France To Close Four Coal-Fired Power Plants By 2022, 14 Nuclear Reactors By 2035 (cleantechnica.com) 387
Socguy shares a report from CleanTechnica: French President Emmanuel Macron gave a speech on Tuesday in which he announced a raft of new energy policies, including a promise to close the country's remaining four coal-fired power plants by 2022 and 14 of the country's 900 MW first-generation nuclear reactors by 2035. "The generation capacity will be replaced with wind and solar," adds Slashdot reader Socguy. The closure of the 14 nuclear reactors will reduce nuclear's contribution to the energy mix from its current level of 75% to 50% by 2035.
"I would have liked to be able to do it as early as 2025, as provided for by the Energy Transition Law," Macron added, "but it turned out, after pragmatic expertise, that this figure brandished as a political totem was in fact unattainable. We therefore decided to maintain this 50% cap, but by postponing the deadline to 2035."
"I would have liked to be able to do it as early as 2025, as provided for by the Energy Transition Law," Macron added, "but it turned out, after pragmatic expertise, that this figure brandished as a political totem was in fact unattainable. We therefore decided to maintain this 50% cap, but by postponing the deadline to 2035."
We need to consume less and better (Score:5, Insightful)
Less energy and more efficient usage is the key to real environmentally savvy policies.
Renewables and lower prices can lead to higher energy use.
And maybe we'd be less people on the planet. But this is another story.
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That needs a lot of power. 24/7 power and at a low cost.
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That needs a lot of power. 24/7 power and at a low cost.
...
Funnily the biggest power consumer in France is the nuclear industrial complex with its reprocessing plants
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A low cost and 24/7 power supply allows France to bid on international projects. Even nuclear projects.
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This is why coaxing people to spend their money on hats and skins in online games is better than house decor, Chinese-made plastic bins to store the decor, and larger houses in which to display/stow the decor.
Remember how PETA made it unsexy to wear fur? Maybe they can throw paint on McMansions to encourage people to live in high-rise condos instead.
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No, I remember how PETA made it unpopular to wear fur among people who agree with them.
https://www.marketwatch.com/st... [marketwatch.com]
This says demand and sales continue to rise.
Hating on shit isn't a plan for success. You'd need a plan to make people want to live in high-rise condos.
For example, if you give their job away to a robot, they might beg you for a cubicle in a high-rise.
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Informative link, thanks. I was mostly being facetious, though.
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Maybe it's an American thing. In Europe wearing real fur is socially quite unacceptable to most people.
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Maybe it's an American thing. In Europe wearing real fur is socially quite unacceptable to most people.
Which part of Europe are you talking about?
Radical chic people agree with you.
Rich ones still prefer to show up their real furs.
In really cold climates real fur still compete with synthetic fabrics.
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You know what also is going up in Europe? Emissions rose in both 2017: https://planetsave.com/2018/05... [planetsave.com] and will again in 2018: https://www.thedailystar.net/w... [thedailystar.net]
Re:We need to consume less and better (Score:5, Insightful)
Less energy and more efficient usage is the key to real environmentally savvy policies. Renewables and lower prices can lead to higher energy use.
Higher energy use is by itself a good thing. If we had enough cheap energy, we could transmute lead into gold as much as we wanted. The more energy you have the more cool things you can make happen.
The only problem is when energy production damages the environment. That is what we want to avoid, but don't get confused that the goal is less energy use.
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Less energy and more efficient usage is the key to real environmentally savvy policies.
Renewables and lower prices can lead to higher energy use.
Higher energy use is by itself a good thing. If we had enough cheap energy, we could transmute lead into gold as much as we wanted. The more energy you have the more cool things you can make happen.
The only problem is when energy production damages the environment. That is what we want to avoid, but don't get confused that the goal is less energy use.
Any energy you use will be in part transformed into heat to be released into the environment.
It's not my belief, it's thermodynamics.
More energy == More heat.
Do you still think this is good?
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Any energy you use will be in part transformed into heat to be released into the environment. It's not my belief, it's thermodynamics. More energy == More heat. Do you still think this is good?
Hell yes! It's fucking cold outside where I live right now and I'm paying out the nose to keep my home heated. I'd love me some free or cheap heat.
