It works so "well" that the French taxpayer will have to pay the UK so they can deliver their guaranteed energy prices the over-due and over budget reactor they desperately try to finish will generate.
It's so fantastic that every summer they have to buy dirty coal energy from Germany because their rivers get too hot and every winter because...it's too cold and their ageing fleet is breaking down all the time.
The success is so staggering that they plan to reduce their fleet by 50% until 2030 and replace that with renewable energy.
Hooray...
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Edit: since the Astro-Turf reached me and I can't reply anymore due to downvotes, here are the answers to Bayart:
> I don't down where you get that broadly France relies on German coal in the summer and winter.
Why do you try to lie about something everybody can google. This is the first result for "France river hot":
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-electricity-heatwa...
> Pretty much the entirety of the problems we've had with the EPR program has to do stopping building nuclear power plants for decades and losing the associated skill-set and industrial base.
Weird because EPR didn't stop building. They just stopped building in France so this can't be right. Also: the reactors currently still under construction started construction when all the people from the peak construction times where still there. They still can't manage to build on budget or on time. Not even close.
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@corban1:
Only because Germany doesn't hide their subsidies doesn't mean that the French taxpayer is not paying for their ageing fleet (or overpriced projects abroad) with their taxes...
Also the fact that coal is an important job motor in troubled regions of Germany which is why it's still there (but is being phased out completely soon).
Seems the success is very clearly visible both environmentally and economically?
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1190067/carbon-intensity... [2] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/press/pressinformation/co2...
>It works so "well" that the French taxpayer will have to pay the UK so they can deliver their guaranteed energy prices the over-due and over budget reactor they desperately try to finish will generate.
Pretty much the entirety of the problems we've had with the EPR program has to do stopping building nuclear power plants for decades and losing the associated skill-set and industrial base.
In 1999 a new reactor started in France (Civaux-2).
In 2005 a new building site started (at Olkiluoto, Finland).
Even by considering start dates (Civaux-2: 1991) and neglecting that skills are needed during the building (and not only when it started) they only are 14 years apart.
Moreover many skills are needed for the maintenance of the existing fleet (in France).
Olkiluoto was planned as soon as in 2000, when its builder Areva NP created an agency in Finland in order to sell the project.
Also: most skills (concrete, welding...) aren't completely specific to the nuclear industry: part of those are shared with many other fields.
How a huge and well-organized heavy industry which sells projects could let key skills evaporate in a few years (no, not 'decades')?
this missing capacity is less the usual slowdown of reactors because of the hot rivers (which by the way is done for environmental and not technical concern) and maintenances process, than a consequence of a previous nuclear plant closing (for political/electoral reasons). another consequence of this missing plant was to reopen two charcoal power plant _this_winter_.
a large part of the EPR slowdown in fr is due to security concern that changed while the project was already started, china EPRs which was similar but a lot less constrained was done in time.
on the price: 25% of the energy produced by nuclear in fr is sold under the market price to private retailers because of anti-monopolistic EU laws and stupidity of our governement. the electricity price in EU is usualy indexed on the worst gaz plant available, with the actual price of gaz raising and all of the 25% already acquired, a lot of them are just closing.
given those constrains, yes this model works more than well...
the project to close "50%" (in fact 15 reactors) until 2030 is another political subject which will probably never become a reality given that most renewable alternatives projects end up being blocked/hated everywhere.
funny fact: replacing ALL the current transport and electric energy supply in fr by wind turbines has been evaluated to require one of the most efficient available turbine for each km² on ALL the french territory...
The report was from 2019 because it was the first search result. This is an ongoing issue and not getting better: https://www.montelnews.com/news/1198233/heatwave-impact-on-f...
Also:
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-france-power-winteroutloo...
https://www.montelnews.com/news/1266598/-france-faces-winter...
https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/People-in-France...
https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2113554-french-tso-rules-...
This is why you diversify your energy.
And I mean seriously...this is France we're talking about. Those informations are easy to google. Please stop spreading misinformation.
> a large part of the EPR slowdown in fr is due to security concern that changed while the project was already started, china EPRs which was similar but a lot less constrained was done in time.
