import non-russian oil and natural gas. Lithuania and Poland did, the rest of europe did not.
So many comments and none talked yet about the Groningen gas field. Europe has plenty of gas there, but instead of exploiting it, we gave in to NIMBYsm.
EU recently passed ban on selling cars from 2035, plus taxation etc.. So every car should be electric eventually. It takes decades (30 years) to build new new power plants, power lines etc..
So to make this plan realistic, there should be 50 (maybe 100) power plants under construction or in planning phase right now. Instead we are closing down power plants and reducing electric grid capacity!
Renewable and green are orthogonal. Renewable is important for long term availability of the resource, which is not a practical constraint for nuclear.
> which is not a practical constraint for nuclear.
It is very much a practical constraint for current nuclear reactors (whether traditional or SMR) whose uranium supply chains lead straight to problem zones [1].
Using conventionally mined uranium, traditional reactors would only provide 5 years of the world's electricity demand [2].
Seawater-extracted uranium could stretch into the thousands of years, but that is unproven at scale and cost. Similarly unproven are the fast breeder reactors needed to truly make the non-renewability of nuclear moot.
"EU demand for pellets has significantly outpaced domestic production for the past ten years, and it has resulted in increased imports from mainly Russia, the United States, Belarus, and Ukraine."
I kind had the theory from the beginning of the war that the only real reason that Putin would commit so hard is to create economic chaos and destabilize the world so that he could maybe have a shot at greater world domination. Russia has a pretty good history of using scorched earth tactics to "save" itself, but I have not seen it used in this way before. (Also I am no historian).
Europe has shot off many feet. Look at how they have demonised nuclear power in some areas. Had they not done this, they would not now be at Russia's mercy(Varies across member states).
Similar to gene changed food - unwise denialism.
Currently Germany is exporting lots and lots of energy to France because the French nuclear plants are in large part not working (repairs, corrosion damage, lack of water for cooling). Given that nuclear is demonstrably not working well for France what makes you so certain things would work better in other countries?
Nuclear is working in France. People taking a very current issue and blowing it out of proportion.
Nuclear has provide CO2 free clean energy to people in France for 40 years. While Germany blew incredibly dirty stuff into the air in addition to CO2. And France has more often been exporting clean nuclear power rather then exporting coal power like Germany.
And CO2 saved in 1980 is far more important then CO2 saved now. The world should be thankful for French nuclear. And French citizens should be thankful that the worst pollution from coal is coal ash that wind is bringing over from Germany.
Now lets get to the current issues. The issues with French nuclear is the same reason for many issues with nuclear in other places. Nuclear has been under political attack, and laws past in the last couple years are responsible for some of the issues they have now. The deferred maintenance because the trend at the time was that these reactors are legacy, and renewables would take over. They wanted to reduce the energy share of nuclear for the same dumb reasons.
The water issue is actually a problem, but temporary one. Also, France had amazing next generation reactors, like Superphoenix, that were killed by the Left and Greens in the past. Had they spend the last 20 years build those reactors rather then trying to kill nuclear and build the same old PWRs, they would be in a amazing position now.
And nuclear is working just fine in a number of European countries. In fact, most countries with very clean grids have a large nuclear component.
I don't find the argument "richer countries can emit more CO2" to be helpful. The richer the country the more money is available to act responsible.
Even in your GDP adjusted data France is 37% lower than Germany (0.14/0.09). In a global comparison both countries are doing fine, but not good enough: https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/ .
The point isnt that rich countries can emit more CO2, the point is that we want poor countries to become much richer, but not emit immense amounts of CO2.
Some people claim this isn't possible. For them only carbon pollution is a true measure of societal wealth. They really like to emphasise that if poor people emitted CO2 like America, then the planet would die, and if America emitted less CO2 then they'd be as poor as some starving refugee in Somalia, hinting darkly that maybe we should kill those poor people, or at least keep them poor, to maintain our standard of living.
But the stats show you can be richer and emit less GHG, often those two things help each other.
Some people claim it's all just trickery because the rich countries buy stuff made in the developing countries, but there's stats that show this is also declining similarly. Various nations are proving that it is possible and the whole world has signed up to work together on it, so it might just be okay.