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That's an oversimplification that leads to the wrong conclusion.
For a start there are times when there clearly are benefits to using less energy, such as anything that is battery powered. The less energy you use, the smaller you can make the battery and the longer it will last between charges.
Lower energy consumption also means better performance in many applications. Your CPU could go faster if it wasn't for the fact that it would melt. There is always waste heat, and often it's a limiting factor. From pho
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What if it turns out that those hippy electrons power lights just as well as the dirty ones? What then?
Re: We need to consume less and better (Score:2)
Then we look at how cheaply they do it.
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"Renewables and lower prices can lead to higher energy use." Yes and no. If you have renewable generation distributed into the grid at the usage point, you're drawing centrally less power from the constant generation sources.
That effectively gives you a backup power supply which can be increasingly relied upon depending on conditions/costs/local issues, overall a net reduction of required fossil generating capacity otherwise in place.
If you're completely off the grid with renewables, who the fuck cares how much you use? Nobody.
The "perception" by the people that the energy production is environmental friendly, leads them to consume more.
And even more if it gets cheaper.
It's a matter of education.
Take the electric car hype. Yes, they don't directly produce more CO2 while moving.
But is the production and disposal of an electric car any better than a fuel car?
What about all those LiPo batteries? And the chargers?
Any higher power consumption leads to higher release of energy in the environment, atmosphere included, no matter the ener
Build Me a Wall (Score:2)
Good thing they're delaying the nuclear plant closures rather than the coal plants. Otherwise, Netherlands would have to build a larger sea wall -- and make the ocean pay for it.
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Good thing they're delaying the nuclear plant closures
They are not delaying them. They are reaching the end of their service life, and are being closed on schedule.
What has changed is that they will not be replaced with new nukes.
This makes sense, since nukes are no longer economical. While the cost of renewables has plummeted, the cost of nukes has steadily gone UP. There are, of course, reasons why nuclear power is so expensive, and those reasons might not be valid in an alternative universe, but that doesn't change our reality.
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The summary says the country's energy mix being 75% nuclear will be reduced to 50% by 2035, rather than the 2025 originally intended by the law. So either new plants are being brought online, then taken offline by 2035 in addition to the old plants being decommissioned by 2025... or the old plants are being decommissioned up to 10 years later than originally intended (i.e. a delay). Or the summary is misleading and TFA says something else.
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The cost of nukes has not gone up. The cost of legal and bureaucratic issues related to nukes, due to irrational hysteria, has gone up.
Just dig out the blueprints from a 1960s nuke design and use them as is. The resulting power plant will be safer and better for the environment than wind and solar (because energy production per unit of materials is so much lower for wind and solar).
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You are talking about countries where anti-nuclear hysteria is rampant and affects every stage of design, construction, and operation. In South Korea, where the hysteria level is much lower, nuclear costs are several times lower [world-nuclear.org].
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Because of the parent poster had just explained to you: "The cost of legal and bureaucratic issues related to nukes, due to irrational hysteria, has gone up."
Was it that hard to understand !?
Besides, when it come to manage large industrial infrastructures, the Brits can easily become a bit.. weird. Let's say they love to listen to their accountants and they resist to whatever their engineers suggest. So they tend to suffer more from delays, cost overruns, bad supervision and "cost saving" experimental dead
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The plants you mentioned use EPR, a new kind of reactor, definitely not something designed in the 60s.
Like every large scale project, delays and cost overruns are to be expected. Hopefully, future builds will be more profitable and help recover the costs. And I highly suspect that legal and bureaucratic issues played a major part in these delays.
As for the cost going up, it is worth noting that nuclear never was cheap. The reason France is so versed in nuclear power is the result of a political decision, no
Re:Build Me a Wall (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, basically the regressive left hates nukes (because they want people to use less power, from what I can tell, and nukes tend to hurt their arguments) so they legally fight every new nuke plant incessantly. Then, the come on /. and other such forums and say "see, nukes are too expensive, can't have them". They don't have to be that expensive, and probably at some point governments need to make it illegal to file baseless lawsuits against power companies for stuff like this.
