Exchange electricity prices in France go through the roof • Hacker News Board

Re: Exchange electricity prices in France go through the roof

#51

Post by imtringued » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 6:40 AM UTC

JohnHaugeland wrote: post #34

pydry wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or insurance. If another fukushima strikes it's taxpayers on the hook for the $800 billion cleanup bill. Makes all the propaganda about how safe it truly is ring a bit hollow when they dont pay for their own damn insurance.

The Fukushima cleanup, unique in history and resulting from radically unlikely natural disasters, cost less than half what the fuel it replaced that decade would have This is without considering the cost of climate change or all those prevented deaths

You could have replaced all nuclear power plants with new ones for the cost of the fukushima cleanup.

As always your theoretical modern designs that are safe are useless if you are still running power plants that are older than chernobyl.

Re: Exchange electricity prices in France go through the roof

#52

Post by natmaka » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 6:41 AM UTC

Manuel_D wrote: post #12

Archelaos wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now for some extra fun, overlay this with graphs over CO2 emissions. Some other fun: Overlay this with a graph of nuclear waste production.

France produces ~2kg of nuclear waste per person per year [1]. Most of that waste is recycled into fuel. 1. https://www.orano.group/en/unpacking-nuclear/all-about-radio...

France doesn't recycle nuclear fuel anymore (since 2013). Source: https://www.rtl.fr/actu/debats-societe/nucleaire-que-devienn... AFAIK it may restart around 2029

The waste repository (Cigéo) isn't ready, and nobody knows how much it may cost (maybe up to 35 billions €).

The buffer (La Hague) is nearly saturated. Source: https://www.publicsenat.fr/article/parlementaire/traitement-...

Re: Exchange electricity prices in France go through the roof

#53

Post by natmaka » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 6:49 AM UTC

belorn wrote: post #17

Archelaos wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now for some extra fun, overlay this with graphs over CO2 emissions. Some other fun: Overlay this with a graph of nuclear waste production.

The point of a graph is to illustrate a number that fluctuate and changes over time. Nuclear waste production does not. We could graph how much money Germany is funding the Russian military by buying gas, coal and oil. We could also graph how much radioactive particels get released into the environment through fossil fuel combustion. However both would just correlate directly with how much fossil fuel they consume wh…

Does nuclear relieves this pressure? Doubt so, as France buys a fair part of its uranium to Kazakhstan, which will very probably stop to supply if Putin says just a word.

The US buys 50% of its uranium to them: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exclusive-us-utiliti...

Re: Exchange electricity prices in France go through the roof

#54

Post by natmaka » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 6:56 AM UTC

Archelaos wrote: post #38

merb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well germany uses less gas for energy, but more for heating and overall way way more coal. of course france has less co2 emissions. coal is even worse than gas which favors france by a big margin. in a best of case scenario we would not use either of coal,gas,nuclear oil or any other fossil technology, but we are far from it, but i'm pretty sure europe is closer than most other countries/states/etc.

To put some numbers on the table, in 2018 (I could not find more recent data) the values of CO2 emissions in metric tons per capita were as follows:[1] France 5.0 Germany 9.1 For comparison: India 1.9 EU 8.6 China 8.0 Japan 9.4 Russia 12.1 United States 16.1 Canada 16.1 Australia 16.8 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

Germany is richer (GDP) than France, 20% of its GDP comes from industry (10% in France), and its climate is colder.

Re: Exchange electricity prices in France go through the roof

#55

Post by natmaka » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 7:06 AM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #45

tucosan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the meantime, a barebones crew operates Chernobyl infrastructure, while the sacrophagus was shelled by Russian troops. Europes nuclear power Zaporizhzhia plant is surrounded by Russian troops and sustained damage: > At 11:28pm local time on the 3 March 2022, a column of 10 Russian armored vehicles and two tanks cautiously approached the Power Plant.[18][19][20] The action commenced at 12:48am on the 4 March when U…

Still better than losing half of the biosphere due to climate change.

