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Nuclear Power in France

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Re: Nuclear Power in France

#161

Post by lkbm »

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #19
redm wrote: post #2

"Government policy is to reduce this to 50% by 2035." I'm no expert on Nuclear power but it seems to me were going in the wrong direction. At a time when we're investing so much money in other fuels, we could be investing that in better nuclear power, like Small Modular Reactors [1], Sodium Cooled Fission, Small Pellet reactors, etc. [2] [1] https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-sm... [2] https://…

Nuclear is always touted as such a good idea on this site, but I want to take the opposite stance. - Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. - Nuclear waste is difficult t…

I agree with you that we should be pursuing wind and solar at this point, but this isn't because it's a better solution technologically. Nuclear is still slightly better, IMO. It's just politically a non-starter, mostly due to the incorrect way humans assess risk, and I think this is an example of that:

> If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable.

We've been using nuclear power for over sixty years, and the most catastrophic nuclear plant failure killed ~4,000 people[0]. Worst incident in the US was Three-Mile Island with 0 deaths. Coal has been killing many more than that in the US alone annually for decades, though we may finally be below that count[1]. Of course, this is before considering the effects of climate change.

It's akin to how air crashes get our attention, while we ignore the car accidents that kill 1000 as many people. Air pollution deaths are even less visible.

At this point, wind and solar are still slightly behind nuclear as a technologically-viable solution (in my amateur view), but because they can still iterate, I think they'll probably surpass it soon. That said, a lot of us are still bitter that we could have converted to a clean, carbon-neutral grid in the 1970s (Nixon proposed doing this!) and the politics of bad risk analysis (and incumbent coal interests) killed it.

Solar+wind have the benefit of political support/momentum. I think their biggest political challenge is in building out high-voltage transmission lines across land owned by hundreds of different entities (and that that keep burning down California because maintaining them properly is expensive). So yeah, I'm for us going all-in on them. However, them saving is is a fantasy, and if we're in fantasy land, why not entertain the fantasy of us using nuclear instead? :-)

(Or better yet, why not both?)

[0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190725-will-we-ever-kno...

[1] https://www.catf.us/work/power-plants/coal-pollution/

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#162

Post by Manuel_D »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #151
Manuel_D wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. We test for uranium contamination of water. There's actually a lot of areas where naturally occurring uranium puts it above safe concentrations and it has to be filtered out. This is the case in much of California, the Rockies that feed into this area's water supply naturally had high uranium concentration [1]. Given that we already test and treat water she to naturally occurring uranium I'm not too conce…

So the testing will then also magically clean the water if it gets contaminated? Sure, if Flint MI is our baseline for acceptable living standards this is fine.

Yes, removing uranium from water supplies is not much different than removing other heavy metals like lead. This isn't particular hard, debacles like Flint are newsworthy because it's something most water services do successfully.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#163

Post by masklinn »

oezi wrote: post #123
Ericson2314 wrote: post #24

Japan is turning the nukes back on, France with the Eastern Europeans is taking on Germany's reckless move https://www.euronews.com/2021/10/11/led-by-france-10-eu-coun... . The current energy crunch is demonstrating how "renewables now, nukes of off now, batteries later" is irresponsible both environmentally and politically, I hope it's a turning point. At the vary least, turning off the nukes is a reward one earns a…

Two counterpoints: - Isn't the current gas shortage just Putin trying to ram through Nordstream 2? - Isn't it great to have high prices fossil energy sources to drive renewable investment and stop wasteful use of fossils?

> Two counterpoints:

> - Isn't the current gas shortage just Putin trying to ram through Nordstream 2?

Is "fossil fuels are a geopolitical weakness" really a counterpoint to "fossil fuels are kinda shit"?

And that geopolitical weakness is exactly why france built lots of nukes in the first place, it was not ecological (though that's a nice side-effect), it was for energy and geopolitical independence, and though it fails somewhat in that uranium ore still needs to be procured, it's much easier to stockpile uranium ore than fossil fuels, and the available sources are much more varied: the main known reserves are in Australia, Kazakhstan, Canada, Namibia, South Africa.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#164

Post by therealdrag0 »

logicalmonster wrote: post #25

> However, 58% thought that nuclear power caused climate change while only 46% thought that coal burning did so This raises some interesting thoughts about the nature and importance of democracy.

Maybe the deepest point is that if the voters are ignorant about this they can't be trusted on anything.

But a shallow perhaps more practical take away is that voters shouldn't be asked about implementation details, only values.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#165

Post by saboot »

I don't understand why nuclear waste is considered a significant issue. You either bury it, or leave it on site enclosed in concrete.

