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France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

politico.eu

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Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#131
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Australia is getting close. [1] Give it a year or two. > Sometimes the sun does shine and the wind does blow. That’s most of the time in South Australia, apparently. The average share of wind and solar during October was 72%. For 29 out of 31 days, 100% of the power used in South Australia (SA) was renewable. The sky didn’t fall, the grid didn’t collapse, and the apocalypse is not nigh. [1]: https://cleantechni…

Looks like Australia has relatively stable amount of sunshine during whole year. In Poland, in December there's less than one hour in a day.

It's the "Electric cars will never work until I can drive across the country on one charge" argument all over that line of reasoning.

Different areas will require different trade-offs. Higher latitudes, excluding inside the polar vortex, tends to have larger amount of wind in the winter.

Currently storage does not make sense because the cheapest store of energy is a smart consumer. It will be very interesting to see if actual storage outside of governmental emergency backups will ever be needed in wind heavy deployments.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#132
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

This has nothing to do with nuclear power plants.

Nothing in common? Lets see. Nuclear power plants and weapons were supported and approved by the same president, regulated by the same governments, with the same members from the same parties, sharing the same feedback and moving in the same direction as the politics requested

If you look under the masks of the people sharing the final responsibility you will see the face of the president in all cases. All nuclear things are intertwined, in the same way as Facebook and Instagram are different, but anything affecting one of them, will instantly spread and change the other.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#133
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes wonder if oil and gas companies even need lobbying: Environmentalists are the number one threat to any green initiative. If they could all agree on one thing just for once.

Likely Shell is funding these “environmentalist groups” in what is basically the corporate version of shitposting. :)

Remember the term "carbon footprint" was popularized by BP[1] specifically as an effort to distract from efforts at systemic regulation that might effect corporations by making CO2 seem like an individual moral concern.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint#Origin_of_the...

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#134

I keep hearing from people who think nuclear's a bad idea that "France is ramping down its reliance on nuclear power, so what does that tell you?" I wonder whether any will change their minds based on this news.

France is the only country I know that's managed to make nuclear power work. Unfortunately, they haven't been able to export that expertise. Nuclear power plants are vast construction project. The construction and large-engineering industries combined are vastly corrupt in the US (look at the 3 billion dollars planning costs of the unbuilt high speed rail project in California, look at the Big Dig in Boston, etc). In…

Not just France. 60 % of Belgian electricity is generated by nuclear power plants. Unfortunately the green party has decided to shut them down and replace them with gas plants to “save the climate”. Green stupidity knows no boundaries.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#135
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea especially in the US that there is some pre-colonial unspoiled nature that we could preserve or return to seems historically ignorant. Who are you replying to here? Who's argued this?

The point I'm making is that there's a certain type of activist who believes these kinds o things, and they're arguing for things like reduction of per-capita energy use to reduce society's impact on the land based on the idea that there was ever really land here that wasn't actively managed by people. (At least since the glaciers receded) I'm making the case that these neo-malthusians want to protect an imagined env…

A huge chunk of this thinking is ultimately the puritan moral code writ large. US-society in particular believes all good things must somehow involve suffering or sacrifice: so "fixing" environmental damage must involve making a sacrifice, and if it's not a constant one you "feel" then how can it be solution?

This also goes the other way: the sacrifice of the environment or air pollution or waterways of whatever is the obvious price that must be paid for luxury amenities.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#136
post #71

Keep in mind that the presidential election is in 3 months. Macron wants to show he is being pragmatic. Nuclear energy allows to reduce carbon emissions without sacrificing the economy. It's particularly smart in this moment of tension with Russia, as Europe depends a lot on Russian energy. But whether this happens or not remains to be seen.

> Nuclear energy allows to reduce carbon emissions without sacrificing the economy. Only over the course of many decades do they net reduce carbon emissions, at the cost of much higher carbon emissions during the construction phase. Right now we need to be implementing the fastest carbon reductions possible and this does the exact opposite; for the next fifteen years, these plants will be a massive carbon emissions i…

I'd love some sources comparing the carbon emissions from building them, because otherwise I'm a big supporter of nuclear energy. I'd rather go solar/wind/hydro but I think they have some (not all) of the issues you've noted as well.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#137
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of those things can be correct. Without environmentalist pressure, coal would be used indefinitely. And nuclear isn't being built or considered because the environmentalists won't support it. Accordingly they can get positive credit for the first and negative for the second.

Don't kid yourself though - no major party in Australia supports nuclear. The Liberals will say they'll think about it, knowing there's a couple hundred idiots who'll actually believe them and give them a vote while they greenlight Indian-owned coal-miners finishing the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef. Both major parties (Labor and Liberal) have huge donors from coal-mining concerns, as well as union support fr…

Two further points:

NIMBYism would kill nuclear power in Australia stone dead, including NIMBYism in conservative-held rural seats.

New-build coal, nuclear, and gas, is simply economically competitive with new-build renewables in Australia right now absent direct government subsidies - and if anyone is tempted to rabbit on about sun not shining and wind not blowing please go read AEMO's draft 2022 Integrated System Plan before replying.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or some group will stop their construction... I think nuclear doesn't make sense nowadays, but it's hard to disagree that there are many groups working hard to stop it. How you decided it's a conspiracy cabal somewhere eludes me, they are very visible and very loud.

Where there are large profits to be made, detractors seem to have very little effect. Why are these groups so much effective than deforestation, blood diamonds, or child labor groups?

You are asking why those groups can't stop what is mostly illegal activities, but have an impact on ones that are completely dependent on formal government involvement?

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Environmentalists are blocking construction of more wind power Environmentalists really are their own worst enemies. When I was in high school near San Diego about 15 years ago, there was a huge amount of opposition to a solar power project. From environmentalists. There was a solar power plant out in Imperial County and the environmentalists were protesting the high voltage lines that would bring the power into San…

Yeah, that one just boggles my mind. A few huge PV solar projects out in the desert in southern California and Nevada got stalled by environmentalists complaining about increased shading cooling down the desert. At this point, even if solar panels in the desert kill off a few species of lizards, seriously, what's the alternative? More damage will occur if we don't. It needs to be about minimizing total damage, even i…

Massive desert projects are just big subsidies to big corps. Few make money, at least one failed, others get bailouts. We could have all the same capacity cheaper, energy independence by putting more PVs on home roofs.

The hippies are right, the corporate whores are wrong.

https://www.newsdata.com/california_energy_markets/southwest...

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