Could be an argument with nuclear as the sole "source" (way to produce electricity), but there are many other ones.

Re: Exchange electricity prices in France go through the roof

#56

Post by natmaka » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 7:12 AM UTC

merb wrote: post #22

complexworld wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for this information? This is what I found "In 2020, France exported a total of nearly 78 terawatt hours of electricity. Meanwhile, electricity imports to France amounted to nearly 35 terawatt hours in total that year." Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1279015/france-electrici...

nuclear is only useful for base load you cant shutdown a reactor in hours, thats why france imports a lot of gas (the same goes for germany, its the fastest way to scale energy, burn more gas, its even easier than with coal.)

Indeed.

France is by far the leader when it comes to the fraction of electricity produced by nuclear reactors; however it never ever could phase out fossil fuels, nor could or can do it at a realistic cost.

In the following history graph fossil fuels ("Thermique classique", in French) amounts used to produce electricity are represented by red surfaces: https://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/editi...

Re: Exchange electricity prices in France go through the roof

#57

Post by natmaka » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 7:24 AM UTC

rurban wrote: post #3

nuclear vs wind energy maybe. just look at it. which do you think is 30x cheaper? the more interesting question is why the oil and water-energy exporter Norway got so much more expensive domestic energy prizes since it joined the European energy market.

When it comes to production costs renewables (wind included) are cheaper than nuclear: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2020

The gap is growing.

When it comes to complete costs of reliable gridpower an adequately spread-out mix of renewables may also be cheaper. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/180592/european-cooperation-...

Re: Exchange electricity prices in France go through the roof

#58

Post by krageon » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 7:28 AM UTC

JohnHaugeland wrote: post #31

Archelaos wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now for some extra fun, overlay this with graphs over CO2 emissions. Some other fun: Overlay this with a graph of nuclear waste production.

It's stupid to fret about nuclear waste. All plants, worldwide over all human history, for 20% of the power production of the entire planet, 100% green, have produced less than one half of one football field of barrels. We can stop climate change on one field of barrels every 31 years Thanks to mining byproducts, nuclear produces less and lower level radioactive waste than solar or wind Zero humans in history have di…

> less than one half of one football field

This is not a useful metric, except to impress folks that know almost nothing about the field. Even then it is misleading, because the storage requirements are so strenuous that it cannot be assumed to be done well.

> We can stop climate change on one field of barrels every 31 years

Instead, we will have radioactive children in 50 years.

> Zero humans in history have died from nuclear waste

Quite simply a fabrication.

Re: Exchange electricity prices in France go through the roof

#59

Post by tonyedgecombe » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 7:29 AM UTC

marbu wrote: post #9

About 1/2 of nuclear power plants in France are down because of maintenance and/or repairs[1][2]: > France's nuclear fleet has been hit by unprecedented outages this winter with half of its 56 reactors currently unavailable. This is happening in a country where most people use electric heating[3] while the temperatures dropped a bit recently (minimal temperatures are mostly below zero centigrade, while max. doesn't g…

Yet another reason that nuclear isn't the panacea it is presented as here.

Re: Exchange electricity prices in France go through the roof

#60

Post by krageon » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 7:34 AM UTC

JohnHaugeland wrote: post #34

pydry wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or insurance. If another fukushima strikes it's taxpayers on the hook for the $800 billion cleanup bill. Makes all the propaganda about how safe it truly is ring a bit hollow when they dont pay for their own damn insurance.

The Fukushima cleanup, unique in history and resulting from radically unlikely natural disasters, cost less than half what the fuel it replaced that decade would have This is without considering the cost of climate change or all those prevented deaths

> radically unlikely

It's an island nation, and we're calling a tsunami "radically unlikely"? Given the time frames involved in cleaning up an event like what happened in Fukushima, once every 100 years is not very unlikely.