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France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

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Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#81

Post by Gwypaas »

Manuel_D wrote: post #72
joe_the_user wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France is the only country I know that's managed to make nuclear power work. Unfortunately, they haven't been able to export that expertise. Nuclear power plants are vast construction project. The construction and large-engineering industries combined are vastly corrupt in the US (look at the 3 billion dollars planning costs of the unbuilt high speed rail project in California, look at the Big Dig in Boston, etc). In…

Ukraine and Slovakia both generate the majority of their electricity from nuclear [1]. South Korea and China area also building nuclear plants at a decent rate (though the former is adding a lot of fossil fuel capacity too). When the United States built nuclear plants at scale, in serial production, plant costs were also much lower. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country

South Korea had a run in with a ton of faked documentation and is essentially out of the game [1]. China likes to keep a finger in the nuclear jar for diversification but the current investments are minuscule, even though they look large from an outside raw numbers perspective. [2]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_South_Korea#H...

[2]: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/average-annua...

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#82

Post by eecc »

908B64B197 wrote: post #27
HideousKojima wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Environmentalists are blocking construction of more wind power Environmentalists really are their own worst enemies. When I was in high school near San Diego about 15 years ago, there was a huge amount of opposition to a solar power project. From environmentalists. There was a solar power plant out in Imperial County and the environmentalists were protesting the high voltage lines that would bring the power into San…

I sometimes wonder if oil and gas companies even need lobbying: Environmentalists are the number one threat to any green initiative. If they could all agree on one thing just for once.

Likely Shell is funding these “environmentalist groups” in what is basically the corporate version of shitposting. :)

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#84

Post by Bayart »

bjoli wrote: post #57
Bayart wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New plants are much more powerful than the older ones. But it's true that the relative share of nuclear is meant to go down.

I was under the impression that it is in the range of 1-2x per reactor. There are some old Swedish ones that are at 800mw, while the ones I believe the article refers to are in the ballpark of 1500mw.

Older water pressure reactors in France are 900mw/1300mw, the EPR is 1650mw. I concede it's not as dramatic an increase as I made it sound. But it should also go hand in hand with longer uptimes and better safety.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#85

Post by Gwypaas »

ryan93 wrote: post #66

Absurd that discussion of nuclear power brings out people who think it’s too pricy. 30 trillion in US debt. Ten percent of that could have nuclearized this country

And say 3% makes the entire country renewable? What is the better use of money then? Energy is energy, and even better if it is vastly simpler to generate with less headaches to take care of afterwards.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#86

Post by thatfrenchguy »

lb0 wrote: post #78
Krasnol wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France just had to turn off 3 of their rotting reactors[0] and they lowered their estimates for this year to 295-315 TWh[1]. They're desperate, it's election year and they failed to come up with a diversified energy plan for the future. Luckily the recent taxonomy decision may help to avoid sharp tax rises to finance this backward and hilariously expensive[2] strategy but those EU funds won't run forever. Expensive t…

totaling 8 now .. but in the end will need another one really going down bad to stop all the sudden pro-nuclear movement here in Europe, which I can imagine only must have some astroturfing behind. But til then, blow more money into insurable and as much green as coal and gas power plants :( (And that calculations done by real experts didn't even include all the other uneconomic issues from getting that stuff from so…

> But til then, blow more money into insurable and as much green as coal and gas power plants :(

Nuclear plants don't emit CO2, unlike coal and gas plants.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#87

Post by 7952 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #22
HideousKojima wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Environmentalists are blocking construction of more wind power Environmentalists really are their own worst enemies. When I was in high school near San Diego about 15 years ago, there was a huge amount of opposition to a solar power project. From environmentalists. There was a solar power plant out in Imperial County and the environmentalists were protesting the high voltage lines that would bring the power into San…

> Environmentalists really are their own worst enemies. Doesn't almost everyone see themselves as an environmentalist these days? The problem is - the average "environmentalist" is not trying to maximize for anything. It's a broad bucket that almost everyone is falling into and there's almost zero common ground, no organization, etc. Of course there are going to be people that oppose almost everything that label them…

I think most environmental argument is just normal politics. We have just expanded what people care about. A new set of things have become contraversial or virtuous. And these issues can mix in weird ways that cause friction and cost to people. But government and politicians don't really want these issues to be political. Balancing so many things is just too complex and fraught.

Also, a lot of environmental groups are focused on specific things. Expecting them to protect the whole world and all of the future is unreasonable. It's like expecting a cancer charity to reduce homelessness. Someone who loves birds just wants to protect birds.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#88

Post by tomdell »

nexuist wrote: post #50
tomdell wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extract value and leave the locals alone to deal with the consequences - how progressive.

Great job moving those goal posts when your original premise was called out. What exactly do you want France to do in Niger to atone for their sins? Build infrastructure, fund businesses, make deals with their government? In other words, you want to solve colonialism with more colonialism?

Locals should have been better compensated, more taxes should have been paid to the local government, costs related to environmental cleanup should be paid for by Areva. The business that went on there was fundamentally extractive and unfair to Niger - a result of a drastic power imbalance.

I fail to see how my "original premise was called out" or how I "moved my goalposts", but great job defending neocolonialism online - you really owned me!

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#89

Post by thatfrenchguy »

Gwypaas wrote: post #85
ryan93 wrote: post #66

Absurd that discussion of nuclear power brings out people who think it’s too pricy. 30 trillion in US debt. Ten percent of that could have nuclearized this country

And say 3% makes the entire country renewable? What is the better use of money then? Energy is energy, and even better if it is vastly simpler to generate with less headaches to take care of afterwards.

There's no even medium-size grid in the world today that runs on renewables that aren't hydro.

Re: France to Build Six New Nuclear Reactors

#90

Post by magicalist »

Manuel_D wrote: post #72
joe_the_user wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France is the only country I know that's managed to make nuclear power work. Unfortunately, they haven't been able to export that expertise. Nuclear power plants are vast construction project. The construction and large-engineering industries combined are vastly corrupt in the US (look at the 3 billion dollars planning costs of the unbuilt high speed rail project in California, look at the Big Dig in Boston, etc). In…

Ukraine and Slovakia both generate the majority of their electricity from nuclear [1]. South Korea and China area also building nuclear plants at a decent rate (though the former is adding a lot of fossil fuel capacity too). When the United States built nuclear plants at scale, in serial production, plant costs were also much lower. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country

> When the United States built nuclear plants at scale, in serial production, plant costs were also much lower.

As far as I know, there was never a time where US nuclear power plants were built on time and at budget (and that's while building more than France ever did).

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