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France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

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Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#181

Post by baud147258 »

FrenchAmerican wrote: post #130
tomdell wrote: post #12

I advise anyone not in the know to look into France's historical control of uranium mining in Niger. France's nuclear industry has long been fueled by a highly unequal neocolonial relationship with their former colony.

True. But Niger is not an exception, it just happens they had some uranium. In the other ex-colonies, it's petroleum, natural gas, wood and exotic products of all sort. In fact, this has been such a continuum that the prefix "neo" in the expression "neocolonialism" isn't really appropriate. It's rather business as usual without having to maintain order directly. Military agreements still link France and most of its e…

> the French Army has many bases

is 4 bases (Djibouti, Ivory Coast, Gabon & Senegal) many?

Though I agree that as a French voter I would like to be able to vote against the endless military interventions, especially in Africa.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#182

Post by signatoremo »

karaterobot wrote: post #164
nixass wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Such reactors cannot be built in a day so right now this is just a political move for the upcoming election. Of course, that's why it says first reactor will go live in 2035, not in a day

Can't tell if you're joking, but I think they mean that the positive effects of making the promise are immediate for Macron, but he won't have to deal with the actual cost, logistics, political maneuvering, etc., until after he's re-elected, if at all. Cynically, he could make promises he has no intention of keeping.

It goes both way, isn’t it? Whoever in power in 2035 who will get to cut the ribbon of the reactors will make it like their own victory. Macron’s name and whatever he would do to make it happen will be conveniently forgotten.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#183

Post by reincarnate0x14 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #56
robertlagrant wrote: post #2

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…

The USA, Japan, South Korea, Canada, and even Russia all had fairly successful nuclear power plant production businesses until they mostly stopped for political reasons -- Areva (France), GE, Mitsubishi, AECL, KEPCO, Westinghouse, etc built reactors are all over the world. China is still doing mostly foreign reactor designs but they have at least two companies that will probably be able to build wholly China-sourced plants in the 2030s. Sadly most of those stopped when the production knowledge and training and organizational maturity was getting much better.

Point being that multiple countries and companies had very successful nuclear power programs, and they didn't collapse because of intrinsic failure of the industry but lack of political will. And as you note, overall large-scale construction in the US in general has turned into a dumpster fire regardless of what is being built due to stupid policies and no small amount of graft.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#184

Post by Sanzig »

mlyle wrote: post #176
baud147258 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, with nuclear you're (and in this case, we're) still dependent on uranium mines and all the equipment that's require to build and maintain those power plants, some of which might not be manufactured in the countries

That may be a problem in the long term, but there's not some spigot of gas you can turn off and cause an immediate problem.

Uranium is also much easier to trasport than gas thanks to the ridiculously high energy density of uranium. Reactor grade uranium has an energy density of about 3,500,000 MJ/kg in a light water reactor, whereas natural gas is about 55 MJ/kg - so uranium is about 64,000 times more energy dense on a per kilo basis. You don't need pipelines or fancy LNG terminals, either - it's pretty easy to transport in relatively unexciting bulk containers.

So, once the security concerns are addressed, you can buy uranium from any country willing to sell it to you and ship it. The number two and number three producers of uranium worldwide are Canada and Australia, both of which France is very friendly with (a submarine kerfuffle with the latter notwithstanding).

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#185

Post by throw0101a »

baud147258 wrote: post #173
Nbox9 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's particularly smart in this moment It may be particularly smart for this moment in internal French politics, but energy independence is a smart move for any sovereign.

well, with nuclear you're (and in this case, we're) still dependent on uranium mines and all the equipment that's require to build and maintain those power plants, some of which might not be manufactured in the countries

The top four producers of uranium (per tonnage) are Kazakhstan, Australia, Namibia, Canada:

* https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...

Better than being dependent on oil and gas, especially if your current supplier is Russia.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#186

Post by imnotlost »

baud147258 wrote: post #173
Nbox9 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's particularly smart in this moment It may be particularly smart for this moment in internal French politics, but energy independence is a smart move for any sovereign.

well, with nuclear you're (and in this case, we're) still dependent on uranium mines and all the equipment that's require to build and maintain those power plants, some of which might not be manufactured in the countries

Dependencies are a fact of life.

Question is, does Europe really want to depend on journalist/dissident-murdering Russia?

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#187

Post by mlyle »

Sanzig wrote: post #184
mlyle wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be a problem in the long term, but there's not some spigot of gas you can turn off and cause an immediate problem.

Uranium is also much easier to trasport than gas thanks to the ridiculously high energy density of uranium. Reactor grade uranium has an energy density of about 3,500,000 MJ/kg in a light water reactor, whereas natural gas is about 55 MJ/kg - so uranium is about 64,000 times more energy dense on a per kilo basis. You don't need pipelines or fancy LNG terminals, either - it's pretty easy to transport in relatively une…

Sure, and France reprocesses, too, which aids fuel security.

Of course, this doesn't mean they control the entire supply chain for needed parts for nuclear-- but if some critical piece broke they wouldn't have no energy immediately, either.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#188

Post by Krssst »

Krasnol wrote: post #58
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…

You have to be joking... France just had to turn off 3 of their rotting reactors[0] and they lowered their estimates for this year to 295-315 TWh[1]. They're desperate, it's election year and they failed to come up with a diversified energy plan for the future. Luckily the recent taxonomy decision may help to avoid sharp tax rises to finance this backward and hilariously expensive[2] strategy but those EU funds won't…

> they failed to come up with a diversified energy plan for the future

Why diversify? If you have enough power when you need it without emitting CO2 I would think that would be enough.

However, no new nuclear construction for that many years does look like a mistake as France looks like it is slightly increasing use of coal this winter: https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20220112-france-fires-up-coal-p...

If France had more NREs it would still face the same issues without adding considerable storage capabilities (any big country that does 80% NRE thanks to storage?)

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#189

Post by steve_taylor »

andrewinardeer wrote: post #18
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…

Here in Australia, it can be argued that The Green Party's blanket ban and refusal to even consider let alone use nuclear has contributed significantly to more carbon in the air as we have instead relied on coal for the last 50 years.

They also blocked an emissions trading scheme in the senate because it wasn’t perfect. They have almost no credibility anymore.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#190

Post by Retric »

julienb_sea wrote: post #180
Retric wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those where low wholesale prices via government subsides. Germany “subsidized” very early wind/solar adoption by forcing electricity consumers to pay through the nose for it. That isn’t to say either model is better, just that you can’t look at wholesale prices and see the underlying economic realities. Time is running out on early German subsides where France still needs to pay for decommissioning. France has a grea…

Wind/solar generation have fundamental availability constraints that require supplementing with on-demand generation capacity. Nuclear is not exactly an answer for on-demand capacity because it is not possible to rapidly spin up and down, but having additional nuclear availability should allow France to have greater clean, stable energy capacity. It additionally introduces the possibility of broader energy exports to…

Nuclear can spin up and down rapidly, it’s simply really expensive to do so. In the mid term heavily subsidized Nuclear is the fastest way for most countries to reach a 90+% clean grid. The risk is ever cheaper grid storage can quickly render such investments obsolete.

A nuclear power plant that comes online in 5 years and operates for another 40-50 is going to be part of an extremely different grid in 25-55 years from now. That’s why private investors are so hesitant, but governments have more flexibility.

It could be that subsidized grid storage is a more cost effective solution, but that’s also limited by manufacturing capacity.

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