Declaring 'Renaisance' for French Nuclear Industry, French President Promises Up to 14 New Reactors by 2050 (theguardian.com) 326
France president Emmanuel Macron "has announced a 'renaissance' for the French nuclear industry," reports the Guardian, with plans to build at least six new reactors by 2050 and as many as 14, "arguing that it would help end the country's reliance on fossil fuels and make France carbon neutral by 2050...."
Atomic energy provides about 70% of French electricity, and low-cost nuclear power has been a mainstay of the French economy since the 1970s, but recent attempts to build new-generation reactors to replace older models have become mired in cost overruns and delays. Presidential candidates on the right have supported more nuclear power plants saying France should have "sovereignty" over its electricity, while detractors on the left have warned of the cost and complexity of building new reactors. Environmentalists have raised safety concerns over radioactive waste that remains deadly for tens of thousands of years.
Macron said French nuclear regulators were "unequalled" in their rigour and professionalism and that the decision to build new nuclear power plants was a "choice of progress, a choice of confidence in science and technology".
He also announced a major acceleration in the development of solar and offshore wind power. He said France had no choice but to rely on renewables and nuclear and that the country would also have to consume significantly less energy in the next decades.
He said he would seek to extend the lives of all existing French nuclear plants where it was safe to do so....
The French government lobbied hard and successfully to get the European Commission to label nuclear power "green" this month in a landmark review which means it can attract funding as a climate-friendly power source.
Macron said French nuclear regulators were "unequalled" in their rigour and professionalism and that the decision to build new nuclear power plants was a "choice of progress, a choice of confidence in science and technology".
He also announced a major acceleration in the development of solar and offshore wind power. He said France had no choice but to rely on renewables and nuclear and that the country would also have to consume significantly less energy in the next decades.
He said he would seek to extend the lives of all existing French nuclear plants where it was safe to do so....
The French government lobbied hard and successfully to get the European Commission to label nuclear power "green" this month in a landmark review which means it can attract funding as a climate-friendly power source.
Someone has to make up the shortfall ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing against renewables, they're just not ready yet. And shutting down your own nuclear when that means you will just use petroleum based energy to fill the gaps is hypocritical and counterproductive. Renewables should be displacing the carbon generating fuels first, not the non-carbon generating.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit. Most clueless statement so far. Nuclear is slow to build, exceptionally expensive, highly unreliable and generally a really bad idea. If they now say 2050, they may have something running 2070 at several times the planned cost. May also be even later.
Re:Someone has to make up the shortfall ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Nuclear is slow to build, exceptionally expensive, highly unreliable and generally a really bad idea
I understand your positions on most things but how is nuclear highly unreliable? Everything I've learned about nuclear power points to it being the most reliable source of energy on this planet.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Nuclear is slow to build, exceptionally expensive, highly unreliable and generally a really bad idea
I understand your positions on most things but how is nuclear highly unreliable? Everything I've learned about nuclear power points to it being the most reliable source of energy on this planet.
You learned wrongly. No idea why. Probably somebody that makes tons of money from nuclear claimed that.
The thing is that nuclear has numerous failure modes. Too hot, too cold, too much water in the river, too little water in the river, etc. for problems not caused by the plant. Numerous things were the plant needs to be taken offline to make sure things are safe. And, and that is the kicker, numerous possibilities for it to need to SCRAM which means no power generation anymore and right now, i.e. the rest o
Re: (Score:2)
Fukushima was actually screwed even if they had power on site. They were able to use external pumps (basically fire engines) to pump water in, but because of the damage done by the earthquake and tsunami that water never reached the reactors.
Re: (Score:3)
Nuclear, on the other hand, needs hours to days to react.
That is not really true. Especially for French reactors. They can shift from > 80 load down to 20 and back up, two times a day. Their problem how ever is: if they shift down, they have relatively soon to step up again, or suffer from neutron poisons (Boron mostly), and are stuck half a day or longer at low power before they can cycle up again.
then wind and solar without storage (which does not really work large-scale anyways).
Works great as you se
Re:Someone has to make up the shortfall ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not true with renewables. If it's night in France, you think the solar in Germany is going to cover for them?
Meanwhile, ignoring battery storage for a moment, if it's not windy in France, it can still be windy in Germany. For some reason you seem to be saying "renewables" but then only talking about solar power. Right after accusing gweihir of lying no less. Did the existence of renewables other than solar (and only PV solar for that matter, since thermal solar solutions work through the night) just slip your mind?
