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Why is the Fessenheim 2 nuclear power plant closing in France?

sustainability-times.com

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Re: Why is the Fessenheim 2 nuclear power plant closing in France?

#61

Post by revax »

_ph_ wrote: post #34
_iyig wrote: post #16

Reminds me of the German government’s decision, made in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, to phase out all German nuclear power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out An immediate effect of this decision was to increase Germany’s reliance on fossil fuels, including “brown coal” which is strip-mined in an extraordinarily environmentally-destructive process. Another effect was to increase the German g…

The German grid does not rely on nuclear power from France. Germany is a net exporter. Of course, with an European electricity network, there is a lot of electricity moved around every day, often reversing directions in a few hours, depending on local needs and production.

It is overall a net exporter but in winter when there is no wind, Germany rely more on its neighborhood.

Average are misleading.

Re: Why is the Fessenheim 2 nuclear power plant closing in France?

#62

Post by FlyMoreRockets »

joss82 wrote: post #43
dv_dt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's moving slow, but France does have planning working through how to manage nuclear going forward. Replacment with renewables as studied by the French gov't seems not only promising but cost effective. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-10/french-po...

This article is misleading. You can NOT replace nuclear with wind and solar. Because you can't choose when the sun shines and when the wind blows. Hydro in France is already built-up everywhere it was feasible. There are no more spots to build meaningful hydro power capacity. Too bad since hydro is the only renewable that can really replace the nuclear power plants.

> Because you can't choose when the sun shines and when the wind blows.

This is a terrible argument. There is always some place on the grid where the wind is blowing and (during the day) the sun is shining.

Re: Why is the Fessenheim 2 nuclear power plant closing in France?

#63

Post by mlyle »

WilTimSon wrote: post #55
throwaway43234 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you trust the service with the statuspage that is 100% green for all of history or the one that reports the occasional degradation?

Reporting accidents isn't the issue. It's having them on the regular and being past the standard operational period that worries me. Not sure why that's contentious.

In an ideal world, you have your threshold for "incident" set low enough that you have a lot of them. Catching more of the distribution of problems let you increase the level of safety.

Re: Why is the Fessenheim 2 nuclear power plant closing in France?

#65

Post by seszett »

onli wrote: post #41
fcantournet wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a independent national authority (ASN ~ Nuclear Safety Authority) which is tasked to assess the security of all nuclear power plants and certifies them for periods of 10y. The plant that is being closed was certified by the ASN. The 40y lifespan was the MINIMUM certified lifespan of the power plant. It could very well run for another 40y. These kinds of equipment are modernised every 10 years during the shudo…

You have a very focused elite building system in which the big universities creating the future members of the elite are heavily financed and influenced by pro-nuclear organizations. That goes especially for politicans, but includes engineers. The pro-nuclear propaganda repeated by the people that go through this is frightening, many of them are completely brainwashed. In no way can the ASN be really independent, as…

> the big universities creating the future members of the elite are heavily financed and influenced by pro-nuclear organizations

Do you have any source for that? I'd be interested, although I find it difficult to believe since those "big universities", assuming you are talking about ENA and maybe Polytechnique, are public and very largely funded by taxes rather than private organizations.

Re: Why is the Fessenheim 2 nuclear power plant closing in France?

#66

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

exabrial wrote: post #24

> Put differently, in 2019 Fessenheim Unit 1 and 2 generated more electricity than all the solar panels in France combined I learned a term recently called "base load supply". Essentially, something like a nuclear plant is hard to ramp/up down with changing grid demands, but it great at steady-state operation and can run like that for years. This takes care of the minimum load placed on the grid which is fairly predi…

Nuclear energy is not required to cover all our energy needs, though: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259033221...

Re: Why is the Fessenheim 2 nuclear power plant closing in France?

#67

Post by steeve »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #47
Mirioron wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These stories are always very nice and the plants cost effective, but are they true? Pakistan had a 100MW solar powerplant built for them. It actually ended up producing 18MW and required extensive amounts of water to clean the dust off of the panels.[0] I'm sure they were also told that renewables are cheap and will be great, but somehow everyone missed this. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaid-e-Azam_Solar_Park

There will be failures on the way to a fully renewable powered grid. India just turned up a 750MW facility successfully [1]. 70% of Texas coal plants are at risk of decommissioning as early as 2022 due to the amount of solar generation in the pipeline [2]. Spain is years ahead of schedule in coal decommissioning due to low cost renewables and pumped hydro storage capabilities being developed [3]. The UK is rapidly de…

"India just turned up a 750MW facility successfully"

That number doesn't say much, since the actual output will be a small percentage of that (15-20%).

Re: Why is the Fessenheim 2 nuclear power plant closing in France?

#68

Post by seszett »

FlyMoreRockets wrote: post #62
joss82 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is misleading. You can NOT replace nuclear with wind and solar. Because you can't choose when the sun shines and when the wind blows. Hydro in France is already built-up everywhere it was feasible. There are no more spots to build meaningful hydro power capacity. Too bad since hydro is the only renewable that can really replace the nuclear power plants.

> Because you can't choose when the sun shines and when the wind blows. This is a terrible argument. There is always some place on the grid where the wind is blowing and (during the day) the sun is shining.

That's far from guaranteed. It's very possible to have little wind over a large area, larger than France even, during the night.

Re: Why is the Fessenheim 2 nuclear power plant closing in France?

#69

Post by Nodraak »

freeflight wrote: post #12

It's weird of the article gives plenty of direct citations from nuclear operators, while at the same time acting like French 40+ year old fission tech doesn't have any issues [0] or sustainability problems, and how the French could dare to shut down one of their first reactors. Particularly in the context that most discussions surrounding nuclear fission power generation lead with "modern designs and reactors being s…

> Afaik originally the life-span for most reactors of that kind was 40 years

That's a lie, or at least an unprecise statement, mostly shared by the anti-nuclear who are looking for a reason to close reactors.

In France, reactors were designed to work for 40 without any major checkup ; and after 40 years, without any decommission deadline planned in advance, as long the "visite décennale" (in-depth inspection every 10 years) does not discover any major issue. So a reactor can totally work for 60, 70, 80, or even more.

Re: Why is the Fessenheim 2 nuclear power plant closing in France?

#70

Post by mlyle »

steeve wrote: post #42
exabrial wrote: post #24

> Put differently, in 2019 Fessenheim Unit 1 and 2 generated more electricity than all the solar panels in France combined I learned a term recently called "base load supply". Essentially, something like a nuclear plant is hard to ramp/up down with changing grid demands, but it great at steady-state operation and can run like that for years. This takes care of the minimum load placed on the grid which is fairly predi…

Actually, in France, nuclear has to give way to renewables. And because they are intermittent, has to rapidly ramp up/down. See https://twitter.com/TristanKamin/status/1247460245460443138?...

Renewables and nuclear -both- have the problem that you can't control when you get the generation.

Nuclear wants to be constant-- both because ramping isn't super fast and because you want to recover large capital costs. Renewables ... produce varying amounts pseudo-periodically and unpredictably, which is even worse. Neither matches conventionally to demand.

The only way around this is technologies that store (hydroelectric, batteries, power-to-gas-to-power, solar thermal) or burning fossil fuels to supplement. Overprovisioning is also necessary: it takes a lot less storage / peaker plants / etc to meet 99th percentile demand with 150% of required generation capacity than 101%.

Renewables and nuclear do complement each other a little bit in reducing volatility.

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