Germany and France are both doing okay, and the retirement of nuclear in Germany, which gets talked about so much, is not visible at all. When they had more nuclear, they had more CO2 per GDP.
Note nuclear is low carbon power, I'm not saying that it's not, but there's a million other lefty-green things that Germany (and France and even the UK and US) are doing to solve the problem and we should acknowledge that reality rather than say "if you don't use nuclear you don't even believe there's a problem".
And I am totally for these "million other lefty-green things". Solar and wind is comparatively cheap to install and comparatively low effect on nature. The resulting energy is also cheap (if used locally). We have many (poor) villages here in Germany owning their own wind turbines and benefiting from selling this energy, greatly improving the financial situation for the local population. It's like farming but with wind turbines.
In the long run Germany will be better of. We just have to get through this painful transition.
France sadly stopped improving and stopped building at the pace they did before and had to fall back on gas.
The Left in France has been fighting nuclear for 30 years and made progress in that when nuclear was really down after 2011.
Germany on the other hand could have easily overtaken France had they mass produced nuclear. Germany as an engineering nation would have been good at this. And unlike with solar, they would be huge in the global world market as well.
Nuclear is "not working well" for us because ideologues have been systematically undermining our nuclear industry for decades now, and it'll take a few more decades to heal the damage done by said ideologues, with the hope no one ever listen to their propaganda ever again.
Starve the beast, kick it when it's down, and blame it for not saving the day.
According to publicly-available info, nuclear was doing quite well for France (80% of load) in 2021. Whatever problems they might be having at this very moment, what makes you think this is intrinsic to nuclear power or EDF in particular?
Also, the electricity that the germans are exporting very likely might come from coal plants burning filthy north rhine lignite. Great way to own the nuke ppl.
Also, the electricity that the germans are exporting very likely might come from coal plants burning filthy north rhine lignite. Great way to own the nuke ppl.
Don't forget they spin up coal plants for peak demand and then just cut them out of the grid to avoid counting their still-running emissions.
> Given that nuclear is demonstrably not working well for France what makes you so certain things would work better in other countries?
French reactors are largely offline for overdue maintenance [1]. This bunched up because scheduled maintenance was delayed. A larger European fleet of reactors would be more resilient.
Yeah. Do not delay maintenance because then it bites you in the rear. Also, it’s still better to do it in the summer: next winter will be terrible enough and we’ll need every generator we can get.
First, you are cherry picking: you should look at the yearly load factor, not a random day and time of the year when it supports your argument. And you will find that nuclear has the highest load factor of all, 80-90%, while solar/PV will never be above 30-40% (because of physics, you can not change that).
Second, and since I just demonstrated that on a yearly timeframe nuclear works very well, the right question to ask is: why are there so many nuclear plants offline right now? The answer is quite simple, and is due to one of the advantage of nuclear: you can choose when to switch it on or off, for ex to perform maintenance. So, when is the best time to perform maintenance? Answer: just before the peak load, which happens in winter (Mondays around 8 AM in January, to be more precise), so you switch nuclear off in autumn, ie now. It's actually a good news that the load factor of nuclear is so low right now, it means that nuclear will be ready and will work well in a couple of months when we will need it the most.
> Currently Germany is exporting lots and lots of energy
Again, cherry picking, show me the yearly stat. But actually the only comment I will make here is about the criteria you are using: is exporting a lot of energy a good thing? I would say it depends. High variability is bad, it makes the grid unstable. I would rather have low and steady import/export rather than big swings. Exercise for the reader: what allows you to have steady production of electricity (nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, ...)?
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We need more nuclear. Simply because that's the only low carbon, controllable option that currently exists (hydro needs mountains, fossils are high carbon, solar/wind are intermittent)
Even in France there has been strong political opposition to support nuclear plants, their renovations and new development, so the situation in France is not indicative of a well run program. In particular no new development in a while meant that a lot of local expertise has gone away
Wow this is depressing. France had the worlds greatest fleet of standardized nuclear reactors. They mastered Nuclear Power... I'm assuming energy companies spent vast amounts of money to propagandize the French public to only support wind and solar (like in the US) but maybe that's not the case?