Also, as far as sunlight goes, when it's night in France, it's morning in, for example, Washington or Montana. Not that a power grid connected over Canada and Greenland, etc. is necessarily all that practical, but still, the sun is always out somewhere, so that would be a matter of infrastructure. Things like that are often highly impractical right up until someday they're not.
Of course, ideas like hemisphere spanning power grids do start to seem a bit impractical when we stop ignoring that battery storage exists and, all of a sudden, PV solar power can be distributed overnight. I mean, seriously, if you have some sort of practical objection to battery storage (you think it's too expensive, you're worried about longevity, you think that the resources required are impossible to get, etc.) you could have made it. Instead, you chose to just pretend it doesn't exist?
Re: (Score:3)
Well it happens to be a fact that it does not exist at the moment (in the quantities required), while nuclear does...
Re: (Score:2)
Transmitting power over such a large distance is not hugely practical as you've pointed out. There will be significant transmission losses, plus thousands of miles of cables which would be expensive to build and could suffer damage.
Also while night in France correlates to morning in Montana, who's to say Montana has good weather? If it's cloudy and heavily raining then the generation from solar will be severely depleted, which means what limited power is being generated there is also likely to be consumed t
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not true with renewables. If it's night in France, you think the solar in Germany is going to cover for them?
Meanwhile, ignoring battery storage for a moment, if it's not windy in France, it can still be windy in Germany. For some reason you seem to be saying "renewables" but then only talking about solar power. Right after accusing gweihir of lying no less. Did the existence of renewables other than solar (and only PV solar for that matter, since thermal solar solutions work through the night) just slip your mind?
Weather patterns tend to be larger than one state, so yes, wind in France is also quite (yes, yes, not perfectly, but enough to screw things up) correlated with wind in Germany. And yes, I was simplifying things by using solar as an example, because I don't have the time to write an entire book.
Also, as far as sunlight goes, when it's night in France, it's morning in, for example, Washington or Montana. Not that a power grid connected over Canada and Greenland, etc. is necessarily all that practical, but still, the sun is always out somewhere, so that would be a matter of infrastructure. Things like that are often highly impractical right up until someday they're not.
Yes, yes, feel free to go 100% wind/solar once we invent a stable room-temperature superconductor that can be mass produced, which this plan will require. Or at least prove that one is even possible within laws of ph
Re: (Score:3)
Just look at the North Sea. The wind never stops blowing at altitude where the turbines are.
Re: (Score:3)
Of course, ideas like hemisphere spanning power grids do start to seem a bit impractical when we stop ignoring that battery storage exists and, all of a sudden,
It doesn't exist outside of fanboi's imaginations.
Read my other answer: you have no clue but make big words.
The Pan European North Asia Synchronized Supergrid: already exists! It stretches from Ireland/UK via Scandinavia, Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan till Mongolia.
You live under a rock, inside of a cave ... get out more.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, ideas like hemisphere spanning power grids do start to seem a bit impractical when we stop ignoring that battery storage exists and, all of a sudden,
It doesn't exist outside of fanboi's imaginations.
Read my other answer: you have no clue but make big words.
The Pan European North Asia Synchronized Supergrid: already exists! It stretches from Ireland/UK via Scandinavia, Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan till Mongolia.
You live under a rock, inside of a cave ... get out more.
If that pan-European Supergrid is so great, then why the hell are we burning Russian gas? But most importantly, you are deliberately and knowingly misquoting me, because what I said doesn't exist outside of fanboi's imaginations is battery-based grid-scale storage. But you knew that, you're just deliberately lying.
Re: (Score:2)
their outages are not correlated with each other
They are. Or why do you think 35% or Frances nukes are offline atm? They all suffer from the same safty issues and are overhauled.
Which part of: water to warm or water not enough, did you not grasp? If the water is to war: then it is all over France to warm. If there is not enough water: there is not enough water nearly everywhere in France.
The crap is you. Gweihr mad some mistakes: but you have no clue at all.
Re: (Score:2)
So, only in the best cases hydro will be able to work at "rated" capacity, and it might be seasonal.
That is complete nonsense. Unless you count unexpected draughts as "seasonal".
Re: (Score:2)
That depends. In France, about one quarter of the installed nuclear capacity is currently offline due to maintance and various unexpected issues. Overall, I would say that nuclear is fairly reliable.
But it is true that is slow to build and expensive and building new nuclear therefor does not make much sense compared to cheaper alternatives which can be deployed much quicker.
Re: (Score:2)
The fact remains Germany's neglect of their nuclear industry and its premature retirement has led them to a situation where they are still using coal. Germany's self promotion as a green nation is a fraud. They are little different from corporate green washers. Doing whatever is politically expedient rather than addres
Re:Someone has to make up the shortfall ... (Score:5, Informative)
Can this be true? Actual data says no.
