France To Invest One Billion Euros In Nuclear Power 308
An anonymous reader writes "France will invest one billion euros in future nuclear power development while boosting research into security, President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Monday."
The Guardian has a more detailed article. It's not a huge investment, but it is nice to see continued commitment to Generation IV reactors by at least one Western country.
They will make a fortune (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They will make a fortune (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. Spend a billion Euro now, get a nice return on that from Germany and Italy, because they can't meet energy demands.
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Not really an issue for Italy since the last reactor was shut dowin in 1990
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And who do you think is going to be building all those new reactors in the UK?
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Or what about when the grays invade?
France will not be a majority Islamic nation anytime soon.
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France will not be a majority Islamic nation anytime soon.
Depending on political leanings, and I suppose the age of the quoted estimate, the answer seems to be around 1/3 to 2/3 of a reactor lifetime...
Maybe not "soon" relative to fashion trends or something, but quite relevant to plant construction.
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Please share your sources for such a statement.
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In terms of pure demographics, there is some indication that if "current birth rates" continue, France could be majority-Muslim in about 25 years: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3601901/Is-France-on-the-way-to-becoming-an-Islamic-state.html [telegraph.co.uk]
Of course, that's predicated on a host of assumptions, most notably that immigration & birth rates will stay constant.
I think it's ridiculously unlikely that French Muslims are going to suddenly turn into fundamentalist sharia adherents, about as li
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No, but Sarkozy's hand-picked finance minister and American favorite Christine Lagarde was just named head of the IMF. It seems that her successor, who was critical of the value of the U.S. dollar and pulling ahead of the polls in the French election, suddenly decided to take up a new career in sexual assault at a New York hotel. How fortunate for her.
Re:They will make a fortune (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude, if you want to comment on French politics, fine, but at least inform yourself.
DSK has a long history as a womanizer, and he finally made the mistake of assaulting someone who didn't care about who he was in a country where these things are taken seriously. This was a long time in the making, and the only thing that requires tinfoil hats is the initial reaction of French politicians who were aghast that he was being charged with attempted rape, and not let off with a private warning.
The president hand-picks his entire cabinet. Not sure what you're trying to imply by saying "hand-picked finance minister". That's how ministers are picked. Lagarde is the American favorite, because the alternatives were pretty unpleasant - specifically, a lot of developing countries were clamoring for the job. At that point, they were happy with going with tradition - which is someone from the French financial field.
And lastly, Sarkozy is pro-US only in the context of the American bashing that is popular in French politics.
I just hope no one takes your post seriously.
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Funny how the pro-U.S. candidate always seems to win, and people who cross the U.S. always seem to end up on rape charges. In a completely unrelated story, did you hear that the ICC decided today [ibtimes.com] to prosecute Moammar Gadhafi for rape? Apparently some new evidence has come in recently linking him and his allies to all sorts of nasty sex crimes. Guess he was a womanizer too.
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It seems that her successor, who was critical of the value of the U.S. dollar and pulling ahead of the polls in the French election, suddenly decided to take up a new career in sexual assault at a New York hotel.
Ignoring the other sexual assault charge from a woman many years ago as well as his long history of womanizing? Those were also US plots to discredit him, too, right?
Re:They will make a fortune (Score:4, Insightful)
So basically you're just a nutter ignoring the fact that he has previous sexual assault charges made against him long before he was ever going to be part of IMF and has a history of shady womanizing. No, clearly he couldn't possibly have done anything wrong despite his history. No, it's all a US government plot! IT HAS TO BE!!!
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Yes, it's all just a conspiracy from the US government.
Yes, just like it was a conspiracy that the CIA propped-up numerous South American dictators and assassinated their opponents, tried to assassinate Castro several times, funded the Contras, secretly financed the Shah and his revolution, and did hundreds of other super-nasty things that stayed classified for decades after-the-fact.
And the CIA rarely assassinates high-profile figures anymore. They've found that it's much cleaner and easier to discredit them with a nice sex offense or corruption charge. Of cou
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Re:They will make a fortune (Score:5, Informative)
Except that France has a reprocessing facility that dwarfs other countries' capacity to get useable fuel out of the "waste."
