Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

>That by itself isn't an issue. Plenty of companies take on debt to invest, for instance. My company intends to take €40bn of new debt in the next decade or so, and our investors don't see it as an issue.

But that isn't the case here. When the debt causes you to be bailed out by the government, is is an issue, wouldn't you agree?

EDF isn't a car maker that has to invest in a transition to electric cars (or whatever), they are basically bankrupt. EDF needs _additional_ billions in order to invest in the future, separate from the billions of debt it already accumulated. Since the organisation is nationalised, that money will come from the taxpayers.

>Plants have been decomissioned in the past already. Because of that, we have pretty reasonable estimates of how much dismantling costs.

Which decommissioned reactor are you thinking of?

Most decommissioned reactors are part of plants that have other active reactors, so they are not actually dismantled. EDF has postponed final decommissioning for several of its closed reactors by 50 years, Berkeley in the UK is still ongoing, Vandellos 1 in Spain (closed since 1990) will commence final phase in 2028, Rancho Seco in California, closed in '89 still costs money today, and so on.

Apart from that, the "end result" for decommissioning projects are always "and then the federal government takes over from here". Meaning that the true costs are unknown even when the projects are actually completed.

This is not FUD, it's reasonable concerns based on observed realities. A discussion can be had about nuclear power anyway - it has merits too of course - but the concerns can't simply be brushed aside and ignored. They are based on reality.

> That is likely true, but what is your point? The statement I said was false and misleading was in the message that started this thread

You realize the part I was quoting started with "I rarely see that here".

Obviously, my sentence was not "the element that you say is incorrect is in fact correct" but rather "that is not a surprise that you notice incorrect element when they are saying something you don't like". This second part recognizes that the element may be incorrect. The point is when you say "I rarely see that here": your impressions have no value, they do not correspond to any reality.

> Are you saying that was a true statement?

I am saying that it is not a worst statement as the one of yours I've quoted. The problem of the statement you quoted is that it is open to interpretation: what is "built", what is "economic", what is "traditional".

Of course, you will pretend it is "false" because you will find one exception, or you will say "it's economic without the artificial extra costs that I have arbitrarily decided are the results of baddies because I don't like them"

I personally think this sentence is bad because it's way too imprecise and generalist. I think only idiots will think it is "false", and only idiots will think it is "true", the reality is that this sentence cannot be called "true" or "false" as it is true to some extend and false to some extend.

> This sort of incessant questioning is a form of sealioning.

Once again you miss the point. I don't care if your statement is true or not, or precise or not. My point is that you are blaming someone for not doing what you don't do yourself.

Your sentence was, according to your own standard (not mine, YOURS), objectively pretty bad (which is not the same as "incorrect"):

1) "the ONLY issue" is obviously highly debatable, as what is an issue for someone may not be an issue for someone else (or be a "small issue"), and it highly depends of the objective and what people care about

2) "the most expensive form of power EVER CREATED". This is technically 100% incorrect: it is totally unreasonable to pretend that modern solar is a more expensive form of power than the form of power used one or two centuries ago. Of course, you can answer "it's obviously not what I mean", but I know that and I don't say you have made a mistake, what I'm saying is that you are the one reacting to such approximations if they are "anti-nuclear".

3) "the MOST EXPENSIVE". Again, while it can be true, it is not at all trivial and even "decidable". In a parallel thread, you admit yourself that you take the "average", which is a very very bad reasoning: if a country decided to build a series of crap nuclear plant with turbines of sub-par efficiency, according to you, it would objectively mean that the nuclear power will intrinsically be worse. A better metric instead of the average would be to take the minimum: it corresponds to the real potential of the technology, probably ignoring old technology (so it is also a good thing to do for nuclear) (sure, there may be circumstantial effect, but at first order, they exist in all the forms, so it's fair. While it is not perfect, it is anyway already way better than taking the average). If we do that, solar power is better than nuclear power. And this is only with the US numbers, but you can easily decompose by state and cherry-pick the ones going in one way or another, or add other countries in the world. It scientifically does not make sense, the numbers that you use cannot answer the question of knowing if the form of power is "more expensive" or not in a debate about future decision, especially when they are all so close.

4) the fact that the sentence is a very naive generalization.

Again, let's be clear: I'm not criticizing you for your statement, or saying your statement is incorrect.

What I'm saying is that someone would have behave exactly like you, would have written exactly the same kind of statement, would have been as clear and precise, but it would have been anti-nuclear and you would have said "yet another example of anti-nuclear being lying or misleading".

> I think a charitable reading of my sentence would have understood what I meant.

This is a good summary: you are asking people to be charitable when reading your sentence and try to understand what you mean by refitting the terms to make sure the sentence is true, but you don't do that to others.

As I've said, the statement that you are saying is a lie is true "in some extend", and, if you really believe in what you've said to me, you should just be charitable and understand what they mean in order to refit the terms so that this sentence is true.

That link doesn't contradict what I said? I said in summer last year (almost?, at the time I saw 2 different sources, one French said all, one German said almost all) all nuclear power plants were offline. Macron even went on TV arguing that they pulled forward maintenance to "prepare for the winter to support the German's lack of Gas" (seems not to happened according to your link, they were on record low output at the turn of the year).

I agree that fossil fuel use should be aggressively reduced. In the past, that would have meant more nuclear. It does not mean more nuclear now. Reducing fossil fuel use has ceased to be an argument for nuclear construction.

The link shows ~25 reactors were up in the summer at the low point, out of 58.

If you want another link: [2] states that about half of the reactors were down. I don't know what news sites you use, but "almost all" or "all" reactors being down is simply false news.

[2]: https://www.grs.de/en/news/situation-nuclear-power-plants-fr...