Yeah they should just look away more like in China...it's just a nuclear reactor after all! France should also get some Tofu-dreg experience from China. This is the way.
Sorry...but I can't take such statements seriously. It's madness.
> funny fact: replacing ALL the current transport and electric energy supply in fr by wind turbines has been evaluated to require one of the most efficient available turbine for each km² on ALL the french territory...
Why would you even evaluate such a narrow scenario? This is beyond stupid. Renewables are not just wind.
Also I doubt this has been done seriously since there was a study years ago that you could power the whole of Europe if you take just the available building space on the coast and use wind.
yes and all your sources are post 2019 (the fessenheim reactor has been slowed since 2017, the project/idea to close it started in 2012, and the effective (not reversible) closing has happened on feb 2020 while it was stopped since more than 2 years) dont really see what's your point here...
> This is why you diversify your energy.
no, our electric mix was simply not build on nuclear, hydroelectric and charcoal was our first power source, nuclear allowed us to close charcoal mines and plants while fullfilling the growing electric needs. nuclear is'nt without constrains that hydroelectric dont have, however there is not much more places to have new hydros. "renewables" will maybe goes up to 8% in the coming years and has already cost us more than 50billions€ (governement subvention) which is nearly two time our current non running EPR cost :) note that those 50billions was only for deployment they does'nt include exploitation cost, that's a big difference between wind turbines and nuclear, nuclear cost is mostly capitalistic (start investment for 60years in the case of an EPR) while wind turbine cost must be evaluated over their full lifetime including market fluctuations, try to evaluate that for the 60 years comming, good luck!
> Yeah they should just look away more like in China...
what's your point here again ? changing a project constrain while it is already started add cost and delay, however once done, acquired expertise usually reduce cost and delay. we have choosen our way to do it, probably for good reasons.
> but I can't take such statements seriously. It's madness.
actually this is your statement, your making a straw man here.
> there was a study years ago
what let you think that an old study with probably outdated constrains and knowledges would be more serious than actual studies from recognized sources (ecole polytechnique, les mines) ? and more important, those studies to be comparable must have the same subject, replacing nuclear with wind turbines is not the same as replacing nuclear + transportation(gas) for example. with the current urge (climatical and political) to reduce gas based transportations, there is also an urge/need to grow electric supply up to two time the actual production (unless your looking for economical collapse by replacing gas with nothing). from this point of view, current renewable are just a joke in france since we have no industries on renewables (they poorly failed/died) which means we will be fully dependent on external supply, and yes that's madness.
ho one last point, those studies are usually done with wind turbine because solar panels end up using a lot more surface than wind turbines, that let you think of the surface needs with a mix of the two...
> this is France we're talking about. Those informations are easy to google.
actually i'm french and in france (in case my poor english was'nt a sufficient hint), those subjects are a perpetual technical and political debate here, i dont really need google press report to explain me what i'm living (actually its a known fact that press is'nt an opposable source in techical subjects, try google schoolar maybe...) :)
How can that be? The whole discussion is not that long and you picked up this specific argument I was supporting with sources. Yes other sources were after 2019 and I can give you even more from before. This supports my argument but you don't even know what that was??
> no, our electric mix was
Says "no" continues to agree with what I said...man...
> however there is not much more places to have new hydros
Why did you chose hydro? I mean...what? I didn't even mention it and the most obvious things are solar AND wind. Hydro is our battery in the Nordics and alps.
> and has already cost us more than 50billions€ (governement subvention) which is nearly two time our current non running EPR cost
That is half of what EPR needs to invest to keep your ageing fleet from falling apart...
> nuclear cost is mostly capitalistic (start investment for 60years in the case of an EPR) while wind turbine cost must be evaluated over their full lifetime including market fluctuations
Yeah but only because you just accepted to ignore all the costs generations will have to come up with just to cover nuclear waste processing and storage. You just hide it while you complain about transparent costs on renewables. This is hilarious.
> what's your point here again ?
It's not my point. It's your point. You said that safety costs too much and we should look to China...a country known for terrible safety.
> actually this is your statement, your making a straw man here.
It's not my point. It's your point. You said that safety costs too much and we should look to China...a country known for terrible safety.