Nice job not knowing any facts though, and spewing the same non-issues like a good parrot.
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Except that's a bloody difficult thing to do. You are talking about materials with a high strength, very high melting point and conditions where everything has to be done remotely in an environment that fries normal electronics. The French have had a lot of trouble with it over decades and nobody else has really tried on a serious scale. That's why all those fuel rods are lying around and ne
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Dwarves AND Gnomes?!? What's next... elves and halflings?
No way, man, I'm not stopping twice!
Re:They will make a fortune (Score:5, Interesting)
They will make a fortune selling power to all those countries "phasing out" nuclear power with no plan to replace it but the underpants gnomes.
... which will work fine until those countries have built enough windmills, dams and solar arrays to no longer depend on France.
If the French aren't careful, they might be in a world of hurt twenty years from now...
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Re:They will make a fortune (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but why can nuclear power only supply base-load, instead of peak as well? I've certainly heard that solar and wind are unsuitable to supply base load, as they're not terrifically reliable, but never anything about nuclear being unable to scale to peak load.
It isn't practical to rapidly change the load on nuke reactors, because it takes a significant amount of time to ramp up and down power output. Also, it basically costs the same to run whether you are at 10% capacity or 100% capacity, so it makes sense to run them as near to full capacity as possible. Contrast that with something like a gas-fired powerplant, where you can ramp generation quickly and you are pretty much only paying for the gas you are burning.
Of course, France announced at the same time as this announcement that they will be going ahead with something like 1.5 billion euros funding renewable resources over the same period, so it isn't like they are putting all their eggs in the nuclear basket - just not abandoning it entirely as others are doing.
Re:They will make a fortune (Score:5, Insightful)
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This sounds great until you have a dam fail and take out your plant.
Considering the safety of dams, I wouldn't want to put much of value under one.
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That's why they're mostly built near large rivers...
... and preferably near borders, with the river flowing out of the country, rather than into... (Chooz, Cattenom, Fessenheim, ...)
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Why not run the plant at some kind of overproduction level? The overproduction could be used for water electrolysis, aluminum smelting or some other energy-intensive task that could be scaled back to meet peak power demands.
Water electrolysis could supply hydrogen which could be burned or turned to methane for longer term storage and used to also provide peak power.
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Because then you are building a reactor bigger than you need. What bean counter is going to ok that?
It is cheaper to make hydrogen from natural gas and buy that to burn for peak power than to bother with making an oversized plant.
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These reactors are able to generate hydrogen via there temperatures alone. It would seem rather feasible to generate hydrogen and store it in large quantities to run gas turbines for peek load. Just place the peak load plant next to the nuke.
Re:They will make a fortune (Score:4, Informative)
You do not want to burn hydrogen in a turbine, you do not want to store hydrogen. It embrittles everything. It leaks through anything. It is an explosive hazard. It would be far cheaper and safer to just buy and burn natural gas.
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Miami, in its test, set fire to two cars, one with hydrogen and the other gasoline. While both created fires when ignited, the gasoline fire engulfed the entire car causing total damage, whereas the hydrogen flame vented vertically and failed to spread to the rest of the vehicle....Similarly, in 1997, a vehicle safety study by the automaker Ford concluded hydrogen is potentially a better fuel source than gasoline when proper controls are built into the vehicle.
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Why not run the plant at some kind of overproduction level? The overproduction could be used for water electrolysis, aluminum smelting or some other energy-intensive task that could be scaled back to meet peak power demands.
Water electrolysis could supply hydrogen which could be burned or turned to methane for longer term storage and used to also provide peak power.
Intermittent "valley" purchasers will not pay higher normal rates, to the point where it doesn't make economic sense to bother offering to them.
A large capital expenditure plant doesn't make any money to pay the stockholders when you cut off the power... if you pull the plug 25% of the time, they just lost 25% of their gross revenues and probably more than 25% of their profits... So that means electricity has to be, roughly, over a quarter of their expenses and has to practically be free, to interest them
No profits for those poor investors? (Score:2)
A large capital expenditure plant doesn't make any money to pay the stockholders when you cut off the power... if you pull the plug 25% of the time, they just lost 25% of their gross revenues and probably more than 25% of their profits... So that means electricity has to be, roughly, over a quarter of their expenses and has to practically be free, to interest them.