The Germans were unwise many years ago = now they pay the Russian piper - as we are seeing.
The anti nuclear people were probably funded by Russia?? as they specialise at strategic plans of this type under Putin's helm = anything to weaken us = good.
Wind/solar makes steady gains and will get even better as the use of newer junction geometries get better and approach the S-Q barriers.
Reading about the Superphoenix reactor makes me furious. They could have 10 of those babies running by now. But no, was killed by the Left and then not revived. And what are they planning to build now, more PWRs. Fucking incredibly how the world can just not move on to next generation nuclear.
It's fun to imagine an alternate history where the left were more pro-nuclear power.
Like if they'd just built the best power stations rather than the ones that had military crossover.
I mean, if the fossil fuel powered right wing can demonise Elon Musk and Tesla as subsidy junkies, and wind turbines can be accused of giving you ear cancer, can you just imagine what they'd say about nuclear?
What, you think we should building nuclear power like the commies and the French and worse the Democrats? Are you one of those vegetarians? We've got cheap fracked American gas and clean coal, why would we waste taxes on nuclear? Climate change? But CO2 is good, it's plant food for God sake. If anything we want it warmer, so we can get more gas in the artic circle, drill baby drill. Nuclear doesn't have a high enough ERoEI to sustain civilization, you're trying to intentionally destroy capitalism.
> It's fun to imagine an alternate history where the left were more pro-nuclear power.
The thing is, nuclear is not incompatible with “the left”. After all, nuclear programmes make sense only with a lot of public investment and control, and work best in nationalised producers, in which case it provides cheap electricity for the people and revenues for the state. Both the socialists and the communists are in general pro-nuclear.
It’s horse trading to keep the greens in the “gauche plurielle” coalition that closed Superphénix. It’s the same kind of compromises that lead to the arbitrary policy that “we should not have more than 50% of nuclear electricity” and the closing of Fessenheim. Even now, the leftist alliance NUPES cannot really discuss this because the demagogues and greens are against but the other half is pro.
Nuclear inherently should be something the left love.
However the problem is that nuclear power is strongly associated with the cold war and nuclear weapons. It was seen as a way to subsidize nuclear weapons. That never was really true at all.
Also the early environmental movement had a strong 'naturalist' wing (and still does) and nuclear is seen as 'unnatural'. This strongly influenced leftists politics in general.
I would love to learn more about Superphenix and its design, history and the politcs around it but I wasn't able to find much. My French despite 12 years of getting forced to learn it, still sucks.
From a Swiss perspective, its crazy to think a Swiss green politician went and shot the reactor with an RPG.
> I would love to learn more about Superphenix and its design, history and the politcs around it but I wasn't able to find much
Most of my knowledge comes from private discussions with people involved with the project or with the government at the time or from French sources, unfortunately. The best I can find is the English Wikipedia page, which seems decently accurate although short on technical details (a lot of them remain more or less industrial secrets to this day: there hasn’t been a bigger breeder reactor before or since).
In the long run, sodium-cooled reactors are a dead end because of the risks associated with a sodium loop (which is terrifying). But a fast reactor would have been invaluable as a test environment for advanced materials and composites, and improved fuels.
> From a Swiss perspective, its crazy to think a Swiss green politician went and shot the reactor with an RPG.
Indeed. So much for neutrality! To be fair, that should seem crazy to anybody from any country.
Yeah, sodium is an somewhat unfortunate branch of the technology. It was sort of picked by many nations as a next set, put it had a number of drawbacks. Still, I would have preferred more of those to more PWRs.
I would like to know how cooling intensive it was compare to PWR. And what operating temperature.
Also, some of the Sodium reactor technology and materials is now used by companies like Moltex Energy.
Molten Salt reactors are the likely future in my opinion, but not sure yet what form.
> It was sort of picked by many nations as a next set, put it had a number of drawbacks.
It made a lot of sense. Sodium is an amazing coolant. It was also a relatively easy to implement design for a breeder reactor, with all the related advantages (much better way of using uranium fuel with no enrichment step, burning of plutonium and high-activity "waste", etc).
> I would like to know how cooling intensive it was compare to PWR. And what operating temperature.
