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

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

#141

Post by belorn »

jhayward wrote: post #75
Reedx wrote: post #19

> The saddest part of this story is that there is no new renewable plant being built overnight to replace Fessenheim. It will be replaced almost entirely by fossil fuels. > It’s worth noting that, as Fessenheim closes, Germany is commissioning a new coal-fired power plant, in Datteln Exactly. Why are so many people ignoring what happens in step 2? When nuclear is shut down, it gets replaced with something worse. Ofte…

> When nuclear is shut down, it gets replaced with something worse. Often coal! The implication that this is what happened in Germany is misinformation. None of the energy production of retired nuclear plants in Germany was replaced by coal. Renewable energy replaced the vast majority of it over the last 10 years, and coal use is down by 50% in that period.

I wish government bundled nuclear dismantling with similar goals for fossil fuels. They should add in the phase-out that by 2030, all fossil and nuclear plants will be phased out. No new fossil fueled plants should be allowed to be built.

It would be really enjoyable to see how they would solve that while still keeping an functional energy grid (buying fossil generated power from neighbors during bad weather would be cheating), and the scientific progress from such attempt would benefit the world greatly.

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

#142

Post by orwin »

onli wrote: post #123
orwin wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hey, that's unnecessary. I admit that my comment was written in haste and is not properly backed up and can't be properly backed up, not like that. It's a melange of several points, not well distilled. But the essence goes like: 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…

1. ASN inspectors reports are not edited by their president or directors (commissaires). The whole structure is based on engineers. Inspectors are strictly engineers.

2. Most nuclear engineer are from Grenoble/Saint-etienne or Lyon. Some are from polytech (so Paris) but this is rare.

3. If you say so. It might conflict with greepeace's vision of ecology, but not with the IPCC's and for multiple reasons, i think i would rather follow scientists than ideologists. I also stopped donating to greenpeace around 2015 so i might be biased.

4. Way more complex than that, but true.

I think you should read ASN documentation before evaluating them as untrustworthy. I can find a lot of untrustworthy pro-nuclear sources. Those are not ran by engineers. Also nuclear power is a distraction until we fixed our real ecological issue, as are renewable power sources.

I don't care if we stop nuclear power in 2080 if we successfully limit the average warming to 2°C (hint: hope for a silver bullet).

I'm ready do donate everything i have (not that much) to any anti-nuclear association that explain to me how to effectively reduce our CO2 emission by 4% a year until 2050 (compounds are hard but this is the number i got) while focusing on replacing nuclear plant by solar panels and wind turbines. Really. Covid will be between 2 and 9% for 2020 [0] so i'm waiting for solutions for the following years.

Wait! i have multiples solutions. Give every french household using oil or gas a heatpump. Forbid new individual cars sold in France to weight more than a metric ton. Put a carbon tax (start with a small amount 10k€/ton) on transportation instead of a 20% VAT. Not on car gas, on the product directly. This will kill most plane fret, but honestly? i don't care. Forbid plane if the trip can be made in less than 4 hour by train (i think they recently did this, good).

But closing a nuclear plant to replace it by gas (and coal, even if temporary) is easier. Gazprom and Total really have more hitting power.

[0]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0797-x

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

#143

Post by msla »

Klinky wrote: post #135
jjoonathan wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This would be great if CO2 was the only waste product of a nuclear plant, but it's not. You not only needed to keep building plants, but also designate proper waste storage sites, which are still up in the air to this day, and some sites like Hanford are utter ecological disasters. It also did not help that the 70s ended with the Three-Mile Island disaster and serious construction flaws being found at Trojan. Then in…

Why do people always forget that coal plants spew radiation into the environment?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

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

#144

Post by dv_dt »

__s wrote: post #109
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 unsuccessful projects, which while we should learn from them, shouldn't be the anecdotes to condemn a technology Here's a retrospective, ie an attempt at looking at how things have actually played out compared to projections we're often fed, https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/downloads/retrospective-be... (Chapter 5 of pdf is what looks into your question) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricit…

The Lazard reports mentioned in your second link are a nice read. They look forward at estimated lifetime costs of power that might be projects started today.

