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France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

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Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#281

Post by makomk »

thow-58d4e8b wrote: post #273
visarga wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most developed countries have net zero goals that are not consistent with continuing to pump out 20% of current electricity-related CO2 production forevermore. Also, keeping those coal and gas plants operational isn't exactly cheap either, though it is probably still cheaper than storage.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#282

Post by theshrike79 »

xps wrote: post #279
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.

100% of Europe's natural gas comes from Russia.

Uranium producing countries include Australia and Canada, who are a bit less crazy with their international politics and military movements.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#283

Post by theshrike79 »

vimy wrote: post #134
joe_the_user wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not just France. 60 % of Belgian electricity is generated by nuclear power plants. Unfortunately the green party has decided to shut them down and replace them with gas plants to “save the climate”. Green stupidity knows no boundaries.

I don't get this logic. How does 100% reliance on Russian natural gas save anyone from anything? =)

The current hike in electricity pricing is pretty much solely based on the fact that way too much of Europe's electricity is produced with Russian natural gas...

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#284

Post by JPLeRouzic »

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.

> Keep in mind that the presidential election is in 3 months.

Exactly, Macron has a very long history of changing of advice, sometimes after just a few days. In 2017 he campaigned to stop most nuclear plants in France (which are really old anyway) [0]. I think here those statements were more to sooth the "CGT" and the big companies in the field after the government last statements on EDF. [1]

He was the guy who dismantle Alstom to GE's and EDF's profits, then made Alstom buy what it just sold. It's hard to see any consistent strategy in any of his actions, except from a political point of view. He probably don't care of anything on any subject, it's just a matter of having the best posture to win elections.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-energy-strike-idUS...

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/power-group-edfs-sha...

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#285

Post by pydry »

simion314 wrote: post #260
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…

>Meanwhile, we are deploying GW of solar, wind, and storage on time, on budget, ar ever decreasing costs. That is the easier part, show me the battery deployments please , the ones that can backup the country/state for a week.

China has about 40 GW of pumped water storage.

A week of no solar power or wind is unheard of. A week of no wind is very very rare.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#286

Post by guiriduro »

azinman2 wrote: post #250
innermate wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries can store enough energy to last for a few weeks.

Industrial-scale batteries are far from a solved problem, and require a lot of excess energy production to fill them that doesn't already get depleted at night. A far more realistic solution is to be able to flex with things like gas plants that don't need to be always running and can function on demand.

Isn't pumped hydro-electricity a solved problem for off-peak energy storage? Granted, only for countries with hills/mountains (not the Netherlands etc.)

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#287

Post by tialaramex »

sideshowb wrote: post #103
orra wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, it's not clear they are doing a fantastic job building Hinkley Point in the UK. First, in the decade or decade and a half they're taking to build it, you could build so much renewable capacity. Second, Hinkley Point only went ahead when it was guaranteed an outrageously high strike price, for the electricity it will output.

I'm wondering if that strike price looks quite so outrageously high now UK electricity costs have risen by 50% in the last year or so

Far more than 50%. A year ago it was normal for suppliers to pay about £50 per MWh (consumers of course end up paying a little more, this is a for-profit business in most cases) and today you're being charged maybe £200 per MWh.

In one peak period yesterday it went to £365 per MWh and I'd expect the same today. Unlike in Texas, UK consumer electricity firms have to apply the price cap, so while you can get electricity for £0 in the middle of the night sometimes (though not so much recently) that full £365 wasn't passed on to you, but of course the financial strain of such offerings under current situations means these firms go bankrupt, and sooner or later the government will end up having to fix it.

Everything paying Contract for Difference subsidies would be above water now, not just the nuclear plant, the most expensive older wind farms are actually net profitable for the government via its wholly owned energy subsidy company. If your wind farm is guaranteed £150 per MWh, and electricity sells for £365 per MWh, you're paying the government £215 per MWh of the income from selling wind power - if you put up a newer, cheaper farm and only secured £80 per MWh, that's £285 per MWh you're giving the government, and your investors are probably re-assessing their appetite for risk accordingly, if they'd just said "Fuck it, we'll build it without a subsidy" that £285 per MWh is profit.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#288

Post by immmmmm »

inter_netuser wrote: post #278
immmmmm wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You are correct, the 5 degree might be a bit high in this context. It's quite possible however in SSP5-8.5 and even SSP4-7.0 from IPCC's predictions for 2100 ([0] for instance). A more conservative 2-3 degrees might be more accurate for climate pledges [1]. This is based on quite a few assumptions tho and varies between authors. 2300 projections can go up to 12 degrees in IPCC AR5 WG1, Figure 12.5 [2] (for the old RCP8.5 scenario).

[0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13143-021-00225-6

[1] https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/

[2] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/long-term-climate-change-...

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#289

Post by pfdietz »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #261
azinman2 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Industrial-scale batteries are far from a solved problem, and require a lot of excess energy production to fill them that doesn't already get depleted at night. A far more realistic solution is to be able to flex with things like gas plants that don't need to be always running and can function on demand.

Sodium Ion is supposed to commercialize this year if you can believe CATL, with high temp range, good safety, good charge cycles, all supposed to be better than LFP at ?half? the cost (we'll see when it hits the market). I think sodium ion batteries will be the game changer in utility storage, like good-density (200 Wh/kg) LFP will for mass EV/PHEV electrification (sodium ion will help there too in hybrid batteries).…

> I think residential solar should be vastly more subsidized.

I don't. The grid has to be sized for the worst case load, not for the average load, so reducing the latter with residential solar doesn't reduce the cost of having the grid around. And utility-scale solar is much cheaper per unit of power than residential solar.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#290

Post by inter_netuser »

jsnell wrote: post #148
jibe wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Green parties of Europe, which are the political face of the environmental movement, all oppose nuclear power. Perhaps most strongly in Germany, but The Greens in France oppose it as well.

The Finnish Green Party no longer opposes nuclear power as of last year.

How did that transition happen?
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