NYT breathtakingly clueless on nuclear energy

The New York Times has a stupendously bad article about the "rebirth" of nuclear energy in Italy: Italy Embraces Nuclear Power, it turns the declarations of one right-wing politician into a big policy change, complete with breathless assertions about Europe and energy that are so bad that they are not even wrong...

A lesson for you kossacks is that, while you're rightly critical of what the NYT and other papers write about US politics, you tend to believe a lot more what they write about European politics or economies - when it's just as slanted. Please be as skeptical about non-US topics, they are no less ideological or partial there.

So here we go:

conditions were very different in the 1980s, when European countries turned away from nuclear power: Oil cost under $50 a barrel, global warming was a fringe science and climate change had not been linked to man-made emissions. Perhaps more important for the public psyche, Europe’s nuclear bans and restrictions were almost all enacted in the years after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union.

Germany agreed on the phasing out of its nuclear reactors in the late 90s, when the social-democrats came to power in a coalition with the green, which made it a major condition to their participation. As far as I ca nremember, the Rio conference on climate change took place in 1992. Ah, but facts should not get in the way of a good narrative, that of silly Europeans scared so easily by the big bad incompetent Soviets. I won't even go into the fact that oil was no longer used much for electricity generation in the 80s, so its price was not relevant - the price of coal would have been a more appropriate reference there, but that's probably already too complicated for them.

Now, I(m going to need to take the next paragraph line by line, because there are so many whoppers in it that it's hard to do anything but deal with each one individually...

The equation has changed: Today, with oil approaching $150 a barrel,

"oil approaching $150": funny how journalists are now happy to casually use such higher numbers after spending years mocking those that were announcing higher prices. But it's still just a game for them - you sense the sports journalist within getting hoarse as oil gets closer to a new benchmark: there's no sense that there might be a deeper meaning behind such price increases. Deeper meaning? That's hard work!

most European countries, which generally have no oil and gas resources of their own,

"no oil and gas resources of their own" - that's been true of most of continental Europe for the past 50 years, and they have learnt to deal with that. What's changed today is that the UK has joined the ranks of the importers, since the North Sea fields have started declining. This is always presented as a big change for Europe, but it's first and foremost a big change for the UK, which did not plan for this transition. Italy, Germany, France, have long been importers of energy and have been worrying about security of supply, diversification of sources, and getting into long term supply contracts for natural gas with producers from Russia, Algeria, Lybia, Nigeria, etc...

have been forced by finances to consider new forms of energy — and fast.

"have been forced by finances to seek sources of their own" - huh? The issue is security of supply, not prices. In a liberalised market, all electricity is sold at the same price, the marginal one (ie the cost of production of the most expensive unit required to satisfy demand at any given time). That price will be driven by the price of gas even if gas use were to go down, because gas-fired plants are the most flexible and usually those setting the marginal cost even when their share is low. Building nuclear plants will not lower electricity prices unless you change the market mechanisms (and admitting for a moment that a newly built nuclear plant will indeed have a lower levelized cost of production, something which is possible only if a number of conditions are fulfilled). Will the ideologues that have driven energy policy in the past 25 years allow it? Is out journalist even aware of that point?

New nuclear plants take 20 years to build.

Tell that to the French who launched a crash program after 1973 and had most of the plants built in the 80s (50+ in all, close to 40 were built within 15 years of the decision to go ahead - altogether enough to provide all the electricity the country needed);

Also, instead of Chernobyl, Europeans have more recently watched in horror as Russian president Vladamir Putin cut off the natural gas supply to Ukraine in a price dispute, leaving that country in darkness.

leaving that country in darkness" - now that's serious hyperbole, and an interesting insight as to how the common wisdom filters through in journalists' minds. The evil Russians cut gas to the poor Ukrainians - and somehow Western European were cut off too (horror, horror), and the Ukrainians instantly went back to the middle ages, poor things. Of course, this ignores the fact that Europeans were cut off happened the Ukrainians tapped Russian gas exports transiting through their country (essentially stealing the gas) for their own use. Not ignoring this would mean that (i) the Ukrainians never had any real shortage in deliveries and (ii) maybe the Russians are not necessarily the bad guys there, given that what they were trying to do was getting paid for gas already delivered.

In any case, the expectation that gas cuts for a week immediately turns into power cuts displays an interesting ignorance of energy markets (storage anyone?). But hey, "Europe watched in horror as Putin cut off..." just restates what we all know is true: Putin is evil, evil, evil, and Russia (not those freedom-loving Ukrianians) is "suing the energy weapon" - and thus the New Cold War narrative gets one more subtle reinforcement outside any reference to facts.

New green technologies, like solar power, wind and biofuel, have not yet been scaled up to the point where they can form the backbone of a country’s energy strategy, and it is not clear that they will ever achieve that success.

"new green technologies have not been scaled" - actually (beyond the fact that biofuels have never been a "green" technology, being just a subsidy source for big conglomerates), the development of wind and solar has been a lot faster than that of nuclear of hydro in their early years, and more studies have been prepared as to how it is possible to go for a lot more in the coming years, but hey, let's repeat the oft-quoted (by coal and nuclear shills, usually) point that these are not "serious" solutions.

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As usual, the only people quoted on one side are rightwing politicians and big company spokespersons, and on the other environmentalists, subtly underlining the narrative that one side is "serious", trying to solve big problems, while the others are just, at best, dreamers, and, at worst, pains in the ass threatening our way of life.

Nowhere is the notion that we might want to use less energy even mentioned. We have a God-given right to use as much energy as we want to, and it just HAS to be provided, somehow.

The New York Times, through such articles, is part of the problem, not part of the solution.