It's very important that the investors always get their cut, or they won't let us have any toys.
Nikola Tesla may have been right about everything else, but we're quite fortunate that he was wrong about his wanting to extract energy from the "wheelwork of nature [google.com]". Imagine the chaos if "investors" had to support themselves with work instead of "investment".
Imagine the chaos if THAT black swan took flight. :)
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It's very important that the investors always get their cut, or they won't let us have any toys.
Regardless if you're doin it for dollars or gaia worship or net positive EROEI calculations, there's no point building something that takes electricity if you're intentionally not going to feed it electricity. I'm not really sure what philosophical or religious outlook supports "building something really big that is really useless"
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Well you can change the power load, actually. You can do it by pumping water in faster or slower, or by fiddling with the fuel rods to produce more or less power. It depends on the reactor type (PWR and BWR respectively). France, in fact, does just this because they have more nuke capacity than baseload. The term is "load-following capability". The French PWRs can go from 30 to 100% capacity in about half an hour. We even do some of this in the US, apparently, around Chicago - which also has plenty of nuke
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It's a bit more complicated than that. In principle the power output of a reactor can be brought up and down very quickly. As you insert or remove control rods the amount of fission in the reactor can change within seconds. There is some decay heat to worry about, but in principle you can bring a reactor down by 94% or so within a few seconds, and similarly up again
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Nuclear power plants can not rapidly change power output. Fast changes in power level can lead to instability due to short-lived fission products that don't get burned up with enough neutron flux.
Re:They will make a fortune (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but why can nuclear power only supply base-load, instead of peak as well? I've certainly heard that solar and wind are unsuitable to supply base load, as they're not terrifically reliable, but never anything about nuclear being unable to scale to peak load.
The term you don't know to google for is "xenon poisoning" or the "iodine pit"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_pit [wikipedia.org]
Using the most non-technical terms I can, the "ashes" from the "fire" choke it from cranking up for a couple hours when you change the power level.
Naval reactors work around it by including massive extra reactivity, meaning you have to be really freaking careful when running them. The average Homer Simpson is probably ... unprepared for their rather spirited performance. The other problem is, for the sake of argument, building a naval reactor 5 times bigger than it "needs" to be is affordable. Really, it is! But building a nuke 5 times bigger than "necessary" for a base load plant will make the brains of the bean counters in finance go prompt-critical.
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As an example of what happens when a reactor is attempted to be restarted from an iodine pit by someone not competent enough to do so - Chernobyl.
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Using the most non-technical terms I can, the "ashes" from the "fire" choke it from cranking up for a couple hours when you change the power level.
Ok, yeah. But if it's really just a couple of hours of delay, aren't utilities by now at least that good at forecasting demand peaks? Isn't it the case that it takes a couple of days to shut down or spin up a coal-fired plant, and that they don't really have any useful range of output beyond on & off?
Re:They will make a fortune (Score:5, Interesting)
Because of that, you try to set them up so that you have nuclear capacity less than or equal to the lowest continuous(base) load on your grid, and run it at full power all the time. Then, during times of heavier usage, you fire up the cheap, fast-responding; but comparatively expensive per unit fuel gas units, or increase the flow rate at the hydro plants, or whatever.
If it came to it, you could build nukes to match your peak load; but (since you can't scale them up and down fast enough to match demand) you would have to generate continuously near peak, and then figure out something to do with the excess during off-peak. That isn't an impossible problem(if you have the geography for it, you can used pumped hydro or pressurized gas storage as relatively inefficient; but not hopeless, 'batteries', or you can try to align the demands of certain power-heavy industries toward off-peak times, or try to reduce the peak/base swing by increasing adoption of thermal storage systems in building climate control and other measures, or, worst case, just burning the excess in some huge resistors); but it isn't ideal.
Nuclear can scale as high as you wish to build it, it just can't adjust output very fast, so you either run it higher than needed in off-peak, or run it at baseload levels all the time.
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Most of these new systems are designed around the ability to generate hydrogen as fuel so you can shift to producing that off peak.