Cooling should be overall similar to a PWR operating at the same power. The temperature in the core is higher than in PWRs (around 500 to 600°C instead of 300°C), but they have 3 cooling loops instead of 2. I can't remember the temperature in the most external loops off the top of my head but I don't expect them to be very different in both designs. They use similar steam turbines, so they should have similar operating regimes, but I could be wrong.
> Also, some of the Sodium reactor technology and materials is now used by companies like Moltex Energy.
Yes, the materials are quite different from PWRs because of the different neutron fluxes and spectra, but some of this knowledge can be applied to other fast reactor designs like the fast MSRs. Some of the corrosion mechanisms (which are a large hurdle to clear for MSRs still) also have some similarities.
> Molten Salt reactors are the likely future in my opinion, but not sure yet what form.
That is where the wind is blowing. It's difficult to say more at the moment, because there are very different designs (fast or thermal, uranium, thorium, or MOX, large or small and modular, etc), but there is a lot of activity around MSRs.
Low river levels + very warm water levels have forced selective shutdowns in France - a reliance on water that the drought sent away. River water is often a 'once through' system, compared to cooling towers which can be water conserving closed systems that tale more space or tiered evaporators. I expect that France is using the shutdowns for maintenance of various corrosion points. It is cheaper to use cheap pipe and replace it when it corrodes versus stainless steel or other alloys. I think France has been very well served by it's nuclear power plants as it leads the world in that arena. As for doctrinaire opposition of nuclear = I have none, build it well, maintain it well, and it will serve you well. I would like France to be in the lead for implementing a thorium cycle. Thorium has been neglected due to the difficulty of making nuclear weapons as off-products of the reactors - as we have seen Uranium was driven to the head of the nuke queue by the relative ease of making fissionable material that suited bombs.
I feel you have stuck an inappropriate 'pin' in France on this. Had all Europe/world followed France, we would be miles ahead in global warming reduction! Even more so with Thorium! Works proceeds on Thorium - it's day will come.
This shows exports/imports from today. Yes Germany is exporting to France, but importing similar amounts from the Netherlands so seems like a wash.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
Nuclear is not working in France right now because France uses lot less electricity in summer than in winter (they have a lot of electric heating and not a lot of air conditioning), so they are doing all the maintenance and refueling in summer.
I am pretty tired of this particular misinformation.
Well there is no difference in practice, as the reactors are closed anyway. But they are not closed because the physics don’t work, or because they are functionally unable to work in the current situation (the “nuclear cannot work when it’s hot” line you see in some newspapers). Nobody has done a serious assessment when the limits were decided, more based on guesswork than anything else.
The reactors are at ~300°C. It does not matter one bit if the input water is at 40°C or 20°C. As for the output, if temperatures keep increasing it just means they will have to build pools to let the water cool down some more before going back to the river or recycled through the external cooling loops. If the water level is the problem, the quantities involved are negligible compared to the throughput of a large river or what we spray on maize fields.
What do you mean "not working well"? At this point, right now, French NPPs are producing 24000MW of power (57% of all french output). Yes, it's down from the usual ~70% due to maintenance issues, but calling this "not working" is outright dishonest.
It's this type of exaggerated misinformation from German greens that brought their country into this mess.
The linked article is pretty matter of fact and I am quite disappointed that replies in this thread go off on weird tangents about "misinformation from the German greens" or "owning the nuke people". You might very well be correct in your argument, but the level of discussion is much lower than I would expect from HN.
The ever present German greens which apparently have the country of Germany in an iron grip even though they have less than 15% of the vote. Let's not get started on the French greens, whose representation on the assemblies is marginal at best, but apparently are the reason France does not have "tens of Superphenix reactors" by now (the large cost overruns and literal swiss terrorist attacks notwithstanding).
"greens" (no capital letter) in my post does not imply just green party, but a group of germans that always comes out of the woodwork blastnig dishonest arguments about why we need to get rid of our critically needed power source.
While it's not just Germans that are always coming out of the woodwork (Austrians are even more extreme), the anti-nuclear movement was always extremely loud in Germany.
