Italian parliament votes for return to nuclear energy

China has some coal reserves but overall they're a major net fossil fuel importer. They're quite short of crude oil and natural gas reserves relative to demand. This is a serious national security risk which is why they've been rapidly electrifying their economy and building solar, nuclear, and hydro power plants (along with coal fired power plants).

People who know how much effort it takes to constantly measure and contain radioactivity and what a mess it is to mine for Uranium in the first place also don't wonder.

If not, reading a list of this helps:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nuclear_disasters_and...

But sure, oil leaks can be bad as well. Solar leaks on the other hand seem bearable.

China also? How is that? China is a big importer of oil, and is heavily burning coal (more than 50% their energy mix), that is also partly imported. They are fighting for a cleaner energy not because they are green but because they don't want to be dependent on imports, and some people even accuse them of undercutting solar panel pricing to get all the world market.

They are installing nuclear power like no other country (1 GW yearly since 2014), and Wikipedia says that 50% of all nuclear capacity being built is in China (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country): 37 new reactors, followed by India with 6 and Russia, Egypt and Korea with 4. USA and France, which are both pro-nuclear or nuclear neutral, are building 0 reactors. But yeah, China has interests against nuclear power.

You are not helping your case by spreading misinformation and calling other people misinformed by making a strawman ("radiation scares people"). I am against nuclear (or rather not pro-nuclear) because it is not economically sound, because it is massively subsidized by Governments for the private sector to profit.

Because for power creation there are alternatives, and for healthcare there aren't. Renewables are cheap now and they also solve the sovereignty issue. Ideally we could use land currently dedicated to energy crops to install solar panels that operate at a significantly higher efficiency.

Because for healthcare profit isn't a motive to begin with (or at least, it shouldn't be) and there aren't many different alternative sources for it either.

Sure, but then that's not "profitable" in the direct sense of "makes rich oligarchs richer".

I'm all for improving the quality of life for society. In the end the goal is to live well, not to destroy our living conditions for a few oligarchs to make more money. But "profitability" is not generally optimised like this, unfortunately.

> If a power generation system costs more to operate than the value of power we get out of it, it's probably not very useful.

There is more than money. There is stability (not depending on foreign oil, peak oil, etc), there is climate change, etc.

So the alternative is relying on solar panels made by a quasi-hostile country, because for some reason we can't produce them economically ourselves, or continuing to burn fossil fuels?

A lot of countries consider energy security national security, and national security always bats last.

A lot of countries also use it to help subsidize (or help cover up the costs of) their military nuclear programs.

Still doesn't make sense. We could have standardized the old reactors too.

Radioactive material and a bit of water.. there's no reason to design those things a hundred times. France actually did that.

France is still shutting down its plants because the rivers are too warm in the summer. As for floating SMBs in the harbour, I don't think climate change will be kind to this idea.

It will reliably cost only 10x, and it theory it will roll of a production line.

The AP1000 reactors at Vogtle were explicitly marked for the modular construction as a key selling feature, which would reduce time and cost. It came out 20B over budget and 7 years late.

There is no economic case for SMR that you couldn't make for a larger one with a massive benefit of economies of scale. SMRs are - in my opinion - a dead end, larger reactors could work well but will be delivered later and likely will still not be profitable on a KWh basis when compared to an equivalent installed base of solar and wind and will most likely be deliver much, much later.

A theory with a lot of leaps that is in no way guaranteed. But it’s a nice idea

Wright’s law is the only way to reduce costs. It’s a generalization of Moore’s law. The more of anything you build the cheaper it gets. Most products get 10% - 20% cheaper every time total production volume doubles. The most obvious example right now is rockets - launch costs are going down exponentially because we (SpaceX mostly) are doing so much of it we are finally getting economies of scale. SMRs will too, but only if they become popular. It’s a little bit of chicken and egg, but the economics are clear. If lots of people start using SMRs they WILL get cheap. And it’s a form factor where it’s plausible lots of people will.

We’ve solved both. The research has moved on from VALCOE to whole system modeling. Including transmission, storage, backup, firming and modeling it hour by hour.

