France Adds First New Nuclear Reactor to Its Grid Since 1999 (yahoo.com) 68
Saturday France connected a new nuclear reactor to its grid "for the first time in a quarter century..." reports Bloomberg, "adding low-carbon electricity supply at a time when a sputtering economy has made demand sluggish."
The Flamanville-3 reactor — the first such addition since Civaux 2 was connected in 1999 — will join EDF's fleet of 56 reactors in France, which generate more than two-thirds of the country's electricity and are the backbone of western Europe's power system. When fully ramped up, the new unit will provide a stable source of supply, which can be particularly useful during peak hours in the winter. Increased nuclear output will also curb the use of gas-fired power stations.
France is set for record power exports in 2024 as local demand remains subdued and it keeps adding renewable capacity. Better generation from EDF's nuclear fleet is also helping keep a lid on wholesale prices, partly reversing bill increases caused by Europe's energy crisis. The Flamanville-3 reactor in the country's northwest adds 1.6 gigawatts of output, raising France overall atomic capacity to about 63 gigawatts...
Since construction started in 2007, its budget — excluding finance costs — has quadrupled to an estimated €13.2 billion ($13.9 billion). The yearslong saga has created lasting doubts about the French nuclear industry's ability to build reactors on time and on schedule — a crucial issue as it prepares to build at least six large plants in the country. EDF's ongoing work on two similar reactors in the UK has also suffered repeated delays and cost overruns, complicating the British government's effort to raise funds for the construction of another pair of EPRs.
France is set for record power exports in 2024 as local demand remains subdued and it keeps adding renewable capacity. Better generation from EDF's nuclear fleet is also helping keep a lid on wholesale prices, partly reversing bill increases caused by Europe's energy crisis. The Flamanville-3 reactor in the country's northwest adds 1.6 gigawatts of output, raising France overall atomic capacity to about 63 gigawatts...
Since construction started in 2007, its budget — excluding finance costs — has quadrupled to an estimated €13.2 billion ($13.9 billion). The yearslong saga has created lasting doubts about the French nuclear industry's ability to build reactors on time and on schedule — a crucial issue as it prepares to build at least six large plants in the country. EDF's ongoing work on two similar reactors in the UK has also suffered repeated delays and cost overruns, complicating the British government's effort to raise funds for the construction of another pair of EPRs.
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That much solar added that quickly would seriously mess up the grid
Solar systems don't perturb grid stability, they increase it. No spinning generator can provide the reliably clocked output of even cheap grid-tied inverters, as they can drop out or pick back up in a fraction of a cycle.
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That can actually be a problem with grid-tied inverters. For various good reasons, they are apt to disconnect themselves from the grid at the first sign of trouble - either internally or when they detect some issue with the surrounding grid. And when they do, it is an instantaneous loss in generating capacity. Instantaneous means there's no time for the rest of the grid to react and respond, which can lead to
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But the notion that inverters are somehow superior is not strictly true.
So..... That depends on the inverter. Lots of what you say is absolutely true for home inverters. This does mean that a standard home install can be kind of unhelpful. My home inverter, for example, is completely incapable of feeding the grid unless there's already a good stable 240V/50hz input. However this is not true of the larger more modern inverters that companies like Siemens produce.
For the more modern large inverters they have what they market as "synthetic inertia" or something similar. It basical
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Solar systems don't perturb grid stability, they increase it.
They don't destabilise, but they don't necessarily stabilise it either.
No spinning generator can provide the reliably clocked output of even cheap grid-tied inverters, as they can drop out or pick back up in a fraction of a cycle.
That does not work how you think it works, and that doesn't do a whole lot for stability: quite the opposite. Spinning mass provides literal, physical inertia to the grid, which slows down changes and makes it much more s
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1. There isn't enough manufacturing capacity for that.
That's the same for a large expansion of nuclear. But then the capacity for both has been increased. So the rejoinder to your comment is to build out capacity.
2. A single solar panel per roof might meet the standard, but be relatively useless and inefficient
Then use a different standard
3. Not all areas and roofs are suited for solar.
Ditto nuclear, so don't add solar there.
4. That much solar added that quickly would seriously mess up the grid. We'd need storage to go along with it.
1 and 4 can't both be true.
Context, pay attention (Score:2)
You have to realize that I was responding to a proposal to give people six months to all install solar or face prison time.
Can we eventually get solar on all roofs where it makes sense? Yes, especially with more expansion in manufacturing, but the expansion still needs to happen.
Using a different standard than the person I responded to is good, but in that case my response would also be different.
And didn't say that both 1 and 4 can be true at the same time, it was more of a 'even if you could get the pane
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4. That much solar added that quickly would seriously mess up the grid. We'd need storage to go along with it.
It doesn't have to. Rooftop solar just reduces the demand on the grid from the structure where it's installed. The real problem with small renewables is that they are situational that no area wide rule will work as intended. Here there's a sunny place, there is a windy place. Let local economics decide which renewables, if any, will work in a given location.
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Okay, how does solar without battery help reduce demand when the sun is already down when people are turning their lights and TVs on, cooking dinner and such around 6pm?