Storage (Score:2)
1, You can store energy in artificial lakes, and get it back with hydro.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped_storage [wikipedia.org]
2, You can use extra electricity to power water-boilers in households, and that doesn't have to be continous, it only has to meet a daily average power, with a rather low precision. (This is how it works in Hungary, but I guess it's used elsewhere as well.) This unreliable power is sold at a much cheaper rate, and uses separate wiring.
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It's very difficult to change the output of a reactor rapidly.
France and various navies (nuclear propulsion) are the only people who do it.
It can be done safely (as France and various navies have proven), but if done by someone who isn't competent, Bad Things (Chernobyl) happen.
However, even if it can be done safely, it is not by any means optimal to run nuke plants in a load-following mode.
That said - it's a lot easier to create storage technologies to handle relatively predictable demand variations than c
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"... which will work fine until those countries have built enough windmills, dams and solar arrays to no longer depend on France."
I.e. "never". Or at least not until 2050, which is close enough. And by that time France will have newer and better reactors, most likely outperforming other alternative sources. Oh, and the world's first fusion power plant is also being built in France.
"... and then France will have a problem: indeed, it buys as much electricity from abroad than it sells there. Nukes can only su
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"people that believe wind and solar can produce energy anywhere near nuclear are living in an alternate universe. The sheer amount of landspace needed for solar panels and windmills to equal the output of nuclear is staggering."
Rubbish, renewables already generate more electricity than nuclear [thegreenpages.com.au] and their installed capacity is growing much faster than nuclear.
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They won't be making a fortune, they will be ensuring that their national security is more stable than almost any nation out there:
1: They won't be depending on Russia for natural gas. German citizens would freeze to death if Russia decides to shut the gas off, so Germany has ruined its national security.
2: They will have energy where others won't. While the US and China piss on each other over oil and coal, French independence and freedom from the Middle Eastern turmoil is assured.
3: They can do more
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It's about 1.44 billion USD, to be precise. "A lot more than?" We're not talking orders of magnitude.
And wherever did you get the notion that the Euro is immune to inflation?
underpants gnomes (Score:2)
1) Eliminate All Nuclear Power
2) ???
3) Profit!!!
France... (Score:2)
1) Spend 1$ Billion dollars in future nuclear power development
2) ???
3) Profit!!!
Re:They will make a fortune (Score:5, Insightful)
First they'll have to make a nuclear plant that turns a profit without public subsidies.
Remember "Safe, clean and too cheap to meter"? That was forty years ago. We still haven't even come close.
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Yup, Germany is going to be at the mercy of either France (nuclear) or Russia (gas).
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Not if they are willing to burn coal. Which if either of those makes noise they will do
After the announcement... (Score:3)
...President Sarkozy kissed his pinky.
Why not? (Score:2)
They'll make a fortune selling excess to the Germans.
Doing it better (Score:2)
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Way to go Brian Clevinger (Score:3, Funny)
I mean, I love Final Fantasy comics as much as the next guy, but apparently France is batshit insane for it!
Hydrogen Production? (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't we have a crapload of unused base load power in this world which we could use for hydrogen production?
In the mean time... (Score:2)
Canada is selling it's nuclear industry to private interests.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/ottawa-to-sell-aecl-to-snc-lavalin/article2078110/ [theglobeandmail.com]
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Privatize profits socialize costs.
This is good news (Score:5, Informative)
At least someone isn't giving up.
Still, the lessons of Fukushima Daiichi are serious. There are a sizable number of reactors out there which will melt down if they lose cooling pump power. (The reactors and the pumps at Fukushima survived the earthquake and tsunami. Cooling continued until the battery bank ran down, then stopped. All the damage shown in photos is from later hydrogen explosions.) That's unacceptable. There has to be backup passive cooling.
All plants should have catalytic hydrogen recombiners [iaea.org] to prevent hydrogen explosions. There's no excuse for not having those. That should have been fixed after TMI, decades ago.
Long term storage of used fuel rods on site has got to stop. After initial cooling, those need to go to dry cask storage.
The really tough issue is evacuation zones. Indian Point in New York has 19 million people within 50 miles.