2022 (so far):
Germany -> France 3.2 TWh
France -> Germany 0.3 TWh
2021
Germany -> France 14.9 TWh
France -> Germany 8.4 TWh
Germany importing tonnes of fossil fuels (Score:3)
And its not just importing electricity. How many millions of tons of fossil fuels is Germany also importing? 1/3 from Russia. 83 million tonnes of crude oil in 2020, there is the price for abandoning nuclear prematurely. Massive carb
Not going to work. (Score:4, Interesting)
Classic Nuclear Fission isn't cost-effective. It doesn't matter if it's cross-funded by German or French tax-payers. We'd (EU citizien here) have this energy problem solved much faster with sun-farms on the Iberian Peninsula and cross-continent powerlines. It would be cheaper, entail way less risk, be more efficient at spreading workload and thus jobs around Europe, we'd be finished faster and the whole setup would be more fault-tolerant.
France is still sticking with the nuclear fetish, early 70ies style. Partly because they need the weapon material (that's actually a "good" reason in this context, believe it or not) but also probably because France is heavily centralized and thus likes centralized energy even a little more than Germany does. It's quite likely there is big money with nuclear fission to be made and thus the french energy lobby continues to push for it.
I'm not French and don't live in France, but I don't like it. 10+ extra fission reactors are a bad plan IMHO. It would actually be better to double-check which German ones could be run for a few years longer and put the investment money into european solar.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
well war with the ussr will stop that Germany shut down
Germany's shortfall has made it dependent upon Russian petroleum based energy. Germany won't offer any resistance to Russia beyond words.
Re: (Score:2)
War isn't going to happen between Germany and Russia.
Natural gas is better than coal.
Re: Doens't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, if you knew how to spell Ukraine, you could look it up and realize the country is not, in fact, a member of NATO.
Re: Doens't matter (Score:2)
If Ukraine were a member of the NATO, nobody would need to drug or drag NATO into protecting Ukraine. So the word drug, whether meaning chemical drugs or metaphorical force that drags, naturally applies only when Ukraine is not a member of NATO.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
3 intelligent comments about nuclear power in one thread! This is Ars! Pity about the first one but 3 out of 4 aint bad!
Most Americans are busy watching football. Its Super Bowl Sunday over here. :-)
Re: (Score:3)
- There is no shortfall of electricity in Germany. In fact, France imports much more electricity from Germany than vice versa, especially at the moment, with many nuclear plants being offline in France. (In 2022 so far: Germany -> France 3.2 TWh vs France -> Germany 0.3 TWh)
- While Germany is dependent on Russian gas, gas use did not increase with the nuclear exit (89,0 TWh in 2021 compared 89 to 2010 TWh before Fukushima, it was a bit higher in 2020: 95 TWh) and most gas is in fact not used for elect
Re: (Score:2)
and yes, I agree that the nuclear plants in Germany should run longer, but bullshit is still bullshit and needs to be called out
And why would anyone agree in running over 70 year old nuke plants built on fault lines?
Re:Someone has to make up the shortfall ... (Score:4, Insightful)
If they were truly environmentally oriented they would shut down coal, and then oil and then natural gas **before** they shut down nuclear. But they are really political, and their politics dictates that nuclear go first. Well, on their soil, their happy to import nuclear from just over the border. Hypocrites.
Re:Someone has to make up the shortfall ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The point remains that Germany shuts down non-carbon emitting energy for political reasons while it continues to use carbon emitting energy.
The German population fought hard for more than 50 years to achieve that. It is a great victory for us.
Plus the massive greenwashing of their own industry while they are happy to input energy from other nations, including nuclear from France and the Czech Republic.
and why is that relevant? All European nations life in a common grid. Why would we not trade which each other what is cheap at the moment? You make no sense.
The fact that they shut down nuclear before they shutdown coal, or input coal sourced electricity, pretty much demonstrates what frauds they are in terms of environmentalism.
There is nothing fraud about that. The population demanded it from the government. We rule our yountry: not you
If they were truly environmentally oriented they would shut down coal, and then oil and then natural gas **before** they shut down nuclear.
Environment, perhaps you want to look up what the word means. First of all it means: the environment surrounding our selves. E.g. the closest German nuke from the place I live is by air not even 50km. If it goes boom, I get evacuated: if I survive. The closest coal plant is by air not even 3km. If it goes boom, I have to stay 2 or 3 days in the house because of the smoke. And I certainly will survive.