Why are wind and solar better? (Score:5, Interesting)
Could someone explain to me why wind and solar are better than *MODERN* nuclear plants, particularly fast breeder reactors, that output very little waste and are relatively safe? Nuclear plants don't vary with the sun and wind and so have no need for expensive/complex energy storage solutions to go along with them. Is the replacement of nuclear purely down to the green lobby not liking the word "nuclear" or is there any justification that has a scientific basis?
Re:Why are wind and solar better? (Score:5, Informative)
Mostly because, unlike these fast breeders you are talking about, wind and solar power plants actually do exist in real life.
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Three reasons. One, cost. I hope even you understand that one. Two, risk. Three, complexity of production chain. Yes nuclear has advantages in some environments, but at great cost and with considerable risk regardless.
Talk of ubiquitous micro-reactors unguarded throughout society is just retarded on the merits, and if you don't see that maybe you don't understand reality. *MODERN* lol, you must be completely new to this subject.
Re:Why are wind and solar better? (Score:5, Interesting)
Could someone explain to me why wind and solar are better than *MODERN* nuclear plants, particularly fast breeder reactors, that output very little waste and are relatively safe? Nuclear plants don't vary with the sun and wind and so have no need for expensive/complex energy storage solutions to go along with them. Is the replacement of nuclear purely down to the green lobby not liking the word "nuclear" or is there any justification that has a scientific basis?
Because renewables are cheaper. From what I've seen there also seem to be reliability issues with these breeder reactors and 'reliability issues' and 'nuclear' in the same sentence tend to be a downer when trying to sell nuclear to the public. On top of that, and according to the International Panel on Fissile Materials: "After six decades and the expenditure of the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars, the promise of breeder reactors remains largely unfulfilled and efforts to commercialise them have been steadily cut back in most countries". Thus a number of countries have abandoned breeder reactor development programs, In Europe this is because renewables are simply cheaper and easier to develop, manage and operate. For those wanting to know more here is an article from the "Bulletin of the Nuclear Scientists":
https://www.princeton.edu/sgs/... [princeton.edu]
The bit at the end kind of sums sodium reactors up: "In 1956, U.S. Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover summarized his experience with a sodium cooled reactor that powered early U.S. nucear usbarines by saying that such reactors are "expensive to build, complex to operate, succeptible to prologned shutdown as a result of even minor malfunctions, and difficult and time conusming to repair." More than 50 years later , this summary remains apt.
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I think Macron is just posturing here. They won't shut down the plants if renewables have not gained sufficient capacity by that point. More than likely he has seen a report which shows the continuing cost reductions in renewables and storage mean they will be able to shut down those plants in the future anyway, so he has seized this information as a big policy win for himself.
For me the big advantage solar has is that it is not dependent on government or big business. As panel costs and storage keep fallin
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1. Electrical demand isn't static. Why must supply be?
2. How much of total electrical demand is perfectly price-inelastic?
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Cheaper, cleaner, no dangerous waste output or tricky decommissioning, and it's proven technology that can be exported.
The French are fed up of throwing money at nuclear. It became a form of corporate welfare for energy companies like EDF.
If it was just about science we would be throwing money at fusion, but it's about what is affordable for tax/utility bill payers and what is an acceptable risk for investors.
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It is not cheap. It is actually extremely expensive save a few exceptional cases. That is why it is heavily subsidised by different mechanisms. It isn't cleaner in the case of France because it rarely substitutes fossil fuel consumption. It is often the nuclear plants which are slowed down which has zero to negative environmental impact. (A little bit more Xenon pollution in the reactor is all what you achieve).
And besides it generates electricity when you do not need it, without meaningful means of storing
Re: Why are wind and solar better? (Score:3)
And it turned out, you don't need high capacity, as there is almost always either wind _or_ sun.
Heh. So you can almost always have some electricity. That's wonderful. Third world energy standards right there ...
Wind and solar cant provide base load (Score:2)
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EU emissions are rising (Score:2)
Europe talks a good game, but has very little action. They do like to sign fancy "accords" and have meetings about it though.
Wrong target (Score:2)
In 2017 in France:
Transportation generate 130Mt CO2 - stable since 2000
Building heating gives 80Mt CO2 - stable since 2000
Industry is about the same (70Mt) - decreasing every year
Energy Industry is 40Mt CO2 - decreasing since 1976 (thanks nuclear)
There is a relatively "easy" target here: make buildings burn less energy. This would give:
1/ rapid benefits in CO2 emission
2/ more cash to people living in those buildings (energy is really expensive those days)
3/ a great deal of business
Guess what: that's the onl
Oh (Score:2)
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The French population can then read books and be calmed with TV at night under the glow of lights.
