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France To Build New Nuclear Energy Reactors (spectrumlocalnews.com) 206

Posted by BeauHD from the environmentally-friendly-solutions dept.
France will start building its first new nuclear reactors in decades as part of efforts to meet its promises to reduce planet-warming emissions, French President Emmanuel Macron announced Tuesday. The Associated Press reports: He spoke as climate negotiators in Glasgow debate how to speed up efforts against climate change, and amid concerns around Europe about recent spikes in energy prices and the continent's dependence on global gas and oil producers, including Russia. "To guarantee France's energy independence, to guarantee our country's electricity supply, and to reach our goals -- notably carbon neutrality in 2050 -- we will for the first time in decades revive the construction of nuclear reactors in our country, and continue to develop renewable energy," Macron said in a televised address. He did not give any details of the plans.
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France To Build New Nuclear Energy Reactors More

France To Build New Nuclear Energy Reactors

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  • Congratulations (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ruddk ( 5153113 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2021 @05:52PM (#61972621)

    Smart move.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 )

      Smart move.

      If anyone was going to say the N-word at COP26, it was going to be France.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Very smart. France already is a world leader in low carbon electricity production because of nuclear. They take lessons learned from the first efforts and move forward, like US should wake up and do as well.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by clovis ( 4684 )

      Smart move.

      With this, moving to electric cars will be a lot more feasible because charging will be available 7/24.

      • Who needs charging available 24/7? Most cars are parked, idle most of the time. They're parked at home overnight & parked at work during the day. You could put the chargers on staggered timers to spread the load throughout the day & night if you wanted to. Or why not do battery charging while solar or wind electricity are plentiful?

        Also, don't forget that this is France we're talking about. Villages, towns & cities that were established & developed long before the car was a thing & based

      • moving to electric cars will be a lot more feasible because charging will be available 7/24.

        Charging is already available 7/24. France is quite an electricity exporter. So even right now a complete switch would be no problem, they just would export less.

    • Re:Congratulations (Score:4, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2021 @06:28PM (#61972735) Homepage Journal

      It's corporate welfare. He's giving money to energy companies and greenwashing it.

      The reason France stopped building nuclear is that it was too expensive. The idea was to support the energy companies with the high start-up costs, and then they could quickly become self sufficient. Instead they just kept talking tax money. Taxpayers got fed up.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        It's corporate welfare. He's giving money to energy companies and greenwashing it.

        The reason France stopped building nuclear is that it was too expensive. The idea was to support the energy companies with the high start-up costs, and then they could quickly become self sufficient. Instead they just kept talking tax money. Taxpayers got fed up.

        And that is pretty mich exactly what happened. Also, to those that believe the fantasy that France is "independent" because of their nukes, without the European power-grid they would have one blackout after the other. Nuclear is _unreliable_ and stops working when it gets very hot or very cold with the river-cooling most french reactors use.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          They have had a lot of accidents too, such as dumping hot water into rivers and killing off the wildlife living there.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            They have had a lot of accidents too, such as dumping hot water into rivers and killing off the wildlife living there.

            Indeed. And they had a few very close calls where they lost control of a reactor.

        • Thanx to global warming the rivers were never cold enough to make a power plant stop :P

          For that the river would need to freeze solid, that not even french rivers ever did after the ice age was over.

          Nuclear is _unreliable_ and stops working when it gets very hot
          I would not call that "unreliable" as you know that in advance.

          without the European power-grid they would have one blackout after the other
          You are exaggerating. There are plenty of means you have as power company to prevent a black out. E.g. the ste

      • Nuclear is relatively expensive when compared to coal, mostly because coal is heavily subsidized and allowed to pollute

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          More importantly nuclear is extremely expensive compared to renewables and storage.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Nuclear is relatively expensive when compared to coal, mostly because coal is heavily subsidized and allowed to pollute

          Sooo, in your world, nuclear is not heavily subsidized and the waste-storage and decommissioning costs are all taken care of? Talk about extreme disconnect from reality.

        • Re:Congratulations (Score:4, Informative)

          by Freischutz ( 4776131 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2021 @07:29PM (#61972951)

          Nuclear is relatively expensive when compared to coal, mostly because coal is heavily subsidized and allowed to pollute

          Nuclear is actually cheaper than coal in terms of LCOE. But Nuclear is also ridiculously expensive compared to renewables and nat-gas. Listening to the Nuclear fetishists here they never mention prices because France can only make nuclear energy affordable to the average consumer only because they subsidise it with tax money to a ridiculous degree:

          Building a single EPR in 2030 would require 4 to 6 billion euros of subsidies, while building a fleet of 15 with a total capacity of 24 gigawatt-hour by 2060 would cost the state 39 billion euros, despite economies of scale that could bring down the EPR costs to 70 euros per megawatt-hour (MWh), ADEME said.

