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France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

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Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#201

Post by rq1 »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #175
oblib wrote: post #83

Meanwhile in Japan...

> Fukushima would have survived if they followed Europe's lead and improved the plant's design. In short, had Tepco and the nuclear safety agency followed international standards and best practice, the Fukushima accident would have been prevented. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/opinion/fukushima-could-h...

This is an illusion of control. Once someone doesn’t follow some guideline or makes a mistake somewhere. Would you come again with an article saying: oh it’s safe, if only we didn’t do X or Y or Z… Yes if only…

Elevation of sea levels (and rivers), elevation of temperature lead to plants downtimes because either the plants can’t be cooled down or the water level is too high for safe operations. So it has its own intermittences.

The other issue is nuclear waste. A small one.

I would prefer them to put a higher effort on the Tokamak iter and develop orbital plants with microwave lenses.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#202

Post by stubish »

Retric wrote: post #190
julienb_sea wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fr…

> A nuclear power plant that comes online in 5 years

The article says 6 facilities, of which just one is expected to be operational in 15 years. I think this is the reason nobody except France is pushing nuclear. Starting today, by the time your first nuclear plant comes online, you will have been forced to deploy an alternative making it redundant. People make the case for nuclear being cost effective today, but I don't see any predictions about it being cost effective in 15+ years either.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#203

Post by prawn »

austhrow743 wrote: post #193
prawn wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ve only thought about this for five seconds but that seems like a pricing structure issue rather than something inevitable.

I have a friend who works in the energy sector and has a strong focus on solar. He's talked about this as a major issue for a few years. I don't know if it's inevitable, but would influence a lot of industry policy.

https://www.energynetworks.com.au/news/energy-insider/the-de...

Early adopters of solar here had very strong feed-in tariffs, but these are non-existent now for new sign-ups because otherwise energy companies were paying out more and more, while still having the same grid/maintenance costs. It disincentivises people from upgrading their solar capacity too. If you got 3-5kW way back, but upgrade to 10kW now, you lose your lucrative feed-in tariff.

Going back many years, I remember my grandfather risking his health because he was scared of unpredictable electricity bills should he run his A/C. That's probably an argument against smart metering, at least for the elderly.

There's often talk of distributed battery systems. e.g., trial programs where houses with solar and batteries pool efforts.

Regardless, for every household that effectively goes offgrid, it leaves the fewer, remaining customers paying for the same powerlines and facilities. Solar uptake is about 30-40% here, from memory.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#204

Post by Terry_Roll »

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 largest uranium fuel depot in the world is Chernobyl, Ukraine.

Russia nearly bankrupted itself when it contained the nuclear disaster and even Gorbachev thinks it was Chernobyl that ultimately destroyed the Soviet Union.

Now with this in mind, I wouldnt be surprised considering the sanctions on Russia, if they perhaps make a grab for the uranium in Chernobyl and sell it, to claw back some of the costs they incurred for cleaning up Chernobyl.

Strategically, it was useful for Russian politics to have something as risky as the Chernobyl nuke power station in the Ukraine during the soviet union era, ie different country if anything went wrong nothing to do with us sort of thing.

However thats how it remains until now where the Iranians need uranium after their enrichers were destroyed with Stuxnet, so you have one potential customer there, you also have India & Pakistan, Israel as well as the UK and France who will all be needing a bit more uranium as we get off fossil fuels to reduce greenhouse gases.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#205

Post by stubish »

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.

I don't think it will change any minds. Bringing a new power plant online in 15 years is irrelevant to just about everybody. Most people are concerned about switching to renewables right now. It might have interested people 20 years ago, maybe even 10.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#206

Post by tarasglek »

missedthecue wrote: post #145
TulliusCicero wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 100% NIMBYism. Just like the complaints about how higher-density housing may hurt 'the environment' for whatever city people live in. Like, if everyone blocks high density housing, those people don't just disappear, they're gonna end up living in low density housing, and that's obviously much worse for the environment: takes up more space, which means cutting into nature more, and generally takes more energy for…

Like the wealthy Bay Area town that just recently sought to block the development of affordable housing under the pretext of protecting mountain lion habitat. These people would literally rather live next to mountain lions than next to slightly poorer people. (ignoring the fact that mountain lions don't actually roam bay area suburbs) https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2022/02/07/woodside-offici...

you mean they don't cross el camino? https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/04/20/jaywalking-moun...

Next door neighbour's driveway had a mauled deer carcass in middle of day, few years ago.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#207

Post by candeira »

joshgachnang wrote: post #136
KennyBlanken wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The carbon cost of extraction and transportation of fuel should also be added to the spreadsheet, both for nuclear and for fossil fuel generation.

Finally, if we're accounting for the cost decommissioning old nuclear stations and long-term storage of nuclear fuel, we should also account for the externalities of fossil fuel power, such as health consequences of pollution, the existential risk from global warming, and turmoil due to geopolitical tensions.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#208

Post by _carbyau_ »

missedthecue wrote: post #145
TulliusCicero wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 100% NIMBYism. Just like the complaints about how higher-density housing may hurt 'the environment' for whatever city people live in. Like, if everyone blocks high density housing, those people don't just disappear, they're gonna end up living in low density housing, and that's obviously much worse for the environment: takes up more space, which means cutting into nature more, and generally takes more energy for…

Like the wealthy Bay Area town that just recently sought to block the development of affordable housing under the pretext of protecting mountain lion habitat. These people would literally rather live next to mountain lions than next to slightly poorer people. (ignoring the fact that mountain lions don't actually roam bay area suburbs) https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2022/02/07/woodside-offici...

Tongue in cheek: Of course mountain lions are preferable. They are much rarer than the hoards of poor people. Which one do I want in the background of my "chillin' at home" insta pics?

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#209

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Xixi wrote: post #197
mhh__ wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hinkley Point doesn't look so expensive now (Electricity forwards have been greater than the rate the reactor is supposed to cost since august)

Also keep in mind, a lot of the cost of Hinkley Point is not so much the cost to build the reactors, but the financing. Speaking from memory, we are talking about borrowing at something like 10% over 35 years. If France finances these new power plants, financing cost goes virtually to zero. So even if actually building the new reactors cost the same (unlikely, I hope they learnt a thing or two over the last 10 years.…

Also insurance. All plants in the USA are insured by the government, I'm sure the same is true in France as well.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#210

Post by Retric »

stubish wrote: post #202
Retric wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fr…

> A nuclear power plant that comes online in 5 years The article says 6 facilities, of which just one is expected to be operational in 15 years . I think this is the reason nobody except France is pushing nuclear. Starting today, by the time your first nuclear plant comes online, you will have been forced to deploy an alternative making it redundant. People make the case for nuclear being cost effective today, but I…

> Starting today, by the time your first nuclear plant comes online, you will have been forced to deploy an alternative making it redundant.

The delay is because these power plants are supposed to replace existing power plants that will be taken offline in 13+ years. What’s notable is they aren’t 1:1 replacements so they are going to end up with a lower percentage of nuclear power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#/media...

PS: I reference the a 5 year delay because that’s roughly when you’re spending real money. France could easily back out of this plan in ~7 years having spent less than 1% of what it would cost to actually build a reactor.

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