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019/

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

#145

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

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…

Fessenheim nearly got out of control in 2016 when water flooded electrical equipment racks. Control of of the reactor rods was interrupted, core temperature was rising uncontrollably. Letting the control rods fall into the core via gravity didn't work anymore either. They had to emergency flood the core with Boron, which luckily worked, the first time this has happened in a western european power reactor.

They assigned the incident level 1, the lowest one, in order to cover it up.

France has huge power demands in cold weather due to badly isolated houses heated with electricity. The power grid is already unstable, France cannot afford to loose much generator power, as they have nothing to replace it with - very few renewables.

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

#146

Post by 7952 »

onli wrote: post #46
Reedx wrote: post #19

> The saddest part of this story is that there is no new renewable plant being built overnight to replace Fessenheim. It will be replaced almost entirely by fossil fuels. > It’s worth noting that, as Fessenheim closes, Germany is commissioning a new coal-fired power plant, in Datteln Exactly. Why are so many people ignoring what happens in step 2? When nuclear is shut down, it gets replaced with something worse. Ofte…

Nuclear is not safer than renewables. These statistics are false, they do not include everything involved with running the plants and gathering the ressources. They get repeated every time in these threads here and are refuted every time. Your first article is provided by a pro nuclear propaganda association. It's almost certainly also false. And ignores conveniently how much more unrecycable nuclear waste France was…

In terms of directly attributable deaths they are probably pretty similar. Both are good enough compared to coal.

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

#147

Post by onli »

retrac wrote: post #139
onli wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even if it is a full order of magnitude larger, it still compares quite favourably to fossil fuels.

Right, that's part of what I was citing. But the people vehemently opposing nuclear power plants, like me, are generally also opposing fossil fuels. So that doesn't change anything.

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

#148

Post by didibus »

onli wrote: post #94
twic wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statistics i've seen do include resource extraction (which is pretty safe for nuclear power, because you need so little fuel). I have not seen them refuted on HN. I would be interested to see a refutation - and if a refutation is posted every time, it should be easy for you to find.

I'm hesitant to argue more than I already did against that straw man argument. It's just a propaganda talking point, it's not actually an argument pro nuclear energy. And it's indecent. But if you are honestly interested, read the greenpeace criticism of these studies to understand how the statistic might be false and how it can be disputed, https://wayback.archive-it.org/9650/20200415093014/http://p3... . Sure, it's…

Your article seems to show that Nuclear is the least deadly of all energies? Am I misreading?

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

#149

Post by ceejayoz »

msla wrote: post #143
Klinky wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be great if CO2 was the only waste product of a nuclear plant, but it's not. You not only needed to keep building plants, but also designate proper waste storage sites, which are still up in the air to this day, and some sites like Hanford are utter ecological disasters. It also did not help that the 70s ended with the Three-Mile Island disaster and serious construction flaws being found at Trojan. Then in…

Why do people always forget that coal plants spew radiation into the environment? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

There's a significant difference between diffuse radioactivity and the sort of waste nuclear plants put out, though. In both impact on humans, and mitigation.

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

#150

Post by 7952 »

JustFinishedBSG wrote: post #136
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…

> Essentially, something like a nuclear plant is hard to ramp/up down with changing grid demands, This is untrue, we regularly modulate nuclear plants from 10 to 100% in a space of hours

But it isn't really financially optimal to do that. The marginal cost of an extra MWh is trivial. The staff and capital costs are going to be mostly the same regardless of output. So it makes sense to run it as much as possible. In that sense it is very similar to solar and wind. In comparison a gas plant is spending a lot of money on fuel and will shut down to save money as prices drop.

Also, the grid needs much faster reaction than modulating demand over hours. If a large generator fails (which sometimes happens to nuclear plants) you need 1GW in a few seconds.

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