          Renewables costs could fall to between 32 and 80 euros/MWh, depending on the technology, by 2060.

          https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
          https://www.reuters.com/busine... [reuters.com]

          According to the US Energy Information Administration (2021),:

          The LCOE for coal is $72.78
          The LCOE for Advanced nuclear: 63.10
          The LCOE for onshore wind: $36.93
          The LCOE for standalone solar: $30.43
          The LCOE for hybrid solar: $44.56

          Money tends to talk in this business unless you have taxpayer money for subsidies. The US is blowing theirs on coal and oil.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by vyvepe ( 809573 )
            LCOE of wind/solar is a useless measure when you want carbon free electricity generation. It is so because it ignores wind/solar intermittency.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by doom ( 14564 )

        One of the reasons I'm skeptical of the claims of renewable-energy fans is that I grew up in New York in the 70s, and I watched hordes of very energetic, earnest, well-intentioned people repeating completely bullshit factoids about nuclear power. (If you took all the nuclear waste and spread it across the highways you could pave the entire US highway system!)

        France is the only country that reacted to the 70s "energy crisis" correctly, and consequently their carbon footprint is very low.

        The United Stat

    • Re:Congratulations (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2021 @06:37PM (#61972773) Homepage Journal

      Smart? Maybe. Nuclear isn't economically competitive with fossil fuel plants (e.g. natural gas), but that's because fossil fuels can externalize so much of their costs. That's why it's "uneconomical" to invest in nuclear rather than, say natural gas. Since nobody is forcing *investors* to pay the costs of pollution, they like to pretend those costs are zero, and according to that viewpoint the decision to resuscitate nuclear isn't smart at all. But from a *public interest* standpoint, it's arguably smart for the government to intervene in the "natural" death of the nuclear industry.

      At least it would be if that's what's going on here.

      But what this is *probably* about is the one thing that can trump money in this world: security. Nuclear in France has always been about national security, and back when the nationalized French electricity enterprises were doing their crash program in nuclear plant building, nobody in (the socialist) government expected those plants to be *profitable*, any than any US government expects a carrier strike group to be profitable.

      The resulting decision make look smart to a smart person, but it got made using old-fashioned monkeys-with-rocks-and-sticks reasoning.

      • The entirety of Europe may discover how uneconomical Nat Gas can be this winter. I am not sure how political unstable the uranium fuel biz is, but Nat Gas/LNG is going to be a premium this winter. Macron could end up being quite prescient by the end of winter.

        • Why would there be a premium price for nat gas this winter?

          We do not buy gas for heating on the spot market, or do you do that?

          Macron could end up being quite prescient by the end of winter.
          Why? For France nothing changes, regardless "how the winter is" - the winter likely super warm again anyway.
          Hint: France is mostly heating with ... ta! ta! Electricity. They do not really car about gas prices.

          • Your email indicates Germany. Here is an article from dw. https://www.dw.com/en/european... [dw.com] I have not followed German home heating, but in the UK, about a dozen retail sellers of gas have gone BK. The UK regulator has reassigned those accounts to other companies. But the thing is, the reason those companies went BK is because they were buying gas for more than they could sell it for. That can't go for very long. I did see an article in the past 12 hours, Russia has started supplying gas again, but flows ar

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by vyvepe ( 809573 )

            We do not buy gas for heating on the spot market, or do you do that?

            Some suppliers did so and went out of business this year. Bit more will likely fail later. But I hope most suppliers did buy long term contracts. I'm optimistic that it will not be too bad.

            • I was more thinking about private households.

              I doubt you find many in Europe that would want/accept a spot market bound heating plan for the winter.

              My gas price for this winter was set in February this year, and the price is bound to the oil price. Every 6month, the average change of the oil price of the previous 4month is used to decide if my gas price goes up or down. But most normal households simply have a 2 years contract, and a price adjustment is done about every year.

        • Are you sure about the "entirety of Europe"? Natgas stands for 3% of our Energy usage and is produced in Denmark. Do tell me again how this will be a problem this winter.

      • back when the nationalized French electricity enterprises were doing their crash program in nuclear plant building, nobody in (the socialist) government expected those plants to be *profitable*, any than any US government expects a carrier strike group to be profitable.

        Exactly. And at least the French get low-carbon energy out of their deal.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jabuzz ( 182671 )

        I suggest you go look at electrical prices in France compared to the rest of the EU, noting that most of France's electricity comes from nuclear ~70%. You will find that there are lower than most. Now that may be because the suck cost of construction was born by the state but regardless the French are sitting pretty right now.

    • 'Smart move', yes, and it was also inevitable. We'll have to come up with better ways to handle the waste but we'll figure it out. This plus the 'renewables' should tide us over until all the details are worked out finally for fusion power.

  • Build them right on the German border (Score:5, Funny)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2021 @06:18PM (#61972703)
    It will make them happy, since the Germans got rid of theirs to keep using coal and natural gas. The French can sell them their excess power.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 )

      Yes, Germany got fully pwned by the greens and will likely be paying for it for decades

      Too bad we all share the same globe

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Too bad we all share the same globe

        Indeed. I would really like to not share one with the likes of you.