And context. The guy I responded to proposed charging people with felonies if they didn't install solar, specifically, in six months.
Re: Solar power your home (Score:3)
Being a bit more dependent on nature for our energy may be a good thing and teach us to be modest and insignificant creatures again. Sorry son, no vr gaming today. There is little sun and wind. Electricity is too expensive. We can tell stories or do some b-ball outside?
It would change life as we know it. We would definitely not be great again. But I am pretty sure we could do it reasonab
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You are missing some of the horrors of solar - mainly they depend on rare earth elements strip mined in China (ooh, and guess what, wind, too). They dump radioactive waste in piles that seep into the water supply. Oh, but we can mine those in the US - with regulations that ban the same strip mining as per China, less than 5% are mined in the US. China also requires manufacturing in their country to use them.
Then there's nearly EVERYTHING people know about fission being wrong because all they know are 1960s
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You are missing some of the horrors of solar - mainly they depend on rare earth elements strip mined in China
They do not. You're thinking of thin-film. Most rooftop panels are not thin-film. They do not rely on rare earth elements.
They dump radioactive waste in piles that seep into the water supply.
Going to need a citation on that.
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I'd say because we've been trying to replace nuclear fission with solar for nearly 50 years and it's not been going well for anyone.
No, we haven't been trying to replace it. Strawman alert.
How about we put an end to the anti-"nukular" lawfare
It's a minor factor. Strawman #2.
and get some new nuclear power plants built on time and under budget?
Where the 'lawfare' has been dealt with, e.g., France, it's not happening. Or did you not read the article?
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I'd say because we've been trying to replace nuclear fission with solar for nearly 50 years and it's not been going well for anyone. How about we put an end to the anti-"nukular" lawfare and get some new nuclear power plants built on time and under budget?
I live in an exceptionally sunny place, and solar panels are cheap here, yet we get most of our power from nuclear. Our most important renewable source is a series of dams.
Re:Solar power your home (Score:4, Informative)
environmentalists have ass-fucked it with mountains of regulation
That's not true in France. The bureaucracy is pro-nuclear, and frivolous lawsuits are much less common than in America.
Flammville-3 was budgeted for $3.3B, spent over four times that amount, and was completed a decade behind schedule.
It was a financial debacle, but excessive regulation wasn't the cause.
a solar panel on your home
Residential solar panels on preexisting housing are twice the cost of grid-scale installations. Although politically popular, they are not a good solution.
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The contracts no idea.
The regulations are most certainly extremely similar.
There are not many ways how to run a nuke - safely.
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Indeed, France 24 cites technical problems as the cause of the 12 year delay and massive cost overruns.
Keep in mind this is a new reactor at an existing nuclear site, i.e. the cheapest option as the infrastructure isn there and the site is already well surveyed etc.
Also France's nuclear fleet manages a capacity factor of about 70%, with unexpected shutdowns a regular problem, so "stable" is not the right word.
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Also France's nuclear fleet manages a capacity factor of about 70%,
77%.
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It varies from year to year, often depending on how bad the summer is for them. But still, 23% downtime, much of it unplanned, isn't great. One of the great things about renewables is that even though they are intermittent, they are very highly predictable and resilient.
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Indeed, France 24 cites technical problems as the cause of the 12 year delay and massive cost overruns.
Keep in mind this is a new reactor at an existing nuclear site, i.e. the cheapest option as the infrastructure isn there and the site is already well surveyed etc.
The biggest problem for the French here is that this was an early model in a new generation of French reactors, the EPR. It's essentially a productionised prototype with all the fun that this entails. Curiously the Chinese and the Finns have apparently managed to build this design with a few hiccups but a lot less delay. The British Hinkley Point C has been built with less overruns than the French but still way over budget. Each time they build it it gets easier and there's a proposal for an updated EPR2 d
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Somehow Hinkley Point C is costing 48 billion. It may have had fewer delays but it seems that EDF learned from the issues they had in France and jacked the price up massively.
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Although politically popular, they are not a good solution.
Tell that to Australia where 36% of homes now have solar panels.
The reality is they are a very good solution if you put the correct incentive structure in place. And that means putting them on a variable energy tariff to encourage load shedding and self use of energy. Combine it with a battery (or a bi-directional EV) and residential solar means building homes which don't put any daily variable strain on the grid. For long term grid predictions traditional base load plants can pick up the load (pun intended
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"Tell that to Australia where 36% of homes now have solar panels."
Australia gets more sunshine than France - its closer to the equator.
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Although politically popular, they are not a good solution.
Tell that to Australia where 36% of homes now have solar panels.
Aussie here and have solar panels They are OK not great
1) They only produce power during the day about 4 -7 hours depending on the season at best for those that work during those hours out of home and kids are at school, it doesn't help if you have an EV as a few of my friends do they take it to work and it doesn't get charged from solar
2) they work well for retirees who use less power and use it while generating i.e. during the day and those who work from home it helps
3) Batteries in Australia are expen
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Re: Solar power your home (Score:2)
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Residential solar panels on preexisting housing are twice the cost of grid-scale installations. Although politically popular, they are not a good solution.
