121–130 of 256 posts
Omitted in the article: the reason why a gas plant (and not coal as written in the article) is picking up the load is because the french nuclear industry is years behind schedule for putting online the Flamanville EPR. The original political deal was putting online the EPR then closing Fessenheim, partly to avoid going over the legal limit for nuclear power capacity set by "PPE" law in France. According to wikipedia…
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> There's always a lot of talk about renewables It's odd to pretend that renewables are all talk when at the moment I'm writing this France's power grid is 28% renewable[1]. And France still has lots of opportunities to expand, both solar and wind. You'd think with >4000km of coast line there'd be lots of space for offshore wind. [1] https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/FR and 60% nuclear, but the point still stands
The bulk of French renewable is hydro, which is not going to grow, and has been there for ages. It's actually a very good complement to nuclear plants. It's disingenuous to point at 28% renewables as if it's a sudden victory of good wind and solar against bad old nuclear. Particularly when we know that gas power plants will be built to partially replace Fessenheim.
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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…
This is one convenient lie. I will just criticize the "pro-nuclear propaganda" bit and ignore the other anti-elite stuff about the engineering schools, after all "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." What is called in France ENR (new renewable energies, basically solar and wind power) are backed by gaz companies, and now even French oil companies (Total) have a hand in the ga…
1. France has a very powerful elite system and one specific route to get there (I'm not saying the engineering schools are that way). That's not controversial, that's just how it is.
2. This leads to a specific orthodoxy, symptomatic could be the centralism that leads to a strong centralization of power in Paris.
3. At the same time there is a very strong pro-nuclear sentiment that gets instilled into engineering students (conflicting and in context with a recent strong popularity of ecology), whatever mechanism specifically is responsible for that.
4. And France has (and even more so: had) a pro-nuclear government, linked to the enterprises running the power plants.
I'm not saying the engineers are incapable or specifically corrupt and to distrust your doctor, thanks you very much for the cancer thing, but that in this situation it is reasonable to have some distrust for security assessments of nuclear power plants in France.
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If we (US) hadn't stopped building nuclear in the 80s, and had simply kept building at the same rate, our grid would be (near) zero carbon today . Not several decades from now if we hustle our asses off, today . But that's not what happened. The anti-nuclear team won and we collectively made the responsible decision to fill our atmosphere with CO2 instead. Yay?
Yes, that's the a common talking point that is false, "Nuclear energy does not produce CO2, or almost none". But you only see that it is false if you look at complete lifecycle analysis of building the plants, running the plants, mining and transporting the uranium, transportintg the waste, dismantling the plant etc. You can try to argue that the US would have less carbon emissions than today - something I'm inclined…
Tech gCO2/kWh
Coal 920
Gas 490
Solar-Util 48
Solar-Roof 41
Solar-Conc 27
Geothermal 38
Hydro 24
Wind-Offshore 12
Nuclear 12 Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of your arguments might be correct, and none of them matter to public opinion and politics. Maybe if they were less transparent, there would have been less political pressure from Germany... And I totally agree this is as dumb as it gets.
The fact that we know we can rank French nuclear plants by their transparency level is already seriously screwed up.
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Sadly there is no uranium in France.
That's a false statement. There's enough uranium in France - it's just not cheap uranium and open pit mines in Africa are more economical. Additionally, France never had to even prospect for uranium ore, as incidentally many of their former colonies had plenty of potential for cheap open pit mining using cheap local workers.... For reference, just a few hundred kilometres east of their border, East Germany was the th…
> Additionally, France never had to even prospect for uranium ore
But this is false. (There is no english link sorry for that). https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/UraMin
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Yes, that's the a common talking point that is false, "Nuclear energy does not produce CO2, or almost none". But you only see that it is false if you look at complete lifecycle analysis of building the plants, running the plants, mining and transporting the uranium, transportintg the waste, dismantling the plant etc. You can try to argue that the US would have less carbon emissions than today - something I'm inclined…
Did you even glance at the numbers? Tech gCO2/kWh Coal 920 Gas 490 Solar-Util 48 Solar-Roof 41 Solar-Conc 27 Geothermal 38 Hydro 24 Wind-Offshore 12 Nuclear 12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emis...
But you are right, I shouldn't have made it sound as if no one produced such numbers.
I can't find much information about the "Sustainability Times". But I'm somewhat certain it's a lobbying effort by the French nuclear industry. Almost every article seems to come around to saying "and nuclear power would be great", even when it starts with some solar power invention.
But you can also see that this is not just that, there is also scientifics who work on responsible sourcing of rare earth, sustainable agricultural tech. This is probably once agian a science-based newspaper that will never work. I've learn that if you want people to care about climate change, just don't talk about nuclear energy
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Would be cool if you sourced your statements like the article did. Like "we don't know what to do with it" which is a lie.
As someone in another field, well what do we do with nuclear waste? My guess is bury it somewhere else.
> The Nuclear Safety Authority has confirmed that the rock has not moved for several million years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meuse/Haute_Marne_Underground_...
Also, I'm not in the field, i just like to inform myself before having an opinon. Too many times there is lies spread about nuclear facilities.
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Did you even glance at the numbers? Tech gCO2/kWh Coal 920 Gas 490 Solar-Util 48 Solar-Roof 41 Solar-Conc 27 Geothermal 38 Hydro 24 Wind-Offshore 12 Nuclear 12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emis...
It's my understanding that these numbers are not undisputed. Even https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1530-9290... lets enough opportunity to have that calculation be changed, though there does not seem to be any doubt that the emissions are minimal compared to fossil fuels. But that's not a point I made. But you are right, I shouldn't have made it sound as if no one produced such numbers.