Total deindustrialisation.
Metro, work, sleep, zero
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It's a political move, not a pragmatic one. France is bottom of Europe when it comes to CO2 emissions per generated energy specifically because of proliferation of nuclear power across the country. Their eastern neighbour is a great example of what happens when you try to close nuclear plants for wind and solar. You get more fossil fuel burning, and your trend of reducing emissions goes straight toward "miss all the CO2 emissions targets you were previously on track to meet".
One has to remember what is the
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One has to remember what is the political environment in which these calls are made. Macron is extremely unpopular in France across the board, after being elected as essentially "that bankster that managed to get to run-off against the woman media called every nasty name they can think of for decades". He was fairly unpopular when he was elected, and since he conducted his policies as would be expected out of a man who's essentially a full on elitist throughout his career, his popularity is worse than Hollande's.
I'll just leave these facts here: In the runoff, Macron got twice as many votes as his opponent, who only managed to win in two departments. In the subsequent legislative elections, En Marche won an absolute majority in the National Assembly (308 to 8 for the National Front). In America, we would say, "Macron ate Le Pen's lunch." Macron's popularity is no worse than that of Hollande, Sarkozy, or Chirac at the same point in their terms, and he's actually doing slightly better than Hollande.
Even if your obvio
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I want to point out that in this long complaint, never once have you addressed any of my points. You avoided them like a plague.
That if anything should tell anyone reading this thread just how much you agree with me on my points. When you opponent cannot even begin to address your actual points, and has to instead go "french woman bad", you know that he has nothing.
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A battery pack for every chateaux and household.
A set of solar-panel options for roofs.
Build really big grid battery for the grid.
Th lights stay on at night.
Industrialization becomes part of French history as power gets too expensive to use in France.
French exports become uncompetitive.
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But me nukular! Thur takin mu nukular! Me Precious! Me Precious!!!
FREEZE PEACH!!!
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That's a nonsensical put-down. What he says is true, but it hasn't been done. The reasons for that are fairly obvious: France doesn't need or want to generate all the world's energy, they don't want to pave over all of France, and the political decision to invest heavily in solar has not been made in the past: that's the bit that's happening right now.
"It would already have been done" is a ludicrously stupid thing to say in this context.
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Btw. Mainland France has between 1500 and 2800 hours of sun per year (4 to 8 per day). So 3 to 5 hours is a conservative estimate based on insolation.
https://www.currentresults.com... [currentresults.com]
Efficiency of the panels will drop by rougly 1% per year over 20 years.
https://www.engineering.com/De... [engineering.com]
For windmills the issues are similar, but they may actu
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But power consumption is not constant 24/7/365. So you're going to need storage anyway.
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Great so they only have to cover one three hundred and sixty fifths of the entire area of France. No problem I guess.
0.3%. I know it is a huge investment, but take into account, that 52% of area of France is used for agriculture. Having half of land area used for food is normal, but using 0.3% of land area for energy needs is already outrageous? I think that if that would be as simple as giving up 1% of your land to never have to worry about electricity again with zero pollution, every country in the world would jump on it. There are many other serious issues, but I don't think that area needed for solar farms is the sho
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It might be more useful to point out that 'gut feeling = cognitive bias' whenever someone mentions they feel something to be true.
Re:France goes dark (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is sticking to your gut instincts when faced with contradictory evidence.
Re:France goes dark (Score:5, Funny)
Important factor being "when you have nothing else to go on" not "in the face of overwhelming data and science" :).
Re:France goes dark (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, but I do have something to go on. I speak both French and Bullshit fluently, and thus am able to translate what Macron said. Yes, from the English summary, why do you ask?
" would have liked to be able to do it as early as 2025, as provided for by the Energy Transition Law," Macron added, "but it turned out, after pragmatic expertise, that this figure brandished as a political totem was in fact unattainable. We therefore decided to maintain this 50% cap, but by postponing the deadline to 2035."