Shutting down nuclear is for safety of our country and our population. It has not much to do with environmental things so no idea why you want to make an argument and why you want to judge over "the Germans" and have silly ideas to "suggest what they should do".
What about your country? Is anyone complaining that you have not exited coal yet? Nope, no one is ... you are just a stupid hypocrite.
A huge deal of Germans do not want nuclear power. We do not want the waste. We do not want the risk. That is _our_ decision, not yours. And that is how a democracy is supposed to work.
BTW: Germany is world record holder in CO2 reduction. Come back when you have done a similar big achievement.
Re:Someone has to make up the shortfall ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you share the source of this? The assessment is presumably somewhat dependent on time-range and the criteria used. I tried to verify it, but the best I found is this table:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In this, Qatar reduced emissions per capita by a factor of more than 15x Germany's between 1995 and 2018. Even the US and UK have more than double Germany's.
Of course, none of this factors in the outsourcing of emissions to countries like China - perhaps you have that information?
Re:Someone has to make up the shortfall ... (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW: Germany is world record holder in CO2 reduction. Come back when you have done a similar big achievement.
Yes, such a huge achievement, when you even have an entire *geographical region* created by strip mining lignite, and the flooding the resulting holes, called Lusitian Lakeland [wikipedia.org]. When you fuck up enough to create an entire fing geographical region as a permanent monument to your fuckup, then it's quite easy to step down from that.
And just look at the map under the link to see the mind-boggling scale. All this blue on the map under the link is flooded former strip mines. Striped areas are ones still active. And let me add, all that CO2 is still floating in the air. So please scrub and sequester that, before you even fucking *dare* approach any kind of a high horse, much less mount it.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Someone has to make up the shortfall ... (Score:4, Insightful)
A coal plant will far more likely kill you during normal operation then a nuclear planet having a meltdown.
Re:Someone has to make up the shortfall ... (Score:4, Interesting)
The point remains that Germany shuts down non-carbon emitting energy for political reasons while it continues to use carbon emitting energy. The German population fought hard for more than 50 years to achieve that. It is a great victory for us.
Yes, a political victory but an environment tragedy. It say zwe are NOT in an existential crisis regarding carbon emissions, that political and economic concerns are more important than carbon emissions.
Plus the massive greenwashing of their own industry while they are happy to input energy from other nations, including nuclear from France and the Czech Republic. and why is that relevant?
Because it also shows how hypocritical the anti-nuclear power stance is. It really just not-in-my-background, nuclear power just across the border is just fine. As you admit, its just domestic politics. Nothing more.
The fact that they shut down nuclear before they shutdown coal, or input coal sourced electricity, pretty much demonstrates what frauds they are in terms of environmentalism. There is nothing fraud about that. The population demanded it from the government.
You are merely rationalizing the fraud, you are in fact conceding that politics is more important than environmentalism.
If they were truly environmentally oriented they would shut down coal, and then oil and then natural gas **before** they shut down nuclear. Environment, perhaps you want to look up what the word means. First of all it means: the environment surrounding our selves. E.g. the closest German nuke from the place I live is by air not even 50km. If it goes boom, I get evacuated: if I survive. The closest coal plant is by air not even 3km. If it goes boom, I have to stay 2 or 3 days in the house because of the smoke. And I certainly will survive. Shutting down nuclear is for safety of our country and our population.
You prove my point, lot of politics, and very little science. Tell me how would a radioactive cloud from French or Czech reactors stop at the border. Yet you promote their operation by importing power from these nuclear sources. Again, hypocrisy.
What about your country?
Whatabout'ism does not change the facts regarding Germany's green washing and hypocrisy.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I believe Germany is filling the energy gap with coal-fired plants, using "brown" coal. /. idiots knows that.
Nope, there is no gap.
And the replacement is: wind and solar. Everyone except selected
Brown coal is pretty filthy stuff as a fuel.
Nope. That was 50 years ago. Brown coal plants are scrubbed in the exact same way as other coal plants,
so getting gas from Russia would be preferred, if there weren't too many nasty political strings attached.
Germany does not use much gas for producing electricity. It is u
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Someone has to make up the shortfall ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, what was once the USSR is now several countries - Russia is just one of them, Ukraine is another one as they were just as much part of the USSR as Russia were.
Good (Score:2)
It will be interesting to see how well modern reactors perform.
We should also consider existing waste stockpiles (Score:5, Interesting)
It will be interesting to see how well modern reactors perform.
