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France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

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Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#311

Post by ohgodplsno »

guiriduro wrote: post #286
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.

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

You still require a place to pump that water into. Forming a lake isn't exactly a very ecology-friendly thing, and as much as you'd love to drown , requires absurd amounts of work.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#312

Post by immmmmm »

rini17 wrote: post #310
immmmmm wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Switzerland, 60% of my electricity comes from hydro. Ok ok, De Gaulle was maybe more concerned about energy independence. France doesn't do too bad? Any link? As far a i remember only a few African countries do "not too bad", but perhaps you were referring to former colonies as well. > I live in France, never heard of this "Net Zero" you're talking about. I then suggest some good climate information channel…

Swiss and Austrians are an exception with the hydro and should stop rubbing it in all the discussions. In Slovakia much of whatever could be dammed already is and still hydro makes only up to 20% of the mix, despite being one of the more hilly countries. Were it not for 70% nuclear, I have no idea how to even go near carbon neutral electricity. Having German electricity prices to pay for renewables is completely impo…

Agreed. I was answering the inaccurate sentence "your electricity is much more polluted than France's is."

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#313

Post by immmmmm »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #308
gobip wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France is not serious about climate? If you're in a neighbor country of France: congrats, your electricity is much more polluted than France's is. Énergie Nucléaire was a thing of De Gaulle, but not for these reasons. France needed independence and needed to provide electricity, and the only way was nuclear (at the time). Given the current situation, I think France didn't do too bad. Only one candidate in France on p…

Well, now France is not being serious about climate, and has not been since at least 10 years, when we had Hollande on the throne. We've had talks about closing down nuke plants that are still in working order, the next one is taking forever, and we still have many people who want to shut it all down in the very name of the environment (overall, the French people are woefully misinformed about the pros and cons of nu…

Yeah things are getting better. The IPCC report was discussed for one 1 day in French medias.

> Oh, and we got a recent report from our national energy company (or something close), that laid out several plans to reduce our CO2 emissions, and most contingencies involved both nuclear and renewable, including the "nuke max" scenario. We'll definitely need renewables, but it's pretty clear shutting down nuclear plants is one of the riskiest plans — hopefully our politicians will wake up to that.

Great. Hope they don't forget what scientists say: we must use much less energy.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#314

Post by phicoh »

rini17 wrote: post #310
immmmmm wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Switzerland, 60% of my electricity comes from hydro. Ok ok, De Gaulle was maybe more concerned about energy independence. France doesn't do too bad? Any link? As far a i remember only a few African countries do "not too bad", but perhaps you were referring to former colonies as well. > I live in France, never heard of this "Net Zero" you're talking about. I then suggest some good climate information channel…

Swiss and Austrians are an exception with the hydro and should stop rubbing it in all the discussions. In Slovakia much of whatever could be dammed already is and still hydro makes only up to 20% of the mix, despite being one of the more hilly countries. Were it not for 70% nuclear, I have no idea how to even go near carbon neutral electricity. Having German electricity prices to pay for renewables is completely impo…

Ignoring storage, wind and solar are now very cheap. For example, companies now pay to rent pieces of North Sea to place wind parks there.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#315

Post by sirk390 »

yason wrote: post #265
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…

The cost of nuclear goes down if we build more of smaller standardized reactors rather than a huge, advanced plants every few decades where everything is new and untested each time, warranting long periods of validation and certification, and where the people building it have changed after each built power plant.

I doubt that there are numbers to prove that. SMR might just be a buzzword. From the page below there don't seem too many operating or under construction (5 operating, and 4 under construction). https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#316

Post by yreg »

hutrdvnj wrote: post #292
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.

> 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. I think it is unserious to call every other solution other than nuclear energy unserious in a climate discussion. Germany, for instance, has very serious discussions on climate neutrality without nuclear energy.

Germany is serious at talking about climate but what Germany says (and does) makes little sense unfortunately.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#317

Post by lagadu »

chha wrote: post #293
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.

That depends on how you want to store the energy. There have been some talk in Norway about using excess energy to pump water from ground level to fill up existing lakes as a form of energy storage. There seems to be quite a few power plants based on hydro power other places in Europe as well, so it could be a feasible strategy there as well [1, page 5] [1] - https://wwfeu.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/hydropower_pre…

In Portugal and Spain we have pumping stations doing exactly that. I couldn't find a link in English but maybe you'll find this useful: https://www.iberdrola.com/sustentabilidade/central-hidreletr...

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#318

Post by cocoggu »

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.

The gas prices spike has also other causes, like gas-powered electricity plants replacing or partly replacing nuclear facilities like Fessenheim in France. Gas-powered electricity plants are flourishing everywhere in the world, including China to diversify from coal, obviously at some point the available offer is not going to be enough.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#319

Post by Archelaos »

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.

> 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.

In my eyes, this is a very indecent way to express ones own position. The discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear energy is not conducted lightly. Nuclear energy has a long list of casualties and severe environmental damage. Nevertheless, I do not imply a priori that anyone who argues in favor of nuclear energy is frivolous; and I expect the same respect in reverse.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#320

Post by rini17 »

phicoh wrote: post #314
rini17 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swiss and Austrians are an exception with the hydro and should stop rubbing it in all the discussions. In Slovakia much of whatever could be dammed already is and still hydro makes only up to 20% of the mix, despite being one of the more hilly countries. Were it not for 70% nuclear, I have no idea how to even go near carbon neutral electricity. Having German electricity prices to pay for renewables is completely impo…

Ignoring storage, wind and solar are now very cheap. For example, companies now pay to rent pieces of North Sea to place wind parks there.

Storage and transmission.
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