Studies are converging on renewable energy systems being cheaper in climates ranging from Australia to the Nordics:

Some recent ones:

Finland, 2025: nuclear scenarios 71–84% higher system cost; unrestricted least-cost optimization builds zero new nuclear. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422...

Denmark, 2026: system-level LCOE including storage, flexibility and system integration; renewables substantially cheaper than nuclear. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422...

Australia, CSIRO + AEMO GenCost 2025–26: whole-system modelling including transmission, storage and firming; renewables + storage remain the lowest-cost net-zero pathway. https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/Ele...

Fair - but using new (unproven) technology imo only increases the cost/time/risk overall?

Aren’t SMRs essentially unproven? I think only Russia and China built some working facilities, and the rest is still under construction.

I mean anything could happen but seems like a long shot

Thanks for sharing those links, very interesting.

I guess ultimately the nuclear vs renewables discussion is coloured a lot by feelings nowadays.

Resources like this help a lot to form a more nuanced understanding grounded in reality - but otoh I have to admit that a lot of this goes over my head - like even trying to understand how the economy works around this is mind boggling complex. I’ll need a deeper look to understand it better and build a more informed opinion tbh

Citation:

France's EDF Warns Solar, Wind Surge Straining Nuclear Fleet Costs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47037839 - February 2026

https://web.archive.org/web/20260217122120/https://www.edf.f...

Related:

Wind and solar generated more power than fossil fuels in the EU for the first time in 2025 - https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/wind-and-solar-gener... - January 22nd, 2026

> Wind and solar overtaking fossil fuels in 2025 can be largely attributed to a staggering rise in solar power. Solar grew by more than a fifth (+20.1%) for the fourth year running. It generated a record 13% of EU power in 2025, above both coal and hydro. This trend was widespread: all EU countries saw growth in solar generation compared to the year before, amid a huge expansion in EU solar installations. Solar provided more than a fifth of electricity in Hungary, Cyprus, Greece, Spain and the Netherlands. Renewables provided nearly half of EU power (48%) as unusual weather conditions caused hydro generation to fall by 12% and wind by 2%, but boosted solar generation. Wind remained the second largest EU electricity source at 17% of EU power, generating more than gas. Signs of a structural shift are clear across the EU, as wind and solar generated more electricity than all fossil sources in 14 of the 27 EU countries in 2025. Over the past five years, wind and solar have experienced massive growth (from 20% in 2020 to 30% in 2025). Fossil fuels have fallen from 37% to 29% in the same period, while hydro and nuclear remained stable or slightly declined.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci... (installed solar energy capacity goes brrr)

Nuclear fuel rods get used for 1-2 years before they need to be replaced. This is much longer than it takes to burn a shipload of liquefied natural gas, though it's much shorter than it takes for solar panels or grid scale batteries to need replacement. Both nuclear energy and renewable energy are less sensitive to supply shocks than fossil energy, even if Europe doesn't reduce the percentage of its energy needs that depend on imports.

Australia and Canada are top producers of uranium ore, and uranium ore is a small fraction of total lifecycle costs. Given a ~2 year refuelling cycle and the possibility of stockpiling uranium, this is very far from an interruption to oil and gas flows - which you need a continuous supply of. Security isn't just a function of autarkic raw material supplies.

Idk we can import uranium from lots of places; i think currently mostly from Canada.

But I just don’t get why it’s being discussed at all - its obviously so much more expensive and time consuming to build than the alternatives

> The future you paint here is only credible to 13 year-old boys who just finished their third Jerry Pournelle book.

My mom is in her mid 70s and grew up reading Jules Verne and H.G. Wells as a child in Bangladesh. She still imagines a Star Trek future is inevitable. If anything it’s Gen Z that has a small and narrow vision of what’s possible.

I don't think we should let musk appropriate nerdy space dreams.

Hand him the nerds and you'll hand him the future, for better or worse.

It doesn't work that way in Italy. A popular referendum can only abolish an existing law, partially or fully. The general public cannot vote to adopt new legislation.