Germany: gas for heating and industry, nuckear for electricity. Primary energy =|= secondary energy. If the pro-nuclear crowd could just get the basics right, it would make so much more sense to engage in reasonable discussions.
Europe has been warned constantly by internal and external folks. It's rather public knowledge how bad a situation they are in.
The best decision would be to get all the renewables done asap. Solar, wind, grid scale batteries. But they've had months and done what so far?
They need north american oil/gas right away. Luckily Trudeau/Biden have worked together to make sure that doesn't happen. Keystone XL, energy east. All cancelled.
Anyone monitoring the atlantic ocean for leaks and spills? They are boating that energy over.
Those european politicians are going to be paying the piper soon.
This is not discussing the reason that prices are so way up, which is largely the wholesale market with its uniform pricing. Electricity production cost has not gone up as much as markets are suggesting, and e.g. solar producers are making huge profits in the middle of this. EU has said they will step in to cap prices, but it's not like they 're in a hurry, they will "discuss it" in sept. 9, even though they had been warned about this months ago.
Then the EU is also giving fines to anyone who uses coal/lignite (of which germany has a lot) to produce electricity.
It also does not show an interest in its own gas fields, like the netherlands and the untapped ones in the mediterranean.
Given the nonchalant attitude of the EU vs this crisis, and the attempt to share the burden (e.g. making southern countries reduce their gas by 15% even though they use very little), it seems like a remake of the covid-vaccine procurement fiasco is looming. The EU has set CO2 targets for itself that have become a weapon in the hands of Putin. And the EU does not even talk about changing the policy to nullify this weapon. It's no wonder then that Putin finds it easy to blackmail the EU, like other dictators did (e.g. erdogan with immigrants).
And on the sides of all these, the EU keeps warming up relations with the worse dictatorships around (e.g. azerbaijan, saudi). Or it's importing repackaged LNG from china.
I have an idea how bad this crisis could (not) be but i can't help than shake my head at the gridlocked attitudes of EU institutions.
A finite amount of time. We will always need gas though, unless we plan to connect to renewables in australia. This war will last a long time, and even then , why would the EU go back to business with russia?
Electricity (meaningful amount is not storable now) price gets high regardless of cost but to match supply and demand. I think current market system isn't good.
"The gas problem is largely due to Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has disrupted exports of Russian gas to Europe and raised prices everywhere else."
Europe/Germany's refusal to actually pay for the gas is what's caused the flows to stop. There is a whole gas pipeline that doesn't go anywhere near Ukraine ready and waiting to go (Nord Stream 2), but Germany refuses to license it. Instead they continue to only allow the aging Nord Stream 1 pipeline that has had several turbines offline for repairs, such that they begged the Canadians to let Siemens violate their own Canadian sanctions to return a turbine they'd seized back to the Russians after repairing it. But that wasn't the only turbine with problems which is why (the Kremlin claims) the flow is currently reduced (and indeed Putin was talking about multiple turbines being offline due to technical problems since before the maintenance in the summer so this isn't something newly made up).
Want to figure out who's lying right now? Turn on Nord Stream 2 and call the Russian's bluff. They claim they're willing to sell gas to Europe, but are limited by the pipeline problems. Right now we can't tell if that's true or not because there's so much obfuscation on the European side. Issue a license for Nord Stream 2 - all brand new equipment - and see what happens.
Germany's government won't do this of course, because with the media's help they are currently successfully pushing the line that the need for repairs is fake and it's all a great game by Russia, who for some reason are OK with pumping some gas, but not all of it, whilst simultaneously lying about the reasons why. This blew up in the media's faces earlier in the year when the pipeline went down for annual maintenance and they ran tons of stories claiming it wouldn't come back, which it then did - not what you'd expect if Russia was sanctioning Europe rather than the other way around.
"Russia's Gazprom state-controlled natural gas giant reduced gas deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany by 60% last month, citing technical problems after a turbine that Siemens sent to Canada for overhaul couldn’t be returned because of sanctions. Canada and Germany made a deal to return the turbine, but Putin said Tuesday that Gazprom still hasn't received the relevant documents.
The Russian leader said that Gazprom was to shut another turbine for repairs in late July, and if the one that was sent to Canada isn't returned by that time the flow of gas will ebb even more.