> what let you think that an old study with probably outdated constrains and knowledges would be more serious than actual studies from recognized sources
The fact that while nuclear only gets more expensive, renewables not only got cheaper but also better and there are now other studies which look much better than what you suggest.
Why don't you link your study? You've obviously found it now.
> actually i'm french and in france
That makes it even worse. You must know about the energy shortages caused by either broken or not running nuclear reactors. It's known all over Europe and you still chose to lie about it? Why?
none of thoses sources is contradictory of what i explained on the history of our shortages.
> Why did you chose hydro?
because you talk about mix, today its fr secondary electricity production, and hydro plants are older than fr nuclear plants/projects.
>That is half of what EPR needs to invest to keep your ageing fleet from falling apart...
i'm not sure of what your talking about again, that's probably half or even less of what we must invest to keep our ageing (not EPR) nuclear fleet yes, which provide 75% of our production, in other words: 8% production for 50billions imported external products + exploitation cost on 20years vs 75% for 50billions local supply one shot to add 20 years to the current fleet, the choice is easy technicaly speaking (not politicaly). our ageing fleet is not linked to EPR at all which may be considered as a prototype for an eventual next fleet, we will see, and as already explained, the cost of our first EPR is not the cost of an EPR in a future fleet. side note: most of our ageing fleet have been build in only 10 years after 20 years of research and "prototypes".
> you just accepted to ignore all the costs generations will have to come up with just to cover nuclear waste
we started a project in 2000 for longterm deep storage which will provide waste stockage for more than 100years of our current dangerous waste production ( https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laboratoire_de_Bure ), for less dangerous product we are already treating not only our waste but most of the EU nuclear waste.
> You said that safety costs too much and we should look to China...
no i said our safety changes extended cost and delay, while china without changes respected cost and delay. which imply that our acquired expertise _with_ safety changes will probably respect and reduce cost like delay if we produce more EPR. this does'nt mean and i never said that we must do like china, that's your straw man.
> The fact that while nuclear only gets more expensive
source ? for the same type of product nuclear does'nt get more expensive, what get more expensive is more efficient, more secured, better and new/first try nuclear plants
> renewables not only got cheaper
renewable cost is a market cost not a local/production cost, like lithium for batteries, china got a mostly exclusive (quantitavely speaking) market on solar and parts of wind turbines (and for a time lithium) not by lowering cost but to acquire the market. we will talk about renewables production cost when they will be produced with renewables energy sources and not charcoal, gaz, gas and nuclear sources. yes nuclear actually rely on the same energy sources with one big diffence: it does'nt rely on it all it's lifetime.
> Why don't you link your study
because you have'nt link your "contradictory old study" and like i already said, to compare them they must apply to the same subject. but if you really want sources on this topic and a lot more about the same subject, there is the 20 hours videos of courses of the "ecole des mines", one of the two or three most recognized schools in fr (largely better than any master or ph.d) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgy0rW0oaFI&list=PLMDQXkItOZ...
you may find the site of the professor in the link which will provide a lot more ressources on nuclear and climate data and expertise, and probably some sources in english.
> You must know about the energy shortages
yes and you seem to not realize that those energy shortages are only on our own production, most of them where usually compensated by introducing/buying energy from others EU country with some minor exceptions like lowering the max available power on smalls customer populations and in rare case short cuts; no critical supply was ever stoped, no home get total shot down for more than a few hours, if those happens that was for small sets, nothing comparable to (for example, even if not linked to production i think) what happened in texas last winter, even occasional energy cut for technical problems which happen to all electry energy supply in all countries are worse than those "production shortages".
> you still chose to lie about it ? why ?
i'm not lying, you just seem to simply not knowing what you'r talking about, building some sort of fantasy disaster looking everywhere on google to confirm your bias (which will always be a success whatever may be the topic of your fantasy).
No, it was late and overbudget.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Taishan_...
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/31/asia/taishan-nuclear-plan...
We need different nuclear reactors, fast reactors or thorium that use uranium more efficiently to stave this off, but they're more dangerous and still experimental, respectively.
I think we're better off using that nuclear money into building lots of grid storage for renewables.
