I used to download books when I was still in academia and money was more of an issue. These days with a decent salary, I just buy most books on kindle and don't think twice about it, clicking through the download links on these download sites is just too much of a hassle. Sometimes I even download a book I already own again in pdf form, so I can feed it to some GPT prompt as context. I do not think most people would be able to buy the books they download there, and I welcome it as a counter to Amazons DRM policy.
This is not an adequate way to look at nuclear. If you check the stats of established constructions and not first of a kind prototypes (check Barakah instead Hinkley), the construction time is closer to 10 years, often less.
With transmutation and the option for recycling it altogether, waste is not an issue. Only the low fission parts of the spent fuel is low-grade active for longer than 1000 years, but this is such a low level of radiation, it is comparable to natural uranium formations and not an issue. The high radiation part of the fuel has lost the dangerous level of radiation in less than 1000 years and can be recycled before. The arenic compounds and other substances as byproduct of copper etc production for the mass of renewables have a much longer shelf life of toxitity. Also, you need more of them.
This is on top of an LCOE that is 5x that of solar or wind power and the need for catastrophe insurance to be provided essentially for free by the taxpayer on top of that.
(Fukushima cost about $1 trillion to clean up, the liability cap for US plants is about $250 million because otherwise private insurers who understand the risks better than you or I WILL NOT shoulder the liability)
The cost of nuclear can be dragged down by taking various risks that the people getting that sweet free catastrophe insurance would probably be happy with.
> With transmutation and the option for recycling it altogether, waste is not an issue
Yes, waste is an issue. We only recently got the first permanent storages and their viability is to be tested.
Dropping barrels in the ocean was just kind of recently disallowed. Nuclear waste processing still drops contaminated water into oceans and rivers.
Water is a brilliant radiation absorber. But you can be sure this radiation will at some point reach the food chain. These are insurmountable costs and other technologies don't have these problems, toxicity of materials is different from ratiation from decaying materials.
Perhaps there is a place for nuclear power, but its problems should not be ignored or downplayed as well as its costs.
Similar concerns hold for the "adult entertainment" (=porn) industry, including onlyfans and such. Without judging the type of content, there is a massive number of existing revenue streams and millions of specialised creators and supporting professions up for disruption. A sudden shift in demand would rather reinforce than counteract existing patterns of exploitation in that sector as well.
When I visited the Georgian mountains last year (Kazbegi area), on the way from Tbilisi we passed an endless column of trucks. They were parked on the side of the road, the drivers taking a rest before crossing into Russia.
Trade with Russias neighbours has increased noticeably since the start of the "sanctions", it is profitable to order western components in bulk, repackage them and send them off.
The sanctions need to be enforced for neighbouring countries as well. The new US government likely won't life a finger, but the current one still could, and europe also can have an impact if they get their act together.
Weapon production is something any country wants to build up domestically, otherwise the country wher3 the producer is situated can impose restrictions and political pressure - see the limits the US sets for use of US weapons or the German denial of Taurus deliveries, or the swiss refusal to give ammunition for air defense to ukraine
Counter point: the majority of the EU's defence material comes from abroad. EU pension funds where/are banned from investing in defence. The defence industry is tiny in the EU compared to the rest of the world.
And as a result, EU defense officials watch the US elections with dread, as they would be utterly helpless against a Russian incursion. Unfortunately, the time of the peace dividend we enjoyed is over, at least as long as authoritarian EU neighbours like Russia heavily invest in their military on a war footing
To be fair, that Swiss decision was completely reasonable. The systems they were scrapping were old, unmaintained and not produced anymore. It made no sense to invest time and resource to teach a lot of ukrainian air defenders in order to then launch a small limited amount of missiles and then scrap the system anyway.
I think by swiss ammo the parent comment refered to the 35mm ammo for the Gepard Air Defence System owned by the German Armed Forces that was produced by Rheinmetal (but in Switzerland) that had to remain in Germany.
AFAIK the Gepards are still in use in Ukraine, but Rheinmetal is now producing the ammo in Germany rather than using the former Oerlikon-Facilities in Switzerland.