Not just with respect to power generation. Some of those new designs can actually help clean up old waste by consuming it as fuel. That cleanup is something people don't consider very often, we should though.
Re: We should also consider existing waste stockpi (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
France has been using nuclear power for a majority of its electricity needs since the 1970s, how many meltdowns have occurred in that time?
Re: (Score:2)
Some of those new designs can actually help clean up old waste by consuming it as fuel.
I think one of the problems is that using nuclear reactors to process nuclear waste tends to produce plutonium. Those people who are concerned about the proliferation of nuclear weapons don't want to add to the world's stock of plutonium, which is much more useful than uranium for making bombs. I believe the French have a more relaxed attitude than other nations about this, which would make nuclear power more practical, because of reduced waste processing and storage costs.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Depends who wants to nitpick about what.
Fresh fuel is 5% to 6% (sometimes a bit more) U235, the rest is U238. After it is "spent", roughly half of the U235 has fissioned into its fission products. Perhaps a little bit Plutonium was bred, too.
The fission products are truly waste, and can not be "burned" in other reactor, unlike many here claim. Depending on reactor design, however the spent fuel, can be used on CANDU reactors, e.g. (no idea if it is better to remove the fission products or not - aka as you w
Re: (Score:2)
The "waste" is highly radioactive, hence why storing it is considered a problem.
Breeder reactors make more use of the byproducts, and produce less waste:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Some of these byproducts can also be used for creating weapons, so such reactors are politically sensitive and need to be more tightly controlled. Otherwise you can build a much more efficient reactor that extracts a lot more usable energy from the same fuel input, and produces a lot less waste.
Re: (Score:2)
The economics may be weird because wind, solar, and storage will be able to provide most of the power almost all the time in this timeframe, kind of inverting the notions of base load vs peaker plant.
Re: (Score:2)
The economics may be weird because wind, solar, and storage will be able to provide most of the power almost all the time in this timeframe
This is really optimistic about improvements that might happen with storage.
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
I am sorry to disappoint here, but they are planned as EPR2, an incremental revision of the current EPR designs that EDF has had immense difficulties to build (apparently cracks in soldering work / difficulties to get steel that performs to the specification). Olkiluoto 3 (Finland) was planned to start in 2010 and is still not operating (should be this month though), Flamanville 3 (France) should have started in 2012 and is still not there (hopefully this year). Taishan 1 & 2 (China) is operational thanks to the experience gained from the previous two. So EDF just wants to make small corrections to the design to avoid the previous issues, nothing more.
One major problem from the start was a gap of 20 years since the last power plants were built, meaning most experienced workers had retired or moved to other careers. Since the new wave of constructions: Finland (2005-2022), France (2007-2022), China (2008-2018), UK (2016-), they hope to have enough experts.
A game changer would have been to restart the 4th Generation programme ASTRID, which was cancelled in 2019 based on a financial study (such as: will not be a profitable business for as long as uranium is cheap). But that would be an improbable outcome, Macron is in campaign for a second mandate (hence making big announcements like this one), so he will not take the risk to revert a decision made just 2 years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
I am always amazed that conventional nuclear generating plants take so long to build, cost so much and have difficulties when operating, when compared with the large number of reactors installed in ships and submarines that seem to be able to just get on with it.
They are also much, much smaller, last decades without refuelling and the bigger ones produce up to 500MW. What not to like? Well, they get decommissioned by removing the reactor core and putting a new one in, so the old one has to be stored somewhe
It's a cooling problem. (Score:3, Informative)
I am always amazed that conventional nuclear generating plants take so long to build, cost so much and have difficulties when operating, when compared with the large number of reactors installed in ships and submarines that seem to be able to just get on with it.
If you're engulfed in a huge body of water, keeping your mini-sun on board your ship/sub sufficiently cool is actually quite trivial. If you're dependant on a nearby river to have enough water flowing in it and need cooling cylces, cooling towers an
Re: (Score:2)
Well, 4x more expensive and several times longer construction times than planned is already known of these "modern" EPRs. Expect the other numbers to be about as abysmally bad.
Never Thought I'd See The Day (Score:2, Insightful)
Never thought I'd see the day when France made more sense than Germany.
Who pays? (Score:3)
Do anyone know rhe specific details as to how they intend to finance this? It seems clear from the article that a state owned company will be tasked with building it, but as there is a common eu energy market it would surprise me if they could finance it directly from the government budget.
Re: (Score:3)
The "EU market" is for (electric) energy.
Not for financing power plants.
AFAIKT: they can finance it however they want.