This is a little pessimistic: these numbers rely on current proven reserves without reprocessing. Of course, if you want to use a bunch more uranium, prices will go up and the number of proven reserves will increase. This won't necessarily take a massive price swing-- heck, even at current prices new reserves will continue to be found.
> Then the price will skyrocket, and nuclear is already more expensive than renewables.
Fuel is a negligible portion of the cost of nuclear. You could triple the cost of fuel without materially impacting the operating costs of a reactor, and the overall costs of nuclear energy are not dominated by operating costs, but instead capital costs.
And, we're leaving out that reprocessing fuel is possible and proven (though there are proliferation concerns0.
This has already been addressed. Natural uranium can be gathered from seawater at about 2 to 5x the current cost. Considering how small fuel costs are in nuclear, that isn't much of a problem. And the amount available from all the world's oceans is orders of magnitude greater than that available from terrestrial mines. Even if we start extracting vast quantities from seawater some believe that more will be leached from rock, renewing the supply.
https://engineering.stanford.edu/magazine/article/how-extrac...
https://cna.ca/2016/07/27/theres-uranium-seawater-renewable/
"The advances by PNNL and ORNL have reduced the cost of extraction by a factor of four in just 5 years, but the cost is still about $200/lb compared to traditional uranium mining which ranges between $10 and $120/lb."
This isn't a reason to not do it. That gives us 40 years to figure out alternative processing patterns or alternative energy production.
Nothing happened. The reactor just sat there peacefully doing nothing, because it was a fast neutron reactor, the EBR-2.
> they're more dangerous and still experimental
They were neither in 1986. But sure, let's build more "grid storage", which isn't even experimental.
The moment people blame things on tree huggers they have fallen into the trap. Tree huggers are not the problem. The problem is carbon emissions. Tree huggers aren't stopping nuclear. They barely have any political power or representation. Nuclear's problems are the huge capital costs and the nimby attitude of the general public.
Nuclear is a clear win in countries like France with the capability and commitment. Climate change is a global problem and it doesn't matter where the nuclear reactors are as long as global emissions are reducing. Countries that can increase nuclear should. Those that can't may find it harder but they will have to innovate more and move faster.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/educational-magazin...
The late 1960s through 1980s saw a shift in the antinuclear movement toward protesting the development of nuclear power as an energy source. The antinuclear movement succeeded in virtually halting the governments' development of nuclear power.
And I'm not even sure the people in the anti-nuclear movements were really that concerned about CO2 emissions in the 70's or 80's. While currently renewables are much cheaper than nuclear that wasn't the case 30 or 40 years ago. Without the absurdly irrational reactions to TMI and Chernobyl a few years later, we would have been much better situated to considerably reduce CO2 emissions but sure blame the oil lobby (of course there are plenty other things to blame them for) ...
It's easier to target marketing against a few 'smoke stacks' than ten millions tail pipes. It's easier for people to get people to sign petitions against an 'industrial site' that is many kilometres away that most people will never see, compared to having people trash their own personal possession (their car).
Nuclear has the huge problem of not being available for another decade (because that's how long it takes to build plants). Until that is solved with some form of pocket reactor it can't solve the problem of greenhouse emissions.
The main problem with nuclear is the dangers of letting them get into a state of disrepair. In a politically unstable county it could be a real danger if they cannot secure the fuel or waste. A dirty bomb could be an environmental disaster.
Here in NZ many install solar and back feed the grid. They get paid to do so. But this doesn't help reduce emissions. During peak load the coal plants still fire up. We have significant hydro generation but require fossil fuels to deal with peak load. If home owners invested in batteries alone I suspect we could do a better job reducing our emissions.
Sure, and there's no reason we can't have both, that's my point.
> A dirty bomb could be an environmental disaster.
I live in an area with ~20 coal plants in a 15-minute radius and, let me tell you, a dirty bomb would probably have been cleaner.
Major aluminium production and mining , chinese crypto hub ?
At the very least we can stop shutting down the plants we currently have.
There is a finite amount of infrastructure that can be built at any one time: instead of shutting down nukes and building renewables to take their place, we should be shutting down fossil fuel plants and having renewable take over them.
