France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors • Hacker News Board

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#431

Post by panick21_ » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 2:53 AM UTC

mrep wrote: post #381

panick21_ wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What matter to me is that within one generation they totally de-carbonized the grid from oil and coal to nuclear and have successfully been in running it that way for decades. Germany has been doing a Green New Deal style thing with Renwables for 2 decades now, in my opinion they could have easily been heading to 100% CO2 free by now if they had just started to build nuclear plants. The French certainty made mistakes…

Nuclear looks to be about 3x as expensive as wind/solar [0] and that is assuming you use it at 100% of its capacity due to the high building cost and low marginal costs. Just looking at California, winter nights drop to about half of electric demand as summer days [1] so you'd have to pay even more for spare capacity. I think it would far cheaper to just build like 2x the wind/solar you need and use the surpluses to…

Based on first principle I simply believe nuclear is the better long term play. In terms of total resources and land required modern nuclear beat anything by order of magnitude. Current prices based on 40 year old technology are not my main concern.

Nuclear is proven and proven at massive scale, its proven massive industrial nation can transition to almost 100% nuclear and can do so within a few decades.

The method that you advocate where you overbuild massive amounts of unsolved issues and it not even proven on a medium scale. And in the cost calculation sited don't account for the problem all in from production to distribution.

Methane produced in the way you advocate would still be transported in leaky pipelines. Massive power grids would need to be build to connect the regions optimal for collection with where it is most used. Massive batteries would still be required in such a system.

I am 100% sure that if a government today said, lets build 100 nuclear reactors in the next 30 years and put them next to each operating coal plant. I am 99% sure they could do it and that it would be a robust system for the next 50-100 years. For that certainty I would be worth paying a premium for.

Again, look at German, had they spent 2 decades on a green transformation on nuclear, they would now already be nearly CO2 free by now.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#432

Post by Terry_Roll » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 4:30 AM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #400

Terry_Roll wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know, I can pull uranium nodules out of the cliffs along the Jurassic Coast in Dorset UK. They are like blobs of clay, its the enrichment process which requires lots of it, so with all that enriched uranium in Chernobyl, why not flog it?

Do you really think there's any just lying around? The other reactors continued operating at Chernobyl after the accident - the last one didn't close until 2000. I seriously doubt there's piles of usable ready to go enriched uranium just lying there for the exclusion zone visitors to trip over.

Its all still there on site and will be for at least another 10 years. 09 September 2020 https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chernobyl-used-f...

Question is just what is the state of the fuel? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_nuclear_fuel#Plutonium

And what developments have been made here? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarov

Reactor grade: more than 19% 240Pu and less than 80% 239Pu

If the irradiation period has been short then the plutonium is weapons-grade (more than 93%).

Chernobyl's life span was cut short, so do we really know what things are like?

Edit.

Lets not forget being a member of NATO means nuclear weapon sharing, so is Russia not justified if it made a grab or made Ukraine a radioactive buffer zone?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferatio...

Where does China come into all this with their new missiles after backing Russia?

Edit 2 Nato has become unpopular in Europe since the middle east wars and the ensuing migrant crisis. How do you know there isnt a concertive effort to rein in the Americans who spend the most on their military, not just within EU NATO members but within the wider global community? In other words are the Americans walking into a trap?

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#433

Post by visarga » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 5:43 AM UTC

MrPatan wrote: post #305

BurningPenguin wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's very unlikely that there will be no wind or sun all over Europe. There is constant exchange of excess energy between the countries anyway. Regardless of that, there are other options too. Like water or geothermal depending on the country. Sometimes there even will be too much energy. I can imagine this being used to make some hydrogen for later use.

How about less sun or wind than is necessary, instead of the strawman "no wind or sun"?

You got me. You're right, of course.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#434

Post by arcticbull » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 6:58 AM UTC

Terry_Roll wrote: post #432

arcticbull wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think there's any just lying around? The other reactors continued operating at Chernobyl after the accident - the last one didn't close until 2000. I seriously doubt there's piles of usable ready to go enriched uranium just lying there for the exclusion zone visitors to trip over.

Its all still there on site and will be for at least another 10 years. 09 September 2020 https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chernobyl-used-f... Question is just what is the state of the fuel? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_nuclear_fuel#Plutonium And what developments have been made here? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarov Reactor grade: more than 19% 240Pu and less than 80% 239Pu If the irradiation per…

Thanks for following up, that's super interesting!

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#435

Post by sofixa » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 8:16 AM UTC

buserror wrote: post #425

sofixa wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what recursion means. There are income taxes on your whole income (- a base provision for living expenses), and you can deduct certain things ( like donations to nonprofits) from the taxable income.

I know what recursion means thank you so much. If you get $100 income, get a 20% tax on that, and then get another 20% tax on... not $80 but on the /previous/ $100, you are paying recursive taxes. Thats what the old "CSG" was (replaced by something else but in the same 'spirit'), in france. You are being taxed on amount you already been taxed on.

Yes, all taxes ( i include social charges and stuff like healthcare, retirement, etc. payments) are counted based on your total income - some provisions.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#436

Post by nix23 » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 8:34 AM UTC

stolsvik wrote: post #429

nix23 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No snow = no glaciers grow = not water in our alps, it's not that hard to understand: https://www.thelocal.ch/20170217/swiss-study-snow-to-largely... https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2018/02/no-... >In an initial phase, climate change will actually cause the runoff to increase, as water stored as ice is released. However, if the glacier becomes too small, it will reach a tipping point, which we call “…

Lakes?

Sorry to tell you but there are not many lakes in the Maintains, and they are often fed through snow and water-sources from glaciers/snow-fields, from higher above. And there is not a single lake in the mountains with nearly the size/mass of a single glacier.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#437

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 10:25 AM UTC

makomk wrote: post #281

thow-58d4e8b wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#438

Post by fulafel » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 10:28 AM UTC

atlantas wrote: post #404

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…

Then we need to remove the 15 year delay. It's not a law of the universe that it needs to be that slow.

It's a relatively new development that solar and wind are so cost effective, even though nuclear had a decades long head start and enormously more taxpayer subsidies over decades and decades. Maybe it's not a law of the universe, but there is a lot of experience showing it's slow, risky and expensive.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#439

Post by inter_netuser » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 12:51 PM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #383

inter_netuser wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did that transition happen?

It's been a gradual process over the last two decades. The cynical view would be that during that time they left the government twice to protest the government approving new nuclear power projects, and paid a heavy political price for that. They can't afford to do it a third time, and given Finland's position (can't rely on solar or wind during winter, can't build more hydro, can't depend on imports during the produc…

What makes you say more urgent than ever?

We’ve been promised apocalypse by now several decades ago, and literally nothing changed.

CO2 is just a misdirection away from actually dangerous things such is persistent chemical pollutants we dump into the ocean by millions of tons that cause widespread hormonal disruption or outright toxicity.

that is happening today, not at some unspecified point in the future. So weird nobody seems to be concerned about that.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#440

Post by joconde » Sat, Feb 12, 2022, 1:26 PM UTC

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…

I’m skeptical about that 5 degree bet. What’s your source?