We bury much worse chemicals with little to no regulation right now.

There's many solutions to put nuclear waste in a stable form such as vitrification.

There's no time left, feel like screaming at the world that we are okay with putting carbon indefinitely in the air instead. Nuclear waste is such a small issue in comparison.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#166

Post by Ericson2314 »

culi wrote: post #153
andrewxdiamond wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is always touted as such a good idea on this site, but I want to take the opposite stance. - Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. - Nuclear waste is difficult t…

The obsession with solar panels is currently driving a major ecological catastrophe. Solar panels are known to leak lead in the environment. We also have no good way to recycle them once the cells are done for good (currently, the average lifespan of a panel is about 20 years). There is already a massive buildup of solar waste full of extremely toxic components and we're not even close to seeing the worst of it consi…

I was with you until degrowth, kind of.

But we could 1000x the number of nukes and not run into the power generation or waste problems. Now, with that much energy we would have far more of a growth problem far worse than today, but that's not really nuclear's "fault", that's more a downstream issue.

I have a secret suspicion renewables are popular precisely because they have scaling issues. For the certain easy-to-dunk-on degrwoth fan who has more guilt than clear thinking, the idea of renewables as a sort of self-flagellation austerity is attractive.

The problem is our society (or "Captialism"), even, pushes for growth because a feeling for austerity. Only with the feeling of abundance do we step off the gas. Things like UBI and nuclear, which they fear will lead to a spending spree and rampant new consumerism, should instead turn off the real and metaphorical cortisol that leads to these things in the first place.

-------

The best stuff I've read about degrowth is from Nathan Tankus, who's got the necessity for needle-threading down, along with the skills to actually do the threading. I will try to find something that is not a tweat.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#167

Post by belval »

dehrmann wrote: post #79
logicalmonster wrote: post #25

> However, 58% thought that nuclear power caused climate change while only 46% thought that coal burning did so This raises some interesting thoughts about the nature and importance of democracy.

A horrifyingly large portion of the population believes all sorts of stupid things. The sad thing for democracy is most people don't understand policy or even civics well enough to make an informed decision on a candidate. Even then, most candidates don't either, and they end up relying on advisors and lobbyists. The fun implication of campaign finance reform is it implies elections can be bought (just ask Michael Bl…

I'd go one step further and say that we all believe in all sorts of stupid things. It's just that we are unaware of our own misconceptions because they aren't often disproven.

Democracy works when the population is generally educated because the mean opinion (or the opinion held by the most people) should converge to the "right" one.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#168

Post by corban1 »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #144
corban1 wrote: post #69

Nuclear is clean, it is safe but it is not cheap. It's safe and clean because of it's moderately priced. I stand by nuclear because it's cleanness and safeness which can't be compared to anything else. What will we generate electricity with in non-windy cloudy days? Coal? LNG? ESS? Note that all of those options are more dangerous, more expensive and more dirty than nuclear.

I wonder how the cost of nuclear stacks up against the cost of fossil fuels when you don't cook the books (externalize the costs of pollution)?

The same applies for others like wind and solar. Do they really calculate all the costs? It was easy for nuclear to cook books in the past. I feel other energy sources are doing it nowadays.

I think in order to set things straight, they should apply the cost of uncertainty to wind and solar.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#169

Post by pydry »

logicalmonster wrote: post #25

> However, 58% thought that nuclear power caused climate change while only 46% thought that coal burning did so This raises some interesting thoughts about the nature and importance of democracy.

Although it is an poll with a weird and surprising result from a nuclear lobby group with a strong interest in depicting the general public as "in need of education" on nuclear issues.

As far as I can see there are no details about who ran the poll.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#170

Post by masklinn »

baud147258 wrote: post #12
beders wrote: post #6

Note how France conveniently placed many of their nuclear power plants close to their eastern border. With winds coming from the west most time of the year... Sneaky.

Or maybe France just built their plants there to put them close to the alluvial resources and close to consumers (between Paris, Germany, Rhine and Rhone valleys), rather than a for reddit-tier conspiracy theory idea. Edit: and the map a sibling comment provided showed that most French nuclear power plants aren't even close to the Eastern border, but rather spread out over the national territory

> Or maybe France just built their plants there to put them close to the alluvial resources

Yep, nukes require cooling, and good cooling mean either the seashore or a large river with suitable sites. Hence there being 4 plants on both Rhone (highest discharge in the country, not including the Rhine) and Loire (longest river in the country), while the smaller Garonne rates only 2.

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