He also pointed out at Ukraine closing a branch of a transit pipeline carrying the Russian gas to the West that comes via the territory controlled by Moscow-backed separatists as another reason behind the dwindling Russian gas flow to Europe."
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Back to the article:
"But it’s not just the war: Alternative supplies of gas are expensive, climate change has drained rivers so much that many of Europe’s nuclear plants are offline"
French nuclear is offline due to a mix of (again) broken equipment and the fact that the rivers were warm, such that heating them more from the nuclear plants would make the rivers too warm for some wildlife. So environmental protection but not climate change, not because the rivers have literally dried up. I think some were given exemptions and came back online.
But this whole line is not really "allowed" anyway because you aren't meant to assign specific weather events to climate change. Climate change is all about long term averages. You can't say it was hot this summer so it's climate change, or it was rainy and cold last summer so that's also climate change. You can only talk about the climate changing if you're talking about long term trends. All climate change so far is only meant to be about 1 degree C over the past 100 years, which isn't anywhere near enough to shut down nuclear reactors.
You seriously believe the machinery in North Stream 1 coincidentally broke down at a time when it's politically convenient for the Russian government? And that a formality like "missing documents" is stopping them from using the turbine? I guess anything is possible.
I don't know which is why I think step 1 is to call Russia's bluff and ask them to start pumping Nord Stream 2, which they claim is fully able to operate.
But why should these claims be wrong? Consider the following facts:
1. The Siemens factory in Canada received a turbine and then repaired it. Do you think they would say nothing if they received a gas turbine and then discovered it was fine, that the shipping was a ruse? Do you think they would lie about making non-existent repairs? If they were silent on discovering that they'd be accused of being traitors, especially as they are a German company. That situation just seems totally implausible. If Russia were faking it why even ship a turbine to Canada in the first place? And why would Germany go to such lengths to get it back?
2. Nord Stream AG is a European consortium based in Switzerland. It's not a Russian company. They haven't contradicted any of these claims about broken compressors.
3. Russia invaded in February. Look at Nord Stream flow data (https://www.nord-stream.info/) and do a query for the start of 2022 to the present day. Unfortunately their CSV/Excel export is buggy and only exports the current page not all results but you can just page it through in your browser. Flows are totally normal until about June, yet Russia was sanctioned almost immediately. Moreover, after the annual maintenance period (during which flow rate drops to zero) it briefly returns to its pre-maintenance flow of ~700M kWH/day for a week before dropping again to 300M kWH/day. These sorts of patterns aren't consistent with political decisions (in which case you'd expect it to go to zero and stay there), they are however consistent with equipment being phased in and out ... which is exactly what everyone involved with the pipeline seems to be saying.
Also, the claimed scenario just makes no sense on its own terms. OK, let's assume Putin is trying to hurt Europe by refusing to sell gas. The point of doing that would be to create enormous political pressure to end sanctions but for that to work, Russia has to say "we are restricting gas because you are aiding our enemies, stop aiding Ukraine and we will restore the gas". It makes no sense to impose conditions on gas supply and then not tell anyone what the conditions for restoration are whilst simultaneously shipping turbines around the world and claiming it's technical issues. That just confuses matters and makes it less likely to achieve your goals.
As for missing documents, yes, of course it's possible. If a very large, dangerous piece of equipment came back from a factory run by declared enemies of my country I'd want really deep and thorough details on what was done to it, with sufficiently precise data that I could actually find and check all the modifications myself. You seem to be assuming the documents in question are a one-pager customs form or something but we don't know what they are (or at least I've seen no mention of further detail).
Sounds like that person with a book to sell is a fringe crazy person outside the scientific consensus then, doesn't it? Because climatologists were always very clear that you can't just point at individual weather events as proof or disproof of climate change, because they only study long term trends.
The fact that some academics are now trying to have their cake and eat it is totally unsurprising. There are no standards in that community, COVID proved this beyond doubt. But it's a sword that cuts in both directions. If unusually hot or cold weather is evidence for climate change, then ordinary average days are evidence against. Today I look outside the window and it's a typical September day with no special temperature extremes. By the argument in your link, that must be disproof of climate change, right?
