Taiwan, Japan have nuclear power plants and do not have weapons programs.

Also: Belgium, Spain, Holland, Switzerland, Chehia, Sovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Sweden, Finland, Ukraine, and others: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Nuclear_...

OP is wrong, and wrong on every sub claim.

Where do all these countries get their reactors from? I don’t know about most of them, but I remember reading that Swedens was Westinghouse, and Finland is getting their latest one from France?

The majority of the Swedish reactors were designed and built by the Swedish ASEA (now ABB), but their nuclear division was sold to Westinghouse in 2000

So far as you know. My impression is that especially Japan's strategy is always to keep itself at the threshold of becoming a full nuclear weapons with very little effort given the Geo political situation. They already have a full fledged delivery mechanism in their space launch program. Given how cheap SpaceX is, the only reason for keeping these programs around is really weapons delivery.

Given the even more unique political situation of Taiwan and the strategic global importance of TSMC, it's very likely they have some option to weaponize - even if only dirty bombs.

Japan has a deniable weapons program. They've accumulated a very large stockpile of reactor grade Pu. This would require some effort to turn into adequately efficient weapons, but with modern designs it should be possible.

Japan is said to be a always a few years away from a nuclear weapons program, in case they need it.

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

"Sweden is in a similar position re:Russia rather than China"

What do you mean?

Russia and Sweden have no territorial disputes, no wars for the last 200 years and Sweden stays more or less neutral by not joining NATO.

Sweden’s neutrality is as much of a farce as Ireland’s.

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

> In the early 1960s U.S. nuclear submarines armed with mid-range nuclear missiles of type Polaris A-1 were deployed outside the Swedish west coast. Range and safety considerations made this a good area from which to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike on Moscow. The submarines had to be very close to the Swedish coast to hit their intended targets though. As a consequence of this, in 1960, the same year that the submarines were first deployed, the U.S. provided Sweden with a military security guarantee. The U.S. promised to provide military force in aid of Sweden in case of Soviet aggression. This guarantee was kept from the Swedish public until 1994, when a Swedish research commission found evidence for it. As part of the military cooperation the U.S. provided much help in the development of the Saab 37 Viggen, as a strong Swedish air force was seen as necessary to keep Soviet anti-submarine aircraft from operating in the missile launch area. In return Swedish scientists at the Royal Institute of Technology made considerable contributions to enhancing the targeting performance of the Polaris missiles.

Still, unlike Japan and China, there are no old grievances and no territorial disputes between Sweden and Russia.

And by staying out of NATO, Sweden is unlikely to be drawn by the US into a confrontation with Russia.

> No country would commit to any new nuclear plants unless it is a cover for a weapons program.

Except for Czechia. We're going to build new reactors because here it's cover-up for stealing government's money.

Could you say more about this? Or link some articles? I'm interested as there are some distant plans to build nuclear units here in Poland and the last time around such plans became a costly fiasco. That was in a different time though, around Chernobyl and the fall of communism.

I'll try to find some articles in English, but just this headline says a lot: "(premiér) Babiš prosazuje expanzi jaderné energie, i kdyby měl porušit právo EU" - "(prime minister) Babiš advocates the expansion of nuclear energy, even if it is to violate EU law".

> A nuclear plant if ever finished as half are abandoned

It seems the very best argument anti-nuclear people have is that their own interference via politics will ruin the cost-effective nature of the operation...

It has more to do with the incompetence of the previous generation of nuclear powerplant designs and simply the nature of the idea. Big unique power plants cost "big unique power plant" money.

> There are three costs for a powerplant (Capital costs, Fuel costs, Operations and Maintenance)

In which category should be put the cost of negative pricing from oversupply?

We also have costs associated with policy. A hydro plant can't just dump water with no regard to downstream or they cause flooding. They can also not just drop water levels in lake or rivers with no regard to the environment. Power plants need to cooperate and that cooperation is a kind of cost which is hard to covert to fuel costs.

In the case that a government operate a powerplant we also have the liability cost of making sure that demand is meet. The article talk about the energy Germany produce and cost associated with it, not individual plants. Germany as a nation has costs associated with meeting energy demands, including importing/exporting energy to balance the grid. Not sure external costs like those can be combined in one of the above three categories.