Re: Who pays? (Score:2)
Afaik (EDF) Electricité de France is only government owned by them by being a majority shareholder, it's a publicly traded company.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. But, no idea what your point is :D
Re: (Score:2)
Not so simple. The EU has rules about state subsidies.
Re: (Score:2)
It is not a state substitute when the owner of a company increases the capital and uses that to build something.
Perhaps hard to judge in this case. But as the EDF is running at a great loss - the whole construct of companies and state is questionable anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
There are some limits imposed by the EU, to prevent members giving their industries an unfair advantage with subsidies. France still does it, arguing national security and the like.
France has a big problem with nuclear, because in their energy market the most expensive source sets the price. Nuclear is guaranteed high prices, so even when cheaper renewable energy is available they end up paying the nuclear price.
The UK is the same, the current high cost of electricity is down to nuclear and fossil fuels dis
Re: (Score:3)
The only detail presently known is one sentence: "the State will contribute". The electric company EDF is publicly traded on Euronext stock exchange, the main investor (83.88%) being the investment fund of the French government (Bpifrance). I guess they are currently negotiating what percentage EDF will have to find from its current cash, what will come from raising capital on the stock exchange, and what from the majority investor Bpifrance.
As a comparison point, last decision to build a power plant was in
Re: Who pays? (Score:2)
Many thanks for the very detailed answer! Hopefully more information will be available before the markets open.
Re:Who pays? (Score:4, Informative)
State owned is an interesting take. This is the skeleton of Areva, the former single greatest nuclear construction contractor in the world. ... Which went bankrupt attempting to build their last reactor in France and then got "bailed out" by the government in the form of directly buying the company.
I'll be more excited when EDF gets Flammvile 3 up and running. They are only 4x over budget 3x over schedule and sunk Areva during construction.
Re:Who pays? (Score:5, Insightful)
I really wish proponents of nuclear power would put their own money at risk rather than depending on government bailouts. Whatever happen do those investments would be truly well deserved.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm in two minds about this. On the one side it leads to more risk averse decisions, on the other side private funding is never the most ideal solution for any publicly necessary utility and the government setting rates, building, or indeed bailing out critical infrastructure is very much in the interest of the tax payers.
The problem is more that the complex financial frameworks behind large projects like this mean the people putting up the capital itself are objectively not usually the ones left on the hoo
Re: (Score:3)
I really wish proponents of nuclear power would put their own money at risk rather than depending on government bailouts. Whatever happen do those investments would be truly well deserved.
No deal as long as the green morons are allowed to put enough red tape in place to sink any investment. When you have actual rules saying "if it's profitable then it means they're not pumping enough money into safety theater, force them to sink more" no wonder it can't be profitable.
Re: (Score:2)
It comes from the military budget: https://beyondnuclearinternati... [beyondnucl...tional.org]
It would be completely impossible to finance this on the civilian side and the electricity generated would be so massively overpriced that they would have a civil war. Sure, in the summer they have overcapacity they sell. But they lose a lot of money on every kWh sold.
Re: Who pays? (Score:2)
That seems to concern previous projects by the same company, but an interesting read non the less. Thanks!
Re: (Score:2)
and the electricity generated would be so massively overpriced
Nope. France is selling its power below creation/distribution cost. The costs of reactors, fuel, manpower etc. is not covered by the money they make. EDF makes a loss every year which is compensated by the state. Which obviously means, by tax payers. The only money EDF is making is selling in international trades, as anti dumping laws do not allow them to sell below production costs.
Re: (Score:2)
Do anyone know rhe specific details as to how they intend to finance this? It seems clear from the article that a state owned company will be tasked with building it, but as there is a common eu energy market it would surprise me if they could finance it directly from the government budget.
They're France. The rules in EU are for smaller, weaker states, not them.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, it will be French taxpayers picking up the bill. They have been doing so for decades already, most recently when EDF basically bankrupted itself taking on the new Hinkley C reactor project in the UK. It's liabilities exceeded its assets and the French government had to bail it out, again.
Nuclear power is basically corporate welfare in France. A way to funnel tax money to individuals who invest in it. Guaranteed returns by socialising the risk and privatizing the profit.
Macron is basically signalling th
Smart move (Score:2)
They will be exporting lots of electricity to Germany, who had crippled itself doing the opposite.
And if Germany finally wises up, France can sell them new reactors.
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
They will be exporting lots of electricity to Germany, who had crippled itself doing the opposite.
And if Germany finally wises up, France can sell them new reactors.