My translation:
We will close the coal plants. We will start building wind and solar, realize that it is not enough to cover the coal plants' output, and quietly 'reschedule' the closing of any nuclear plants. The next government will probably revoke the totally random 50% cap, continue closing old reactors, and replacing them with newer, safer, more powerful ones, as we have been doing for ages.
But fear not! I am green, I am looking to the future, I am relevant!
Vive la France!
Re:France goes dark (Score:4, Insightful)
I too speak both French and bullshit.
Which means i have heard of this declaration elsewhere and in other contexts. In short, nobody in the energy sector takes it seriously. France in not Germany and their administration is a more efficient counterweight in face of the public opinion. And nobody there wants to end up like Germany in regard to energy.
They know they are close to their optimum with roughly 80% nuke and 20% hydroelectric. One part of the hydroelectric power being in fact nuke electricity pumped in reversible hydro plants. The Cour Des Comptes, their equivalent of the general accounting office is screaming when they see the economics of subsidies towards wind and solar, especially wind.
So, all those public schedules are probably unrealisable bullshit to win the votes of the uneducated. And Macron probably knows explaining that, if that ever happens, will be the problem of someone else.
When i talk with researchers in the non-scam energy sector, i often have the impression they wait for the hippy generation to croak so more rational policies can be enacted.
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I too speak both French and bullshit.
That is probably the reason why your post is bullshit.
Perhaps you want to check how much hydropower and pumped storage France has, and how much wind: https://www.rte-france.com/en/... [rte-france.com]
But you might find better links to support your retardedness ...
Re:France goes dark (Score:4, Informative)
So what about the widespread opposition to further subsidies to nuclear power companies like EDF? The French electorate are kind of fed up of bailing them out when their nuclear plants fail to be profitable or experience expensive problems that need fixing. Worse still a lot of that money is flowing overseas with vague promises that there will be some ROI one day maybe, thanks to multiple failing construction projects around the EU.
Commercial nuclear in France is a basket case, reliant on government support just to survive and keep the lights on. Too big to fail, continually writing off assets and downgrading valuations.
If the Cors Des Comptes is screaming about renewable subsidies they must being having a heart attack over the nuclear ones.
Re:France goes dark (Score:4, Informative)
Commercial nuclear in France is a basket case, reliant on government support just to survive and keep the lights on. Too big to fail, continually writing off assets and downgrading valuations.
This is the first I've heard of this. There's a lot of talk in the US about how France is the model [nytimes.com] for a successful nuclear energy program. [pbs.org]
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Well you could start by reading EDF's Wikipedia page. The French version is best but the English one catalogues their financial woes too.
Basically their nuclear stuff is so expensive and risky that they keep running out of money and having to delay to take more bail-outs from the government.
https://www.ft.com/content/04d... [ft.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/uk... [theguardian.com]
Of course the government has no choice, if EDF failed they would have to nationalize it anyway to keep the lights on.
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It helps that I've spent a lot of time there. Where in hell would France put enough solar and wind to replace such a large amount of its power generation? It doesn't have an Outback or a Mojave that it can pave over with solar collectors, unless it teams up with the energy-short Germans to get help reconquering Algeria.
In countries where there are large sprawls of new residential and industrial development, you can put a lot of photovoltaic capacity on rooftops. To avoid chewing up too much land, France bui
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How about offshore wind farms?
Re:France goes dark (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't have to conquer Algeria to invest in solar power there. I think exporting solar power to Europe would be an excellent industry for North-African countries.
But France still has plenty of rooftops that haven't yet been covered with solar panels, and France has plenty of coastline for wind turbines.
All in all, this plan sounds pretty much perfect: replace coal as soon as possible, keep nuclear around for now but see if you can replace it in the future. Whether that's feasible by 2033 remains to be seen, but setting it as a goal requires a lot of investment in solar and wind, and that's definitely good.
Re:France goes dark (Score:4, Interesting)
Which means i have heard of this declaration elsewhere and in other contexts. In short, nobody in the energy sector takes it seriously. France in not Germany and their administration is a more efficient counterweight in face of the public opinion. And nobody there wants to end up like Germany in regard to energy.
One part of the hydroelectric power being in fact nuke electricity pumped in reversible hydro plants.