A far better way is to just finish the war, which could be done in a few weeks.
Russian forces are on their last legs, they can barely fend off under-equipped Ukrainian recruits.
Putin may possibly use a tactical nuke, but if he does, his regime is over as China and India will turn against him. Remember that they have not recognized Donbas or Crimea as Russian territory either.
With Western intervention, Putin would basically be forced to some kind of 'Giant Saving Of Face' withdrawal, which my bet would be something like: "Donbas and Crimea maintain their independence, Russian language and culture is allowed, Russia can have monitors to ensure their are no 'Nazis!' (which is bullshit in the first place), and possibly some citizens can keep their citizenship'
But in reality, it's a Russian collapse as Ukrainian and 'International Soldiers' monitor the areas.
One 'cause' of this war is the 'weakness signal' coming out of DC which Putin gambled mostly correctly on - if he were to have been successfull in taking Kyiv, he would have won. And he almost did.
Washington has been taking the incremental approach and it's mostly prolonged things, we need to step it up and play a few Ace cards.
> Russia can have monitors to ensure their are no 'Nazis!'
No, not acceptable. That will let Russian monitors have a veto on Ukrainian politics, media, and society, because they can label "Nazi" anyone who they decide they don't like. And it gives Russia a causus belli if the monitors are ignored.
So, no. Don't plant that seed of destruction to try to fix the current mess.
Just the opposite, it'd be the weakest material provision, with the biggest benefit because Putin can say he's getting something, when he's getting nothing.
'Overseeing to make sure no Nazis' doesn't give Russians any special internal access to politics they wouldn't have already. 50% of Crimea is pro Russian, probably the same with Donbas. They will have 'informants' everywhere anyhow.
Russia's 'causes belli' are completely irrelevant, because they don't have the power to do anything about it.
Moreover - there would be no oversight anyhow. The whole point of the article would be to allow Putin to make a claim of victory.
Given those terms, Putin can claim that he has 'Denazified' Ukraine, which was one of this 3 major stated objectives i.e. pushing back NATO, denazifiaction, shift in regime outlook.
The language of the actual term would be softened so as to be meaningless. Nobody in the West would even talk about it. It'd be a little note in the treaty, line 7: 'Ukraine to ensure no political radicalism in monitored territories'.
And that's it.
It's a surrender treaty.
The objective right now is to find bullshit terms that Putin will accept so that he can leave while saving face. Even though literally the entire world, and 75% of Russians would know it's bullshit.
Once Russia leaves, Ukraine will be flooded with NATO weapons etc. they are never setting foot in there again.
"Ukraine to ensure no political radicalism in monitored territories"? OK, what's a "monitored territory"? Donbas? All of Ukraine? (Russia says it wants to de-nazify all of Ukraine, not just Donbas.)
What do you do when Russia says that every non-separatist politician in Donbas is a political radical?
You say Ukraine will be flooded with NATO weapons. Probably true... this year. The flood will dry up, though. What happens 20 years from now, when Russia's weapons have improved, and Ukraine's are 20-year-old NATO weapons? And then Russia says "Hey, you haven't kept line 7! Get rid of all these politicians!" and then invades when Ukraine refuses?
Don't give them that line. They will exploit it sooner or later.
"What do you do when Russia says that every non-separatist politician in Donbas is a political radical?"
Literally nothing.
You're missing the point here.
A NATO involved response would not end a Korean-style detente where troop positions etc. are a careful balance of power.
This would be a collapse Russian forces in which Putin needs an excuse to run away and make it look like a victory.
This is a game of 'hard power' in which 'public statements' are irrelevant, other than for propaganda purposes.
Russia will invent 1000 reasons to cry after the fact, it's irrelevant once Ukraine is filled with NATO weapons and a bunch of forces and is 'NATO in everything but name'.
Just like Russians do daily on state TV (it's comedically nuts) They can say anything they want, nobody will listen or care.
Once Putin is gone, Ukraine will have to 'fear' about the same as Finland, which is not at all, so long as there are mechanisms in place and the state generally has order/power within it's borders.
