> France aims to rapidly develop renewable wind, solar and biomass capacity to curb its dependence on atomic power, reducing its share in its power mix to 50 percent by 2035, from 75 percent today.
The UK is doing fine with a renewables-heavy powergrid, as are Spain and Portugal. 40% of their electricity comes from this, and the share is rising steadily.
> However, the bill also calls for "realistic goals to transform our energy model by increasing the timeframe for reducing nuclear power to 50% by 2035 instead of 2025, which would have required the construction of new gas-fired plants, and would have involved an increase in our greenhouse gas emissions."
I'm sure World Nuclear News is more favorable to nuclear power, but I don't see how that is relevant. Do you believe that this article fabricated the contents of the French bill?
This comes off more as a cheap jab than a substantive claim of bias.
Legislation gets written and rewritten as timelines get tweaked. That's a reality. The core goal is unchanged.
They literally are, and have formally said so. They're not shutting down all their reactors right away or anything. But for a country that took pride in betting big on nuclear, officially planning to go from 70% nuclear to 50% is a pretty huge drop. They've already shut down the first two reactors at Fessenheim as part of this.
Yes, they're kicking the can down the road slightly at last news. That's not surprising since many of the reactors may be possible to life-extend to 50 years, and renewable energy costs are dropping quickly. Delaying a few years saves some money. But that does not change the fact that many of the reactors will not be replaced when they hit end-of-life.
> They literally are, and have formally said so
Citation needed.
As I stated in another reply to you, reducing dependence on nuclear has a lot of advantages unrelated to "nuclear is bad" or "nuclear is not clean" or etc. Like I said before, no matter what your energy source is, 75% of your power being produced from a singular source is not a good idea. You may be familiar with the old saying "don't put all your eggs in one basket." This is the same reason we don't invest in a single stock. Dropping to 50% is far from getting rid of nuclear and it is an absurd claim.
> But that does not change the fact that many of the reactors will not be replaced when they hit end-of-life.
Many, but many are planed to be replaced. You're focusing too much on the reduction aspect. Reduction is not elimination. France has no plans on eliminating nuclear in the foreseeable future. The only way this would happen is if ITER was a major success and small versions could reliably be developed and deployed. I'm not counting on that.
I already provided a citation for this - https://www.reuters.com/article/france-electricity-solarpowe...)
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>> France aims to rapidly develop renewable wind, solar and biomass capacity to curb its dependence on atomic power, reducing its share in its power mix to 50 percent by 2035, from 75 percent today.
A quick google will turn up dozens of other sources discussing that if you like.
> reducing dependence on nuclear has a lot of advantages unrelated to "nuclear is bad" or "nuclear is not clean" or etc
When did I even say that? Please have the decency NOT to convert my educated and reasoned points into a straw-man argument. I spent years working in nuclear physics. I'm not making some idiotic "nuclear reactors will turn us into glowing mutants" argument here.
The real issues with nuclear are -- and always have been -- simple, practical problems of cost, time to construct, and the usual problems of cost overruns and delays that you see with constructing a very complicated system. The Flamanville EPR has been a fiasco, with costs triple its original estimate and a timeline that ballooned to 15 years.
In comparison, the competition from renewable energy has heated up rapidly. Economies of scale are rapidly driving down the costs renewables and batteries (and the underlying technology is improving rapidly). Between 2010 to 2019 wind energy become 70% cheaper and solar became 89% cheaper: https://www.lazard.com/media/451082/lcoe-8.png
Battery costs have dropped 75% over the last 6 years: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/report-levelize...
Nuclear energy in 2020 is often quite expensive compared to renewable energy, and the comparison is only getting worse over time.
> France has no plans on eliminating nuclear in the foreseeable future.
In 2020, Energy Minister Élisabeth Borne announced the government would not decide on the construction of any new reactors until Flamanville 3 starts operation after 2022. Citation: https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsfrance-to-decide-on-new...
"France has undertaken to cut the nuclear share in its electricity mix from around 75% to 50% by 2035 while increasing the share of renewable solar, wind and biomass."
“Whether we are looking at 100% renewables or a percentage of new nuclear, we want to consider all the elements, including technical, economic,” she noted. “On such important subjects, we must make rational, reasoned decisions, and that is the objective of the various studies that have been launched.”
To put that all together: France is cutting their use of nuclear, and waiting to decide whether or not to replace reactors that are fast approaching end-of-life. They're going to look and see how the energy market shakes out.
>>> They literally are, and have formally said so
>> Citation needed.
>> reducing dependence on nuclear has a lot of advantages unrelated to "nuclear is bad" or "nuclear is not clean" or etc
> When did I even say that?
Wow this conversation is a mess.
We have to look at France and how much carbon it produces. Right now it is one of the lowest producers in Europe. Let's look at the electricity map[0]. Sweden, Norway, and France are leagues ahead of others in terms of carbon emissions. France's plan is first to replace existing natural gas, biomass, and coal with renewable resources. The second part of the equation is that their reactors are reaching EOL, so do you build more or replace them? If you pay attention to energy trends solar and wind (something France has an abundance of) is getting much cheaper and battery storage is getting cheaper (France doesn't have to bet as much on battery storage since they can over produce and sell excess energy, which they currently do a fair amount of). So if you're going to take bets this is still a good bet. A big part of a good and stable power grid is by having a diversification of energy resources. 75% of your energy being dependent upon one resource is not a good idea. No matter the resource. Even 50% is high, but acceptable. They aren't planning from going away from reactors, there's even one under development. But you also want to hedge your bets. If any of these factors (solar, wind, battery storage, smart grids, ITER, etc) don't pay off, then they need to maintain their nuclear grid. It would take a large revolution in energy development for France to be able to still produce so little carbon and provide its citizens with a modernized (electrified) country.
Also consider that France doesn't have good access to hydro like Norway and Sweden do so its options for clean energy are nuclear, solar, and wind (lots!). They should, and are planning on, using a diversification of these. Nuclear provides a strong baseload and the others supplement. You may notice that this is a key argument made by many proponents of nuclear. Anyone that says the grid should be entirely nuclear is an armchair scientist who understands very little about nuclear or the climate. But the same is true for those that think we can solve the issue with just solar and wind.
So if you're saying France is turning away from nuclear, then this is adding desires into a plan that does not express or concern itself with those desires. A big part of this decision is about diversification and increasing energy independence (just like recycling fuel is a big part of their energy independence, which they power a whopping 17% of their grid with recycled nuclear alone).