You seem to be taking a swipe at Germany and their renewables policy in favour of your preference for nuclear. However, it does not in any way add to your argument that renewables are crap and nuclear is king to say that this water is being pumped into the reservoir by nuclear energy because pumped hydro is just another way of saying 'energy storage'. It is completely irrelevant to the pumped hydro energy storage facility operator whether the energy for pumping is excess energy from nuclear plants or excess energy from renewables since the whole point of building the pumped hydro facility in the first place was to store excess energy for later use regardless of where it comes from. Fun fact: Germany has similar pumped hydro facilities it uses to store excess energy from wind and solar plants.
Re: France goes dark (Score:2)
Headline BS. Announced another 10 year delay (Score:4, Insightful)
The headline is BS. It's the opposite of the announcement. Here's what the announcement actually said:
We had planned on getting to 50% by 2025, but our new target is 2035.
In other words, they announced that wind and solar are NOT. going to work out like they had previously said. By 2035 Macron will be long out of office and it will be somebody else's problem to explain why the new target is 2055.
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Sometimes they're due to experience, as with phobias, although it should be clear why that isn't always a good thing.
Many cognitive biases (like anchoring [wikipedia.org]) are due to the way the human brain thinks, and are innately present from birth.
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Re: Nope, you can't assert that. (Score:2)
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It might be more useful to point out that 'gut feeling = cognitive bias' whenever someone mentions they feel something to be true.
Cognitive biases reveal the problems with relying on gut feelings. They're not synonyms. It seems some people in this thread have taken the '=' sign literally here and it's led to some strange comments about cognitive bias, when they actually mean 'gut feeling'.
Gut feelings allow decisions to be made quickly with minimal use of energy. This is important in the animal kingdom. Human beings have an abundance of energy and often have the luxury of time to make their decisions. As a result, human being
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They making a mistake because closing down nuclear for "wind and solar" means more fossil fuel energy.
Citation: Energiewende and German emissions trends.
That said, this is Macron's desperate wheeling and dealing from position of being the most unpopular president in France in a very long time, managing to successfully beat even Hollande. Most of his strategic long term calls will likely be revoked by the next government.
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Actually, emissions from burning coal and gas to generate electricity in Germany are falling steadily since 2013 [energy-charts.de].
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Are you angelosphere's alternate account? Your misrepresentation of my point is exactly the same thing he has done on this topic for years now.
In real world, one need not go beyond a single google search to find countless sources on the fact that Energiewende resulted in Germany missing all of its environmental goals on CO2 emissions and reversal of long standing trend in reduction.
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And no, I'm not angelosphere. Maybe, just maybe you are wrong, and you just got some numbers between 2011 and 2012 (when there was a nuclear moratorium in Germany, and indeed, the output of coal plants increased), and you thought that trend would continue to infinity?
In fact, most German coal plant operators are currently
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means more fossil fuel energy. ...
Citation: Energiewende and German emissions trends.
Perhaps you like to find a link? Will be pretty hard as fossil fuel usage in Germany is on the decline since 30 years
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As long as we pretend Norway doesn't exist.
Hydro is the one renewable that Greens love to hate, until they want to brag about some country's high percentage of renewables. Then hydro magically reappears in their figures.
France has fully exploited its hydro already, topping out at under 10%, which further complicates the idea of pairing hydro with sun and wind to take up the slack when these sources are not producing. You going to build more mountains in France, and where will you put them?
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Re: France goes dark (Score:5, Insightful)
It's true; we just need to kill off enough of the world's population, and move the remaining fraction to places where hydro power is plentiful. Problem solved!
Hydro is great, where possible. (Score:2)
For hydro, you need a big river, a place you can dam that river at a high altitude, and a way you can make a relatively short pipe to a low altitude.
For Norway, a fairly wet country with high mountains and deep fjords, there's lots of opportunities for that. So Norway has lots of hydro power, uses it to cheaply supply energy intensive industry, and exports power to the rest of Europe.
But Norway is not a normal country. Most countries are rather flat and/or rather dry. They exploit what hydro they can, but i
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LEGAL NOTICE: From now on, I will be posting the following quote whenever there is a discussion here on Slashdot about climate change or renewable energy:
You deserve the funny mod and the trolls with their troll mods should lose their future mod points. However, my gut tells me Slashdot is incapable of fixing any of its many problems, and bad moderation is merely one of the more annoying problems that will never get fixed. ADSAuPR, atAJG.