Depends on your use case. If what you are after is energy independence or off-grid operation, the extra cost is worth it. Also, it depends on what your actual cost of grid power is after markups and delivery charges and other fees.
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Flammville-3 was budgeted for $3.3B, spent over four times that amount, and was completed a decade behind schedule.
French nuclear economics is based on getting a good design working, and then quickly cranking out many copies of that design. Now that it has been fifty years since the start of the first design cycle, Flamanville-3 was the first build of a new design. Now taht its bugs have been ironed out, it will be the start of the next build cycle.
Build nuclear reactors like airplanes, not like airports.
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I'm starting to think that the "solar panels only!!!" PR has been pushed by the fossil lobby. Realizing that they have lost the battle pretending that climate change isn't real, the next step was to lure the hippies into supporting a plan that is guaranteed to fail, so they can blame the environmental movement once the grid collapses. This is especially apparent now as we have just passed the winter solstice when solar generation is minimal. Germany is already suffering from this, they just had multiple wee
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cause not everybody gets sunshine 24/7 all year around, in fact, solar production for central/north europe is really minimal for half of the year
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This has nothing to do with environmentalists or regulation. The industry is not geared up to build nuclear power plants anymore. There's a lack of experts, there's a lack of construction workers, there's a lack of virtually everything required to build projects like that. Even raw materials are in short supply.
This will also continue unless many countries go all in on nuclear at the same time. An industry doesn't get built because one country builds one reactor.
Because solar works so well at night... (Score:2)
... and in northern winters.
Presumably you've had solar installed? Oh wait, from your tone I reckon you're about 15 and still live at home. Have mum and dad installed it? I'll wait.
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Nuclear is great but the environmentalists have ass-fucked it with mountains of regulation.
Not really. If environmental lobbies were so strong we wouldn't be 'celebrating' record usage of coal. In reality, the environmental lobby is, in most countries outside Germany, quite weak. Look at the UK - environmental concerns long dealt with but construction behind schedule and over budget too. Or Finland or several other places.
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In reality, the environmental lobby is, in most countries outside Germany, quite weak. Look at the UK - environmental concerns long dealt with but construction behind schedule and over budget too.
How is the environmental lobby strong in Germany: the electricity mix there has about 2x the carbon per kwh as the UK.
on time and on schedule (Score:2)
"...about the French nuclear industry's ability to build reactors on time and on schedule."
I guess they wanted to say "on time and in budget".
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No one to fire.
It was planned like that.
And if you cancel a project which you need in the middle of construction: who is fulfilling your needs, and how - ever?
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Back in the 60's project managers with expert domain experience mostly got things right.
PRINCE was born from a series of high-profile project-management failures in the 1960s. Project delays is pretty typical and has been pretty much forever. The medieval equivalent to a nuclear plant was building cathedrals, and they were basically never on time or budget.
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Expensive but Necessary (Score:4, Insightful)
I have serious doubts about the reliability of wind and solar alone along with batteries. You can get to 60-80% of capacity with renewables but that last 20% is way more expensive. We'll still need at least some nuclear for baseload, especially in the winter.
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Electrical demand isn't constant throughout the day, and nuclear power isn't cost effective at load following [slashdot.org], so even nuclear needs some other form of dispatchable power. France covers the last 20% with hydro and fossil fuels, [rte-france.com] but full decarbonization will require more grid energy storage.
Synonymous with nuclear construction (Score:3, Insightful)
Since construction started in ____, its budget — excluding finance costs — has quadrupled to an estimated €__.__ billion
There's also little talk of additional costs of running a nuclear power station, you know, like fomenting civil unrest & conflict in countries that supply uranium ore in sub-Saharan Africa (the Sahel) in order to get lower prices, storage & processing of nuclear waste for the foreseeable future, & the cost of decommissioning nuclear power stations once the radiation has made them unsafe to operate any more.
Yeah, "cheap" electricity.
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" like fomenting civil unrest & conflict in countries that supply uranium ore in sub-Saharan Africa"
You might want to check out what oil wealth (well, for the few) has done to Nigeria.
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Lightly higer price (Score:1)
Estimated to €19.1 billion (build on 17 years).
(from article 9 may 2024 in newspaper https://www.lemonde.fr/les-dec... [lemonde.fr])
"Doubts in the nuclear industry" (Score:1)
That's a cute way of saying that this project caused AREVA to go bankrupt and get absorbed into a state owned energy utility as part of a government bailout.
Why doesn't everyone recycle their nuclear waste? (Score:1)
Why doesn't everyone recycle their nuclear waste, like the French?
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Why doesn't everyone recycle their nuclear waste, like the French?
Because it increases their costs 2-4x.
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Did you just prove that engineering efficiency is dominated by economic efficiency? What if economic theories about the zero-sum nature of money are fables and we could have our nuclear cake without the waste problem?
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Because it increases their costs 2-4x.
Most people do... I think the US is the odd one out here.
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The USA is indeed the odd one out there, but not quite for the reason you think. Most people actually don't. Currently only countries that have nuclear weapons do reprocessing - except the USA.
France Loves Nuclear Power So Much... (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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And everyone in France died of radiation poisoning (Score:2)
Tonight they're going to party... (Score:2)