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France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

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Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#271

Post by immmmmm »

ike0790 wrote: post #235

Looks like a G20 country is serious about the impending "climate emergency". Regardless of the motives and timing behind this, I think its great to see a country is actually being serious and practical. Anyone going on about the climate and refuses to put nuclear energy at the forefront of the conversation is unserious and is only interested in virtual signaling in my opinion.

For living in a neighboring country, speaking their language and following their policy quite a bit, i can tell you that, no, they are nowhere near serious.

Just as an example, the best performing company this year is Total with 15B and which is happily feeding the government with petrodollars and the other people with lies about "Net Zero " etc.

"Énergie Nucléaire" as they call it is a thing there because De Gaulle wanted a bomb after WW2, so they pushed the industry (which is btw in pretty bad shape).

There is exactly ONE person in France who is pro nuclear and say accurate things about climate and it's Jancovici. All the rest of the crowd is like in most countries corrupt by petrodollars or other polluting industry, and is saying crap about climate. and the rare times they are not saying crap they are lying about their intentions.

No, France is nowhere near serious about climate, like most countries they bet on a +5 degree futur. I think i have read enough papers to tell you that 5 degrees will be very very hot and a very very sad point in human history.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#273

Post by thow-58d4e8b »

visarga wrote: post #246
epistasis wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will be serious if they actually build it, unlike Flamanville. While you call non-nuclear options "virtue signaling," the attempts at building it in France and the US have been virtue signaling. We don't have the industrial capacity to build nuclear. Meanwhile, we are deploying GW of solar, wind, and storage on time, on budget, ar ever decreasing costs. Locking in the high costs of nuclear, for the 60 year lifet…

Once a few years, we get a few weeks without much wind and solar. What do we do then? Solar and wind can't store enough energy to last for weeks.

We fire up coal/gas/biomass plants. Nature doesn't care about the ideological purity of the electricity grid - all that matters is total cumulative emissions

People treat this question with religious mindset, as if burning fossil fuels is a sin that must be banished. In reality, there's nothing wrong with powering countries ~80% of the time with renewables + storage, and ~20% of the time with fossils - that's still a decently decarbonized grid

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#274

Post by phicoh »

visarga wrote: post #246
epistasis wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will be serious if they actually build it, unlike Flamanville. While you call non-nuclear options "virtue signaling," the attempts at building it in France and the US have been virtue signaling. We don't have the industrial capacity to build nuclear. Meanwhile, we are deploying GW of solar, wind, and storage on time, on budget, ar ever decreasing costs. Locking in the high costs of nuclear, for the 60 year lifet…

Once a few years, we get a few weeks without much wind and solar. What do we do then? Solar and wind can't store enough energy to last for weeks.

We have plenty of storage options. We can produce various chemicals, hydrogen, methane, ammonia. Production scales, storage scales.

But, it is very expensive. At the same time new nuclear reactors are also very expensive.

So we just don't know. Countries like France should build nuclear reactors and see if they can get the price down.

Countries that are opposed to nuclear, like Germany, should investigate storage solutions and see if they can get the price of that down.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#275

Post by niyaven »

baud147258 wrote: post #181
FrenchAmerican wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

These are the permanent ones. In you include temporary bases in Africa the list is longer. For 2021 it was: Djibouti, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, Gabon, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#276

Post by kuhewa »

morelish wrote: post #168

Every time Nuclear comes up (rational) people complain of two things: 1) cost, and; 2) safety. I think the cost argument is really an irrelevance. The electricity grid is probably the most important engineering system ever developed. Everything really relies on the electricity grid. Without it, we'd do so much less. (Think about everything that depends on it. Is anything else so significant?) For example, the Nationa…

> Arguing that nuclear is more costly than other forms is just arguing about a few pennies in the dollar.

The trouble is that cost is mostly due to the need to service considerable upfront capital investment required to build a project, starting a decade before any power is produced. No one wants to be holding the bag for that when the market can still handle some smaller cheaper renewable or natural gas projects.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#277

Post by thow-58d4e8b »

misja111 wrote: post #262
polskibus wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of enough wind and sun is basically what happened in EU end of last year and caused energy and gas prices to sky rocket. It is not as rare as you think, moreover it happens over large areas at the same time which exacerbates stress on the grid.

This is nonsense. The crazy gas prices had two main causes: insufficient gas buffers during the uptick of the economy after Corona, and Russia closing part of its huge gas supply to Europe.

> insufficient gas buffers during the uptick of the economy after Corona

this is true

> Russia closing part of its huge gas supply to Europe

this isn't, afaik. Russia doesn't sell on spot market, they prefer long term futures contracts, on which they reliably deliver. They delivered on their 2021 commitments a bit earlier, hence they closed off the valves

Basically, the gas supplies were low during summer, but the spot prices were significantly above long term average, so energy companies delayed their purchases, hoping the price will come back down soon. It didn't, reserves dried up, and everybody was forced to buy at the same time

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#278

Post by inter_netuser »

immmmmm wrote: post #271
ike0790 wrote: post #235

Looks like a G20 country is serious about the impending "climate emergency". Regardless of the motives and timing behind this, I think its great to see a country is actually being serious and practical. Anyone going on about the climate and refuses to put nuclear energy at the forefront of the conversation is unserious and is only interested in virtual signaling in my opinion.

For living in a neighboring country, speaking their language and following their policy quite a bit, i can tell you that, no, they are nowhere near serious. Just as an example, the best performing company this year is Total with 15B and which is happily feeding the government with petrodollars and the other people with lies about "Net Zero " etc. "Énergie Nucléaire" as they call it is a thing there because De Gaulle…

Do you have a link to their models w.r.t +5 degrees?

seems like an extraordinary number

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#279

Post by xps »

d--b wrote: 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.

> It's particularly smart in this moment of tension with Russia, as Europe depends a lot on Russian energy.

This may help lowering the reliance of France on Russia but its energy production will still be reliant on other countries, as 100% of the required fuel (uranium) is imported.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#280

Post by eps »

stewbrew wrote: post #240
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.

Speaking about independence: where does the uran come from? And how is this clever since the EDF cannot sell their nuclear power without making losses?

Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia

Followed by Namibia, Niger, Russia, Uzbekistan, the US and China.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Uranium_...

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