Once all the fossil fuel plants are gone we can talk about nuclear at that point.
That is solvable problem. Much worse issue is that in mid lattitudes (e.g. central Europe) it is not available (or just marginal) most of winter.
Nuclear is the mainframe. Let's just concede, for the sake of argument: the hands-down better, more reliable tech.
Renewables is the distributed. Worse but worse-is-better [1]. Setup and investment is incremental. Take down and/or upgrading is also simpler. There's huge traction in the battery and renewable tech ecossystem. The lower entry barrier makes it a competitive, highly decentralized market where costs are going down fast. There are "killer apps" and a constant flow of innovation happening everywhere else too, outside of power generation: from cars, to airplanes to homes. And it's all that swarm, and not a single "because it's better", that makes the renewable+battery duo the winner.
Maybe nuclear could have been that distributed, pop energy too, but the fact today, for various well-known reasons (regulation, monopoly, distrust...) it isn't. And, by the looks of it, it probably won't be in the future. Nuclear failed to capture the traction in the West for decades already. Just like the IBM mainframe it's not going away, and it's a perfectly good solution for some people (banks for the mainframe, China for nuclear in this metaphore). But most of us are heading into a "cloud" of multi-tiered renewable tech solutions and nothing can stop it.
Also, it's fine to be pro-nuclear (I am too), but it's not fine to be anti-renewables (or anti-nuclear).
It seems that in their strange world every citizen is either pro-nuclear or a hippie living in a caravan. This is not how they will sell it.
China builds literally dozens of 1GW plants simultaneously for a fraction of the price, and in a fraction of the time, using western nuclear companies.
The time and cost limitation are entirely avoidable if we make sensible policy changes.
1. We need to issue an executive order opening the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. This one facility can hold ALL the nuclear waste we will make even if we move to 100% nuclear power.
2. We need to immunize nuclear plants from environmental lobby lawsuits which constantly delay projects and multiply costs.
These two changes ALONE will make nuclear plant construction attractive again in the US. Remember that large capital cost finance for profitable projects is not a problem. It's literally what Wall Street was built for. We wouldn't even need to fund the plants with gov't money.
(1) When nuclear accidents happen, they suddenly overturn the lives of a LOT of commoners all at once as opposed to slow and creeping and often "statistically determined" impact of other energy tech
(2) technocrats have consistently failed to demonstrate the ability to create organisations that over the long term prioritize safety and the ability to prevent accidents over all else (maybe with the exception of US Naval Reactors org - but who knows given the secracy)
People instinctively get this now. Fukushima was especially a bad shakeup because "if even the Japanese can't do safety right, why would we trust the dumb nerds we went to school with to be able to do so".
We should move on and focus on other clean energy tech, scaling up storage tech and stop wasting time and energy debating fission. And Maybe figure out a rebranding for "nuclear fusion" whenever it works (hopefully within my lifetime) assuming it's safety profile is better.
Then perhaps the US Navy and their US Navy Corps of Engineers need to be tasked with building & maintaining a system of land-based reactors
Instead of worrying about the loss off coolant, the operators worried about the reactor "going solid", which is slang for "no steam bubble is left in the primary coolant circuit". This made sense on the small Navy reactors they were trained on, but on the large land based ones. Arguably, it never made sense to take a submarine engine and turn it into a power plant.
Japan: in the past they invested in nuclear power, now they don't want it anymore BUT need gridpower and have no other way to obtain it than to (reluctantly) restart some reactors.
Hydroelectric dams have the same issue. I also bet, that if one of those gigawatt lithium battery storage facilities had a fire, it would be a very bad day for people around them.
The fire at the lithium battery station would burn out after a while, and the area repopulated very soon.
The nuclear waste land like Chernobyl is uninhabitable for the foreseeable future.
(1) When flight accidents happen, they suddenly overturn the lives of a LOT of commoners all at once as opposed to slow and creeping and often "statistically determined" impact of cars
(2) technocrats have consistently failed to demonstrate the ability to create organisations that over the long term prioritize safety and the ability to prevent accidents over all else
This is not the same as deaths.