Nope. And at the moment they have to massively import electricity to keep the lights on. Nuclear was a really, really bad decision for France. The only reason they have it is to maintain their bombs: https://beyondnuclearinternati... [beyondnucl...tional.org]
10,000 years isn't a relevant time frame (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never understood why people acted like we needed to render nuclear fuel safe for 10,000+ (or even 100,000) years. Yes, we need to store it safely but even storage for 1,000 years is plenty of time for our descendants to decide what they want to do with it.
I mean, imagine the Victorians trying to take samples of tuberculosis or of arsenic and render them safe for 10,000 years. Not only would their attempts likely be laughably inadequate compared to what we would see as necessary since we have much higher safety standards/better knowledge of the risks (meaning we'd have to redo them anyway) but they'd also have to invest a much much larger fraction of their GDP to do it than we would. If human civilization survives in 200 years we'll be much much more capable of dealing effectively with the waste than we are now. Indeed, rather than searching for a truly 'permanent' solution we should probably be searching for a solution that isn't too hard to monitor and revamp if we decide we need to in the future. It's counterintuitive but the NPV of a continuous stream of payments going into the future isn't actually that large.
And, as for the concern that civilization will collapse and we need to design storage to protect some future tribe of non-technological humans that's just crazy. What, the worry is that a few hundred humans who are probably already living in a world ravaged by nuclear war might get their lives shortened by nuclear waste. Yes, that would be unfortunate but surely any money that might be spent trying to design storage that would warn them away could be much better spent on research that might help us avoid the collapse of civilization or recover from it. If we think we have any chance of communicating with these people at *all* how about using that money to put down our most valuable knowledge on clay tablets (the kind which have survived almost 10k years in the middle east) or even spend it on research to reduce the chance of civ collapsing in the first place by a tiny amount. Surely those make the better cost/benefit analysis.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I've never understood why people acted like we needed to render nuclear fuel safe for 10,000+ (or even 100,000) years. Yes, we need to store it safely but even storage for 1,000 years is plenty of time for our descendants to decide what they want to do with it.
That is the "crap everywhere, let somebody else clean it up" mindset. Despicable.
Re:10,000 years isn't a relevant time frame (Score:5, Insightful)
Your thinking future generations will not be better able to handle said waste than us is far more despicable. It means you think humanity will only devolve from this point... what a tragic mindset.
So all those past generations that just blithely declared that "the solution to pollution is dilution" and created a massive mess for us to deal with were just showing us respect? Is it also respectful to have food fights in restaurants and leave the mess for the restaurant staff since it would be despicable to think that trained restaurant professionals are not better able to handle the mess? Should all parents who get winded running halfway down a sports field run up large debts in their children's names because it would despicable to think that their children won't be rich professional athletes?
Re: (Score:2)
We've known how to eliminate 99% of the nuclear waste problem since the 1960s for fuck's sake.
Re: (Score:2)
We've known how to eliminate 99% of the nuclear waste problem since the 1960s for fuck's sake.
Then explain how to do it, and farm in your Nobel Price.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, we need to store it safely but even storage for 1,000 years is plenty of time for our descendants to decide what they want to do with it.
Can you think of any modern government that plans a thousand years ahead? What most governments do with an awkward problem is kick the can down the road, so the next administration has to deal with it, typically four years later.
To put a one thousand year plan into perspective, consider a building that was intended to last: Notre-Dame de Paris. According to my quick Wikipedia search, construction of the cathedral was begun in 1163, which was 859 years ago. I hope you would agree that the society of medieval
Re: (Score:2)
The light house of Alexandria, was over 1000 years in use. Some claim: daily!
In the end it got destroyed together with the whole city by an earthquake, though.
Re:10,000 years isn't a relevant time frame (Score:5, Insightful)
Younger generations won't go for it. Gen X and younger are already getting screwed by their parents and grandparents taking that attitude that they can just rely on future generations fixing their mess.
Re: (Score:2)
If human civilization survives in 200 years we'll be much much more capable of dealing effectively with the waste than we are now. ...
Actually: nope
The problem in 200 years will be exactly the same as right now. Nothing changes. Most of the spent fuel will simply still be uranium. If you count the rods itself as waste, it will be the exact same rods as now, and the rest are fission products, where a few have a short half life and will considerably decay, and the others wont
France Never Left Nuclear (Score:2)
France wants its nuclear arsenal maintained (Score:2)
That is the real reason. Nuclear has been a huge financial drain and a serious problem with regards to reliable energy supply for France. Bad enough that France buying electricity on the European market has seriously increased prices recently, because they needed to buy so much. Without the European grid, they would have had blackouts.
