So you mean exactly how with coal the entire society bears the cost of just running the plants? Even if we set climate change aside for a second, there are huge health downsides to burning coal. I mention coal specifically because we're talking about the contrast with Germany here.
>>Same with decommissioning the nuclear plants, for which the companies are supposed to hold back some funds, but they just undercalculate that, go bankrupt and the taxpayer pays up.
The only issue I have with this is that nuclear power plants should have never been operated by private companies in the first place. They should have been national property and taxpayer funded from start to finish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lectricit%C3%A9_de_Franc...
Nuclear waste is not a real problem - the total amount of long-term waste produced by France is less than 10 tons a year. That's for a country of half a million square km..
But still, even though France is exporting more energy than importing, over the whole year, at certain times, especially in winter they have to import coal power...
Also, there are possible solutions to nuclear waste, such as auto-breeding reactors that basically burn waste, or energy amplifiers... that also reduce nuclear waste to waste products with much more manageable half lifes.
IMO Being a luddite with nuclear energy means not looking at reality for what it is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor
The CANDU is a successful attempt, the energy amplifier was never attempted, and self breeding reactors are a material engineering problem (alas not yet completely solved), not a physics problem.
Throwing a fraction of what we are spending to chase the "fusion dream" we could have achieved a great deal more for present reality.
Again that's all IMO.
edited: clarification
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Development_an...
Which is why one might be careful about ramping up the production of the waste.
French subsidizes on nuclear is about the same size as Germany, but that is not the most strangest fact. The biggest subsidizes french pay on the energy grid is for fossil fuel! The fossil fuel subsidizes is also almost identical in size to Germany subsidizes to fossil fuels.
Germany actually spend twice the amount of total subsidizes than France in the energy sector, with half of it going to renewables. The amount of nuclear subsidizes and fossil fuel subsidizes are similar, but then they have the combined amount added to just renewables.
In raw numbers, the French pay about €25 billions of subsidizes with fossil fuels getting the biggest share. In Germany that is €50 billions, with about €25 billions going exclusively to renewables.
Same goes with, say, hydropower. If a dam breaks and flood a region, the tax payers will pay. Are you against hydrolic dams ?
I obviously not saying that we should phase out dams, what I am saying is, nuclear power is one of the safest energy we have, funnily enough[0].
That's just flat out wrong. Decomissioning costs are included in the TCO and electricity price, and IIRC for Hinckley Point C it's a big chunk of the costs. Furthermore, EDF is state-owned and won't just go bankrupt. Yes, the taxpayer will cover any shortcoming, but at least significant efforts are made to plan for decomissioning and cover the costs from the start; can anything similar be said about coal?
The rest of what you say is are regulatory issue. Similarly coal burning externalities are paid not by the generating companies but the rest of the society. Not that I'm suggesting coal and nuclear to be the only options.
I'd like to wait for it to actually work before accumulating ever more of the stuff.
I know Germany prefers to strip-mine their coal these days, but digging tunnels several kilometers deep is a skill that's been mastered for more than a century.
These discussions are way more complicated than you apparently think, and they are both scientific and political. Nobody wants this stuff in their backyard, even a few kilometres underground. And Germany is relatively densely populated, making "nobody's backyard" a tight constraint...
Some countries may or may not have found storage options. But it is more complicated for most countries than you appear to think.
COVRA only does temporary storage (100 years). They are coordinating research into finding a final long-term solution, meaning they don't have a solution currently. Where do you get that 1000 year duration?
I don't know about the Finnish solution. Do you have some links about that?