Now - if Ukraine has to do their own negotiating alone - then yes, it's a different story. Ukraine may have to subject themselves to a lot of BS and you may end up with a 'careful detente', and yes, in that case, Putin could literally use it as time to re-group and re-attack at the next opportunity he gets. That's unfortunately a possibly outcome in the current situation.
But it's Europe's decision to effectively attack Russia that has caused the problem though. We could've just stayed neutral and opened NS2 and avoided any issues, whilst investing in nuclear power for the future.
There was no obligation to support the Ukrainian military, their refusal to allow for self-determination in the Donbass or their tenuous claim on the Crimea (arbitrarily transferred from Russia by the Bolsheviks - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_of_Crimea_in_the_Sovi... ).
But Europe also wants to expand its free movement zone to include Ukraine’s inexpensive workforce. It stands to gain if it can bring Ukraine fully into it’s fold and Russia stands to lose.
You don't have to agree with them to understand their position in supporting the self-determination of Russian descendants in the Donbass after Euromaidan, and in not recognising Khrushchev's arbitrary transfer of the Crimea to Ukraine.
I don't think they're right to invade. But I don't understand why we're sacrificing our economies to support Ukrainian nationalists either (especially re. the Crimea).
Germany got Soviet gas reliably for 50+ years. Trump eanted to sell US LNG, nothong else to see here. And any news of Europes death in a blacked out winter are overstated.
For something as significant as keeping your population warm in winter I don't think this is "hindsight". This is one of those things that a government should pay core attention to because of the consequences of it going wrong.
Since winter in Europe has yet to come, there is no way to say whether or not it will be a problem.
Somehow this discussion reminds of the first months of Covid. A lot of complaining and crying about water under the bridgebfrom the benefit of hindsight. Without thinking about timelines, costs of alternatives and past experiences. All from the sidelines of course, brcause in the end we are all better football coaches tgan the actual coaches, aren't we?
Both the pandemic (health crisis) in 2020 and the energy crisis 2022 in Europe cannot be understood without looking at the whole picture of cui bono on all sides.
When Trump warned Germany about the dependence on Russian gas he had first and foremost US interests in his mind.
Continental Europe (effectively Germany and France) failed to formulate and establish a distinctive stance regarding its foreign policy towards Russia with whom they share a continent.
Exactly this lack of own assertiveness is now leading to the self-inflicted energy crisis. The Russian and US interests where clear from the start way back in at least 2014 when irreversible actions (on boh sides) where made.
The US interests: when push comes to shove they don't mind the pawn sacrifices in Eurasia by defending its hegemony against - ultimatley - China.
After the fall of the Soviet Union Europe's interests were scattered (e.g. Balkanization, Brexit, North vs South etc.) and today are basically aligned with US interests even if they seem at odds purely from a strategic pov.
I once asked a friend of mine who grew up partly in China (who was always very cautious not to be drawn into political arguments) provocatively who his favourite (European) politician was, he answered: Charles de Gaulle.
At the time I thought what a weird answer that was, why such an old and partly forgotten statesman but after some years I came to realize that he probably admired his very demanding independent stance after WWII not shying away to challenge his uber-powerful ally overseas when his own national interests where at the line.
I can clearly identify the national interests of the US, Russia, China, India, South Africa, Turkey, Poland and even Hungary ... in the Ukraine war but I have a hard time understanding that of Germany or France from a self-perserving perspective. Quoting from Bertold Brecht's "Dreigroschenoper"[0]: Erst kommt das Fressen, dann die Moral. [Food is the first thing, morals follow on].
In contrast, the US has invested staggering amounts of money into work on energy independence (triggered by the OPEC embargo in the 70s). This led to research in solar, wind, and fracking, which eventually led to significant improvements.
The result is that while things aren't perfect:
1. The US is a net energy exporter: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/imports-...
2. The energy jugular vein of parts of Europe is exposed to those who are happy to hurt Europe. I think France is mostly okay due to nuclear power (yes some are down for delayed maintenance, but they still have a lot being generated).
Yes, yes, it's all more complicated than any simple summary can make it. But lack of energy for a country can quickly lead to a lot of dead people. A country is unwise if it ignores the issue. In contrast, I think it's quite reasonable to take steps to ensure that any necessary energy will be available in the future.