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Macron tries to justify himself staying in to power despite deceiving the population.
He ran for office as a moderate reformer, and he has governed as a moderate reformer. So where is the deception?
Being a reformer means going against entrenched interest groups. So of course he has made some enemies. If he deserves any criticism, it is for being too timid. But France is not an easy place to fix.
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Explain how moderate this his
- tax on big fortunes : removed. "You'll see, money will fall back down to the poors". Still waiting.
- CICE : free money given without anything but a promise in exchange. Employment should be the counterpart. Here are the figures : it was 20 B€, it's going to be 40 B€. How many jobs created ? Do the math : each job crea
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>> So where is the deception?
Hmm.
Less taxes for the rich.
Necessarily more taxes for everybody else.
That's not good.
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France has one of the best, most realistic and cleanest power generation systems on the planet.
Also a rather expensive one. About 0.15 euro = 0.17 USD per kwh. That is not so high by EU standards, but hurts them globally, leading to trade deficits and chronically high unemployment. France needs to be more competitive.
Solar and wind can generate power for about 0.03 euro per kwh.
There are some very sunny areas in southern France, and plenty of wind in Brittany.
Re: Friggin Nuts (Score:4, Informative)
Also a rather expensive one. About 0.15 euro = 0.17 USD per kwh. That is not so high by EU standards, but hurts them globally, leading to trade deficits and chronically high unemployment. France needs to be more competitive.
Solar and wind can generate power for about 0.03 euro per kwh.
You're hilarious. France, with about 70% nuclear and very little renewable energy, has by far the cheapest electricity prices in Europe. Meanwhile Germany - with the largest uptake for wind and solar - has some of the most expensive electricity in Europe. But yeah, wind and solar can like totally make electricity cheaper ... they just don't ... because reasons.
Re: (Score:2)
France, with about 70% nuclear and very little renewable energy, has by far the cheapest electricity prices in Europe
Only because the real price is hidden from you. Those nuclear plants are heavily, heavily subsidised. And now they are too big to fail, it's basically corporate welfare for the likes of EDF. French voters are fed up with it, they know that the kWh price they pay is only a fraction of the cost.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Macron is a “threat to our democracy&rdqu (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite literally: https://www.npr.org/2018/11/27... [npr.org]
Refusing to cave in to the demands of a mob is not a threat to democracy.
It is more accurate to say the mob is the threat. The protesters should take their demands to the voters, rather than rioting in the streets.
Re:Macron is a “threat to our democracy& (Score:2)
That’s one way to put it. Another, less autocratic way, would be to hold a referendum, which he would handily lose, because 77% of the country are against this bullshit. That’d be democracy.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. Macron only won 24% of the turned out vote in the first round of the elections (it's difficult to know how much he gained in the second as he was against Le Pen, so potentially a lot of protest/fear votes involved). He certainly does not have the majority of the country behind him, not by a long shot.
It's really this weird English idea where you just 'keep calm and carry on' as the Tory's destroy you country, despite them not winning the popular vote in a semi-democratic First-Past-The-Post system.
Re:Macron is a “threat to our democracy& (Score:2)
That's exactly what King George III said about those pesky colonial revolutionaries!
Re:Macron is a “threat to our democracy&rdqu (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite literally: https://www.npr.org/2018/11/27... [npr.org]
You don't understand the difference between democracy and tyranny of the minority. Quite Literally.
Re: This must be a blow to some nuclear fanboys (Score:2)
Getting rid of old first gen reactors?
That's good by any measure. You could argue it is too bad they are not replaced with new ones, but 75% nuclear was a bit high for a balanced load anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
French electricity demand always exceeds the available nuclear power supply even in the low-demand summertime when they schedule shutdowns for inspections, maintenance and refuelling. France is unusual in that it uses electricity to provide a lot of home and industrial heating since it's cheap and readily available. Other "green" countries like Germany, Denmark etc. burn gas to supply this heating requirement and the resulting CO2 gets dumped into the atmosphere.
By the time they are being closed in 2035 (as
Re: Just for a sense of scale (Score:2)