        • Re:Build them right on the German border (Score:4, Informative)

          by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @01:41AM (#61973809)

          your crappy polluting brown coal drifts well beyond even EU borders

          "The new package extends that to brown coal, or lignite, of which Germany is the world's largest producer. Brown coal generates about 19% of the country's electricity, but is considered the most polluting type of coal, partly because its low energy density means more must be burned.Jan 15, 2020"

          How loud will you scream when Germany starts building nuclear plants again?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      One wonders why EDF is basically bankrupt if they can sell all this nice electricity at a profit....

      In actual reality, they sell the electricity to reduce the massive losses all their nukes are making.

      • Riiight. I'm sure that's why "On 22 November 2016, French competition regulators raided EDF offices, looking for evidence that EDF was abusing its dominant position to manipulate electricity prices and squeeze rivals," because it was "basically bankrupt". -_-

        • In Europe the definition of bankrupt is pretty simple:
          more outstanding bills you have to pay than money/income to pay it.

          No idea how your country defines it. So yes, technically EDF is bankrupt.
          Perhaps you want to check the wikipedia article about the EDF. E.g. who the owner is, why the power they sell to house holds is so cheap, and why they do not have to file for bankruptcy ... the word bankruptcy is probably not mentioned. But the amount of losses per year and how those losses are compensated: are menti

    • Germany has not replaced its nukes with coal. You are an idiot.
      In fact 50% of the nukes are still running ... double idiot.

      We replaced coal and nukes with wind and solar, and partly bio gas.
      Triple idiot. As everyone knows that, except you, obviously.

      Btw: 50% of Germanies electricity is Wind + Solar + Bio Gas.

      Sure, we gladly import some French nuclear power from time to time. But most of the time we export more power to France than we import. The last 30 years you will not find many quarters were Germany imp

      • tsk tsk tsk,

        what was that you said earlier about numbers being meaningless? :)

        Then Germany will likely be at 75% green energy

        I can say with 100% sincerity that I hope your right.

        We may not agree on the methods but we both want the same thing. I'm just willing to support more drastic measures. Kind of like advocating that someone get chemo therapy to treat their cancer while you advocate improvements in lifestyle and health. Both might work, both have issues, but both are options that must be considered and are not mutually exclusive.

  • Code-Aster/Salome-Mecha has optional modules to age nuclear secondary containment. During the Chernobyl disaster, most countries in Europe detected radiation, but apparently not France.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      During the Chernobyl disaster, most countries in Europe detected radiation, but apparently not France.

      Yes, the radioactive clouds stopped all directly at the French border. In actual reality they just lied to their population and accepted the increased cancer rate that not taking measures brought with it.

    • most countries in Europe detected radiation, but apparently not France.
      Yeah, we have this running joke that the radioactive clouds obeyed the french decree and stoped at the border.

      Cynics claim however: the background radiation in France was too high. (Of course that was a joke, too)

  • Flamanville 3 was begun (first concrete) in 2007. Fourteen years is not decades by normal uses of the phrase.

    Hope to God they don't try for more EPRs, though, because that'll be another 15+ years before any of them spin turbines.

  • Expect more announcements like this. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MacMann ( 7518492 ) on Tuesday November 09, 2021 @09:04PM (#61973175)

    Of course France is going to build more nuclear power plants, they will have to or cease to be an independent nation. The same applies to many nations on Earth.

    We enjoy so many luxuries today because of nuclear fission power. We can't go back from nuclear power. Attempts to abandon nuclear power have not gone well so far, and there's no reason to expect this to change.

    The numbers on why we need nuclear power are laid out well in the book by Dr. David MacKay, available in HTML form here: http://www.withouthotair.com/ [withouthotair.com]

    It is inevitable to have more nuclear power, we can choose nuclear power or a return to scarcity. It's because of fossil fuels that we saw an end to social changes like an end to child labor, end of slavery, an expectation that people would learn to read, that we could expect our children to almost certainly live to become an adult, and so much more. As fossil fuels become more difficult to attain we will have to turn to nuclear fission or expect to see a return to the society we mostly just read about in our history books. We will not be exploring the solar system without nuclear power. There's no coal to mine on Mars, and no atmosphere to burn it in even if we could. If nuclear fission can support human life on Mars then it can support human life on Earth. We will not have the people trained to operate these nuclear power plants on Mars if we don't train them first on Earth. That means we will be building nuclear power plants on Earth.

    If we don't use nuclear power then we will turn to children and slaves to have enough food and clothing. If we don't use nuclear power then we will not be sending people to the moon and Mars. We can choose nuclear power or we can choose to see human society revert to a far more primitive society. I believe people would rather use nuclear power, no matter what some might bring up as downsides to it.

    • Of course France is going to build more nuclear power plants,
      Of course: they won't. The new plant is an replacement for a plant that just went off grid (the oldest plant in France, I think you can google that - should be easy)
      France has basically maxed out its potential for nuclear power, unless they find a new market for the surplus.

      Why always coming up with topics, where you have no clue about?

  • Lookup Howard T. Odum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] he calculated a 'negative gain'. Pass on nuclear.

  • Go France (Score:3)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @12:49PM (#61975627) Journal
    They are doing this right. America needs to follow their example and fund BOTH nuclear and AE. We all need an energy MATRIX, not depend on 1 type or another.

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