Macron has basically said this is because of the military use: https://beyondnuclearinternati... [beyondnucl...tional.org]
Don't get confused (Score:3)
Nuclear is very good for the environment. It is carbon free, or as close to is as possible (you need to use cement for the buildings, and cars to commute the workers, that is about it).
It is also one of the the safest form of energy generation: https://www.energy.gov/ne/arti... [energy.gov] . Depending on whether you count rooftop falls from solar installations, and displacement of wildlife from hydro dams, it could be considered the safest even.
But where does it fall short: ... sorry politicians, will care more about short term issues than fighting against the public opinion for the better future.
It is expensive. There is an upfront cost nobody wants to pay.
It is not popular. And populaticians,
It is not going to add jobs. Let's be clear here, solar and wind makes a lot of new jobs. Nuclear, not so much.
It is "scary". Even though numbers don't lie, "docuseries" directors do: https://www.historyvshollywood... [historyvshollywood.com] . And people are really afraid.
It is expensive. Again, but this time due to all the extra government burden caused by the irrational fear from the previous point.
That is why we don't have any new nuclear reactors, and even shut down perfectly fine ones (PGE in California). Not because of any scientific reason, but all because of politics.
Re: (Score:2)
It is expensive only because of the piles of unnecessary regulations and BS measures that don't even meaningfully add to safety.
France moves up a notch (Score:2)
Who'd'a thunk it?
The world will need fission nuclear power to stop gap the carbon sources that are supposed to be shutting down until a proper fusion reactor can be deployed.
Re: Paging MacMann (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Nope. You do not give a shit because you are stupid and do not understand what is going on.
Re: (Score:2)
Nope. You do not give a shit because you are stupid and do not understand what is going on.
I know we can be picky about our solutions. So I am too.
You are mistaken.
OK. Props to France then. Glad we agree. Cheers!
Re: (Score:2)
It is not cost effective at all. EDF is basically bankrupt despite getting huge amounts of money from the government. They could never charge customers what their electricity really costs. It is a huge cost issue and a huge reliability issue.
The only reason the French are doing it is to keep their nuclear capability intact: https://beyondnuclearinternati... [beyondnucl...tional.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Nuclear needs some sort of storage just as much as renewables to make sense on a power grid with variable demand. Otherwise you either have to over-generate to power everything with nuclear, or you have some sort of base load of nuclear and you still need plants using fossil fuels to cover when more power is needed.
Re: (Score:2)
It's easy enough to over generate with nuclear, and then either sell the surplus to neighboring countries or use it for energy intensive and non time critical operations like desalination or carbon capture etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Solar and wind power are going to escalate in price quickly going forward, because of raw material and energy cost in construction.
Care to elaborate on what raw materials you're referring to that are suddenly going to become much scarcer and why suddenly they will take much more energy to produce?
On top of all that, with a new generation of small modular reactors just coming around, the costs for nuclear are going down dramatically over the next decade, even as costs for all other forms of energy are spiraling up for at least the next ten years, possibly longer.
I've been hearing that since I was a child. So far, renewables have been delivering on their promises. Nuclear has not. What, exactly, is on the horizon for nuclear now that hasn't been there for decades in one form or another?
Re: (Score:2)
Care to elaborate on what raw materials you're referring to that are suddenly going to become much scarcer ...?
No elements will become "much scarcer" but there are several that might not scale with rising demand.
For solar panels, the biggest problem is tellurium [wikipedia.org], which is a byproduct of copper mining. There are substitutes, but the result is less efficient panels.
For wind turbines, the critical elements are dysprosium and neodymium used in the generator magnets. These are more scalable than tellurium, but we are failing to make the investments needed to increase production capacity.
Re: (Score:2)
For solar panels, the biggest problem is tellurium [wikipedia.org], which is a byproduct of copper mining. There are substitutes, but the result is less efficient panels.
Most solar cells do not use Tellerium, but: sand!
Re: (Score:2)
The only thing that will not go up in cost substantially is nuclear because the fuel is vastly cheaper than any carbon based fuel, they take much less exact resources to assemble and have vastly longer lifespans than any solar panels or wind farms. ...
Perhaps you should read that up first
Nope. Wrong. (Score:2)
Nuclear is the only viable option we have to mitigate climate change.
No it's not. Not Nuclear Fission at least, and that's currently the only realistic source of nuke power we know of.
The Germans shut the Kalkar Fast-Breeder Project and the Wackersdorf nuke replenishing plant down not because of hippies protesting, but because some state clerk actually sat down, did the basic math and concluded that the numbers simply don't ad up for classic nuclear fission.
Don't you think the Germans would keep fission goi