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Nuclear Power in France

world-nuclear.org

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Re: Nuclear Power in France

#71

Post by andrewxdiamond »

dehrmann wrote: post #50
andrewxdiamond wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is always touted as such a good idea on this site, but I want to take the opposite stance. - Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%. If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. - Nuclear waste is difficult t…

> Nuclear power has inherit risks that are not present in other forms of modern energy generation. The risk is mostly that there's a large, high-profile accident every 20 years. Coal power has probably killed more regular people (not miners) than nuclear due to its emissions, but it's metered out slowly, so it's less scary. People are more afraid of flying than driving for the same reason.

I do not consider coal to be a modern source of fuel, it’s clearly a legacy source that we need to be rid of.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#72

Post by lm28469 »

cogman10 wrote: post #51
shakow wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. We do people focus so much on the danger aspect of nuclear energy only? Why not the thousands of people who died of dam break, the millions who die of lung failure due to exposure to polluants, or, the elephant in the room, the dozens of millions whoe die and will die of climate change? Sure, it's very sad that a han…

> Ah yes, remind me how many windmills we would need to produce as much energey as a NPP? Here's an infographic on that very subject :) https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/infographic-how-much-powe...

This isn't France though, we're much more limited in term of sun and windmill efficient land over here and 80% of our electricity comes from nuclear, not 20% as in the US

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#73

Post by jacobsenscott »

rllearneratwork wrote: post #4

being anti-nuclear at times of climate crisis is a moral and intellectual equivalent to being anti-vaccines during the pandemic

Being anti-nuclear is more like being anti-facebook. Nuclear is a giant centralized free-loading subsidized secretive toxic industry. Just like nuclear.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#75

Post by eldaisfish »

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #68
shakow wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. We do people focus so much on the danger aspect of nuclear energy only? Why not the thousands of people who died of dam break, the millions who die of lung failure due to exposure to polluants, or, the elephant in the room, the dozens of millions whoe die and will die of climate change? Sure, it's very sad that a han…

The tone here is much more patronizing than required. > We do people focus so much on the danger aspect of nuclear energy only? Because nuclear is the only one with multigenerational risks that can make entire regions inhabitable. A damn break is deadly, a nuclear meltdown is potentially significantly way worse. > Such a way to waste my Sunday. Hiding waste is not a viable solution to dealing with it, regardless of t…

>Because nuclear is the only one with multigenerational risks

As opposed to continuing to emit carbon? this mischaracterisation of the threat is dangerous. The climate is changing right now. We literally cannot afford to bicker and wait for an indeterminate point in the future when entire grids will run on wind, solar and batteries.

We have a solution now. That solution is nuclear power and will buy us time to transition to a fully renewable grid.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#76

Post by sudosysgen »

ortusdux wrote: post #52
dragonelite wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also running 4th generation thorium molten salt reactors prototypes and thinking of having a commercial viable design in 2030. From what I gathered the waste is not that suitable for nuclear weapon usage. So those Reactors could be exported to SCO/BRI/global south countries. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02459-w

The problem with molten salt based reactors is that the high temperature radioactive molten salts destroy their containment vessels. I've yet to see a system design where the salt facing components are expected to last more that 7-10 years, which really hurts profitability.

Yes, the reactor cores would have to be replaced every 12-15 years. But if the reactors are mass produced and designed to swap out the cores, it doesn't have to be too expensive.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#77

Post by neaanopri »

redm wrote: post #2

"Government policy is to reduce this to 50% by 2035." I'm no expert on Nuclear power but it seems to me were going in the wrong direction. At a time when we're investing so much money in other fuels, we could be investing that in better nuclear power, like Small Modular Reactors [1], Sodium Cooled Fission, Small Pellet reactors, etc. [2] [1] https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-sm... [2] https://…

Nuclear can also directly generate heat, for residential district heat, or industrial processes heat

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#78

Post by lazide »

pjscott wrote: post #55

I often hear opponents of nuclear power say that it takes too long to construct, so it's interesting to look at the timelines for these reactors -- most of them took about 5-6 years from the start of construction to being hooked up to the power grid, and there was a lot of concurrent construction, so their peak throughput was several reactors per year. More recently France seems to have lost the ability to build nucl…

We lost the sense of urgency and the connection between our decisions, what happens, and why we feel the way we do. It was also helped along by the ‘green field’ nature of Nuclear at the time (writing new code is easier than fixing a legacy code base, and making a new design when you don’t know and have to consider the bazillion regulations and gotchas since discovered is also easier), and a general ‘do it’ mindset after the massive destruction of the war and ongoing rebuilding.

Mostly now we’re not in a hurry because we ‘already have stuff that works’ because we’ve had so many of those prior projects ‘just work’ (hint: they didn’t, it took massive hard work to make them happen - but the people alive today were not the ones getting dirty on the ground there, so they don’t know that). And we haven’t had many big disasters around them yet (as in electric grid collapses for a month in winter and can’t be restarted) to give it more urgency and importance.

In some ways I think we’re in a classic ‘rich kid’ fallacy.

Hey, we have so much money, why do we need to be responsible right? We can be irresponsible because even if we crash the Porsche we got for our birthday, we’ll get a new one in a week anyway.

Well, we only have so much money because the prior generation worked so hard (and stole a bunch of stuff and murdered a bunch of people, but hey whatever - sometimes folks need their illusions), and while the inheritance might last if we keep pissing it away, it usually doesn’t for very long. And one of these days we’re going to crash the Porsche and end up with life long medical issues.

It does tend to self correct, but oooof does the other side of the curve hurt. And sometimes whatever mindset or situation created the wealth in the first place just never is recaptured. Greece and Italy are certainly not on a trajectory back to world defining empire status anytime soon, and are more worried about how to keep their pensioners fed.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#79

Post by dehrmann »

logicalmonster wrote: post #25

> However, 58% thought that nuclear power caused climate change while only 46% thought that coal burning did so This raises some interesting thoughts about the nature and importance of democracy.

A horrifyingly large portion of the population believes all sorts of stupid things. The sad thing for democracy is most people don't understand policy or even civics well enough to make an informed decision on a candidate. Even then, most candidates don't either, and they end up relying on advisors and lobbyists. The fun implication of campaign finance reform is it implies elections can be bought (just ask Michael Bloomberg), and people can't sort out political messages for themselves.

Oh, the good news about two-party democracy is it mostly keeps 20% views out of politics entirely. 58%/46% is a problem, though.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#80

Post by misiti3780 »

corban1 wrote: post #69

Nuclear is clean, it is safe but it is not cheap. It's safe and clean because of it's moderately priced. I stand by nuclear because it's cleanness and safeness which can't be compared to anything else. What will we generate electricity with in non-windy cloudy days? Coal? LNG? ESS? Note that all of those options are more dangerous, more expensive and more dirty than nuclear.

Not sure about Europe, but nuclear seems to be expensive in the US because construction costs are high because of overcautious regulation[1]. It was considerably cheaper in the 50/60s here, and it seems like mostly a policy issue

[1] https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop

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