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France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

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Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#151

Post by anonporridge »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #15
HideousKojima wrote: post #10

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…

A lot of environmentalists are really just ecofascists/terrorists who would rather see the wholesale destruction of advanced civilization than make pragmatic compromises, in effect if not intent.

They occupy an incredibly infantile frame that we should be less accommodating towards if we actually want an interesting collective future.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#152

Post by prawn »

hindsightbias wrote: post #140
Teknoman117 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

We have high home-solar uptake here in Australia, but the problem on the whole is that you then have a grid needing to cater for peak load without having the regular income to make it financial. Makes for a bit of a death spiral. They need higher prices to cover grid costs, which drives more people to put on solar, and so on.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#153

Post by freeflight »

323 wrote: post #16
rdtsc wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?" A cynical person might even imagine French infiltrators behind the scenes supporting anti-nuclear sentiments in neighboring countries in order to eventually sell them electricity. Energy independence and energy costs have started wars before, so it would just be pocket c…

Or Russian infiltrators. Isn't it funny how after deciding to get rid of nuclear reactors Germany suddenly realized that it needs to build a gas pipeline to Russia to cover it's energy needs. The former German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder is now chairman of Russian energy company Rosneft, and was a strong advocate of the Nord Stream pipeline project.

> Or Russian infiltrators. Isn't it funny how after deciding to get rid of nuclear reactors Germany suddenly realized that it needs to build a gas pipeline to Russia to cover it's energy needs.

It's not funny, it's bluntly wrong.

The German nuclear phase-out was precedented by the EEG, the first green electricity feed-in tariff scheme in the world [0]. It was part of the Energiekonsensgespräche that went on in the 90s, and ultimately resulted in ratifying the nuclear phase-out in 2002 [1] where nuclear would be replaced with renewables subsidized trough the EEG.

It's particularly wrong in the context of Germany using most of its gas not for electricity production, but rather for industrial and chemical production, and household utilities, only 14% of German gas is used for electricity generation [2].

Nuclear fission reactors would do nothing for that, they don't help with high temperature smelting were gases need to be injected, as it's for exampled needed for metal alloys that go into all those cars Germany manufactures.

They only way nuclear fission could help there is by using nuclear energy to electrolyze hydrogen, and use that as natural gas replacement. But renewables can very much do the same, without creating very complicated waste, while also fixing what's currently holding renewables back the most; Storage [3]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Source...

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomkonsens

[2] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/37985/umfrage...

[3] https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/dutch-pin-hopes...

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#154

Post by voz_ »

The idea of a power source that, when failed, can wipe out a significant amount of live-able land, large swaths of population, irradiate rivers, etc, seems insane. The risk reward factor just does not seem to be there.

Sure there are redundancies.

Sure there are threat models.

However, everything fails. Mistakes happen, black swan events occur. What is the calculus here? How can it ever be made in good faith?

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#155

Post by ochoseis »

HideousKojima wrote: post #10
socialdemocrat wrote: post #7

I am skeptical to current nuclear power, would have liked Molten Salt Reactors instead. However I see leaders having to do something. Environmentalists are blocking construction of more wind power, and crisis with Russia makes gas less accessible. France has a relatively good track record on nuclear power. They may pull this off. 2035 is a really long time to wait for new power to the grid though.

>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…

At some point you begin to wonder if environmentalists like this are indeed environmentalists?

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#156

Post by kuang_eleven »

voz_ wrote: post #154

The idea of a power source that, when failed, can wipe out a significant amount of live-able land, large swaths of population, irradiate rivers, etc, seems insane. The risk reward factor just does not seem to be there. Sure there are redundancies. Sure there are threat models. However, everything fails. Mistakes happen, black swan events occur. What is the calculus here? How can it ever be made in good faith?

I find the truth to be quite the opposite; nuclear opponents vastly overstate risks and don't consider externalities from other power sources. For example, coal power plants largely don't have a scary, infrequent failure mode, but they cause far more deaths per kW generated than nuclear from ongoing emissions and more frequent lower scale events.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#157

Post by anonporridge »

polotics wrote: post #4
rdtsc wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?" A cynical person might even imagine French infiltrators behind the scenes supporting anti-nuclear sentiments in neighboring countries in order to eventually sell them electricity. Energy independence and energy costs have started wars before, so it would just be pocket c…

The word you're looking for is "paranoid", not cynical I think. Reasonably, to drop CO2 emissions by 5% each year, ie. to have a change of keeping climate drift below 2°C avg, these reactors won't even be enough for French energy needs...

"Only the paranoid survive."

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#158

Post by ch4s3 »

XorNot wrote: post #135
ch4s3 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I’m never really convinced of that the puritans were so profoundly influential on modern American habits. They were a relatively small group relative to the whole effort of colonization and almost everyone else thought they were crazy. Even their own children, as evidenced by the Half Way Compromise.

Notwithstanding I see that kind of “Puritanism” among European X-RAY activists. There’s something certainty very human about it, but I think people often reach for irrational, exuberant religiosity during confusing and difficult times.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#159

Post by 988747 »

Gwypaas wrote: post #131
KptMarchewa wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> Higher latitudes, excluding inside the polar vortex, tends to have larger amount of wind in the winter.

"Larger amount of wind" still means at most 3-4 days of decent wind per month, that has been my experience living in Poland. There are some windy regions like the Baltic Sea coast, or Tatra mountains in the south, but that's still not enough.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#160

Post by p1mrx »

voz_ wrote: post #154

The idea of a power source that, when failed, can wipe out a significant amount of live-able land, large swaths of population, irradiate rivers, etc, seems insane. The risk reward factor just does not seem to be there. Sure there are redundancies. Sure there are threat models. However, everything fails. Mistakes happen, black swan events occur. What is the calculus here? How can it ever be made in good faith?

Fossil fuels are already wiping out a significant amount of livable land, through normal operation.

We need to invest in carbon-free energy sources that won't cause blackouts at the whim of the weather. Reaching 100% decarbonization via wind/solar will be very difficult because it requires overbuilding, days to weeks of storage, and transmission upgrades.

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