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France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

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Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#361

Post by simion314 »

pydry wrote: post #285
simion314 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

We would need to build much , much more storage, and I hope you know water dams are not easy to build(a lot of humans and wild life needs to be moved), if you don't already have them probably is impossible to create them.

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

You don need no solar or no wind, you need a few weeks of super low solar and wind, like say in winter, solar efficiency is much lower in winter.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#362

Post by mrep »

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.

Yes you can. Methane is already stored and used for electrical grids on a massive scale and you can make methane with electricity [0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#363

Post by pvaldes »

notevenclos wrote: post #166
pvaldes wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing in common? Lets see. Nuclear power plants and weapons were supported and approved by the same president, regulated by the same governments, with the same members from the same parties, sharing the same feedback and moving in the same direction as the politics requested If you look under the masks of the people sharing the final responsibility you will see the face of the president in all cases. All nuclear th…

The French nuclear weapons program was started by (right-wing President) general de Gaulle in the early 60s. The French nuclear power program was started in the mid-70s under the (right-wing) Giscard d'Estaing government. The rainbow warrior bombing was conducted under the (left-wing/socialist) government of Mitterrand. So completely different governments, in fact.

France did nuclear weapons tests from 60 until 90's with many presidents. And promoted nuclear energy with many presidents. There is an extensive feedback and overlapping between both programs and the successive governments continued basically in the same direction as the former.

France just keep a clean image doing the essays as far from Europe and indiscreet views as they could and hiding the real extension of the damage done, but can't be denied that they have their own quote of evil acts also in this field, as any other countries. I'm not comparing them with North Korea, but they commit mistakes also.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#364

Post by phicoh »

gobip wrote: post #291
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…

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…

For the energy transition, it is not enough to look at the way electrictity is currently generated. All use of fossil fuel needs to go, transport, industry etc.

A rough estimate is that the production of electricity needs to double.

I'm curious how France is going to double the production of electricty. The current plans for new nuclear power don't seem enough to increase capacity and retire old plants at the same time.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#365

Post by southerntofu »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #360
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.

How is "people who don't do solution X for climate change are unserious" different from climate change denial exactly? You're claiming entire governments are proposing and committing to expensive and sweeping actions, but because they've not done X (for possibly several different reasons) you are openly accusing them of not wanting to solve the problem. Why wouldn't they want to solve it? We are spending that money t…

> Why wouldn't they want to solve it?

Because they're rich as fuck and will never have to care about finding clean water to drink? Because they're profiting directly from destroying our planet, being part of the capitalist establishment? Because the hundred of millions of climate refugees will mostly be from poorer countries, and France will only have to relocate a few coastal cities and deal with more hurricanes? Because they're hopeful their descendants will go pollute Mars thanks to assholes like Bezos/Musk after they're done fucking up Earth?

I'm not defending nuclear energy, far from it. But pretending governments around the planet (except for a few smaller ones) care at all about planet change when all they've done since the 70's (the time we've know this is the most massive/pressing issue for humanity as a whole) is giving away money to the people who destroyed the planet in the first place (green new deal kind of stuff)... that's political denial if you'd like to call it that ;)

We need degrowth immediately. Heavily criminalize planned obsolescence. Outlaw industrial farming. Tax concrete industry 1000% and legalize eco-housing (illegal in France due to housing regulations). Reduce energy/resource waste on all levels and all fronts. That's the only way you can fight climate change. Keeping the same capitalist recipe that produced the disaster and hoping for a different outcome is either naive or manipulative.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#366

Post by southerntofu »

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.

france has a bunch of standardized reactors: doesn't mean they don't suffer from engineering issue, that they don't leak hot water or radiation every now and then, or that we even know how to tear them apart when they reach end of life.

You should probably do some reading about the many scandals of the nuclear industry in France, from colonial exploitation for uranium to jailing/crippling/assassinating anti-nuclear protesters, with a bunch of nuclear scandals and accidents in between.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#367

Post by phtrivier »

FrenchAmerican wrote: post #169
grammers wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Such reactors cannot be built in a day so right now this is just a political move for the upcoming election.