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"All plants should have catalytic hydrogen recombiners [iaea.org] to prevent hydrogen explosions. There's no excuse for not having those. "
All plants should have some fucking insurance, what's the excuse for that?
What is also missing (Score:2)
Yea, it is always nice to see .. (Score:2)
Yea, it is always nice to see reactors being built close to other countries borders to minimize risk.
Re:Yea, it is always nice to see .. (Score:5, Funny)
Thorium Cycle? (Score:2)
WRONG (Score:3)
Right now, if General Atomic chose to get back into the game, they could re-do this intelligently and be the big winners on this in under 5 years.
"boosting security" = preventing disasters? (Score:3)
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More like 1 billion Euros for Areva (Score:2)
You can bet.. (Score:3)
You can bet that France and Germany are going into the Nuclear energy business together, only the reactors will be in France. Must be that the political landscape makes this kind of shell game plausible to the German people (let's move the reactors over the border) after all French fallout wouldn't dare cross into Germany.
France will be like the USA (Score:2)
Re:Vote right wing. (Score:4, Insightful)
They are, in truth, extremely focused on customers service. It's just that voters aren't the customers.
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Except the right wing in France isn't right-wing. Rather it's left of centre, with huge cultural blind spots as much as the left. Just not as bad.
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No, it is right of center. The US center is practically far right, and seems to keep slipping that way.
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Keep telling yourself that.
Right does not mean small government, nor does left mean large. An anarcho-communist commume would be far left and have nearly no government.
Right and left describe beliefs not size of government. You can have right wing and large government which fascism is one example.
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tougher international policies ? nothing.
Policies about what? Or is being tough an end in itself?
please, someone, explain that.
Team spirit.
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1. nuclear power is the only hope we have of fulfilling the planet's energy needs. getting everything from solar, wind, and hydro is a silly left wing tree hugger fantasy. in fact, nuclear power is only the first step. step two involves getting a stable mining operation in space. that's a 200 year process right there.
2. from what I've read, immigration problems, 'cultural fragmentation', and being tough on international relations are NOT leftwing strong suits. they're the ones appeasing middle eastern '
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it's been said a thousand times that the chief reason nuclear plants fail is because they aren't replaced.
Exactly. The plants in the news are like saying a car with 500,000 miles on it broke. Really? What do you mean we can't build a new car? OK. Patch it one more time.
Re:Current score (Score:5, Funny)
That line-up looks awfully familiar...
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That line-up looks awfully familiar...
I heard Japan will be looking to its neighbors, the greater east-Asian sphere if you will, to help meet future energy needs.
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Cool idea I had today (Score:2)
Today I got a good idea for nuclear power plants. Build them on a raised platform above ground, like an oil rig sits above the sea floor (but not so high of course), but instead of using solid struts, use flexible ones or giant shock absorbers combined with giant caster wheels in parabolic pits. This way earthquakes are no longer a problem and the risk of damage from tsunamis or floods is decreased. Also with a limited number of ramps leading up to it, security becomes easier to manage.
Next, install a metal
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Who says there only needs to be 4 stilts? There could be many going all around the edge.
Also I think it's fair to say that security shouldn't give anyone a chance to set up a shape charge on the stilts.
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Well good luck getting past the usual power plant security to do so. As I added below, [slashdot.org] this structure is inside the compound.
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I should probably add that I'm imagining this structure being inside the power plant compound and only having the reactor and related equipment on it (even the cooling towers could be off the platform, with a small "backup cooler" on board if necessary), plus maybe a small backup control room.
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As such, they are built with an escape drain under the fuel supply. Near the drain is a refrigerator that cools the salt to a solid, plugging the drain.
When the power fails, the plug melts, and all the fuel flows out of the system into a large holding area. The holding area is too big to generate significant heat.
This means no meltdown is possible. Humans can literally walk (or
Got any words for this, MDSOLAR? (Score:4, Insightful)
Get in line... (Score:2)
Italy is in the same boat... France will be selling power to all of Europe. Perhaps they are going to position themselves as the European energy broker...
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If it's only chomp change, where is the 1 billion euro for solar?
At the end of the article you didn't read. 1.35 billion for renewables... Doh!
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