I respectfully disagree on that. It"s on the contrary a decision made a few months before the elections - so that the French energy policy won't be a matter of debate on the voting day. French citizens have never been put in a position to vote between a pronuclear candidate and an antinuclear one. Well, of course, there are ecologists on the first round of the vote, but on the second rounds, both candidates are alway…

> French citizens have never been put in a position to vote between a pronuclear candidate and an antinuclear one.

> Well, of course, there are ecologists on the first round of the vote, but on the second rounds, both candidates are always pronuclear.

Well, since nuclear power is such an important part of the Greens political platform (for better or for worse), you might argue that the fact all second-round candidates have been pro-nuclear sor far _is_ the result of the population voting on the topic.

And the fact that it happens _before_ the elections is, on the contrary, a way to trigger the debate.

The process to build plants take years - if the population is strongly opposed to, they can vote Macron out, elect Jadot or Melenchon, and the process will be canceled.

(The sad thing about French democracy is that the Presidential Election is virtually the only moment to have all debates)

Other countries (Germany, Belgium, etc...) decided _not_ to use nuclear energy without asking there population any more directly.

Populations are not asked explicitly about plenty of very dangerous industries (I leave near Toulouse, yet I still have to see "Get out of fertilizers !" stickers on cars following AZF explosion.)

Is this the kind of topic where the rules of representative democracy is to "let the elected governement govern" ?

Or is there a right way to get the opinion of a country, knowing that, in those matters, the population that vote will not be the population that deals ?

I have no idea what would happen if we had a referendum about nuclear energy, as they had in Italy and Switerzland.

I'm also no so sure what I would vote for !

Every time I ponder those questions, I open this [1] or [2], and I wonder: who's ready to switch off their lights first ?

[1] https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energ... [2] https://app.electricitymap.org/map

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#368

Post by southerntofu »

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.

> That is the easier part

No, that's the hard part. The easier part is to reduce energy consumption and adapt to production. The problem is some people think we can live in eternal abundance and not think about it, and these people are making billions of dollars of tax money on "green new deal" types of contracts.

But the truth is degrowth and lowtech are the only option for climate change. Look what "green capitalism" has done for us since the 60s: yes things keep getting worse, and it's not gonna change as long as money and industry are involved, as they are the problem not the solution.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#369

Post by shawabawa3 »

Archelaos wrote: post #326
shawabawa3 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has been burning more and more coal since shutting down their nuclear plants in favour of renewables What a great green strategy that was

This is not true. The agreement between the federal government and the energy supply companies to phase out nuclear energy dates back to 14 June 2000. The first nuclear power plant was shut down permanently in Nov. 2003. At this time the power generation from coal (both hard coal and lignite) was around 300 TWh/year. It almost halfed to 162.6 TWh in 2021. The all time low was in 2020, though, due to the pandemic. For…

sorry you're correct i was inaccurate.

Coal has only increased in 2021, but fossil fuels have increased since 2002 (from 69.9GW to 78.9GW), i misremembered that statistic as coal instead of fossil fuels

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#370

Post by pydry »

simion314 wrote: post #361
pydry wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We would need to build much , much more storage, and I hope you know water dams are not easy to build(a lot of humans and wild life needs to be moved), if you don't already have them probably is impossible to create them. >A week of no solar power or wind is unheard of. A week of no wind is very very rare. You don need no solar or no wind, you need a few weeks of super low solar and wind, like say in winter, solar ef…

We would need much much more of anything to make our power fully renewable.

It's still cheaper and faster building pumped storage, wind and solar (all This is not even accounting for the nearly free insurance granted to nuclear plants putting taxpayers on the hook for costs like the $800 billion cost of dealing with fukushima (which involved burning a lot of coal and gas).

The economics of nuclear power as green energy only really make sense because it lets you share some of the rather high costs of maintaining a nuclear arsenal. The environmental movement is being coopted/guilted into supporting its subsidization.

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