I keep hearing from people who think nuclear's a bad idea that "France is ramping down its reliance on nuclear power, so what does that tell you?"
I wonder whether any will change their minds based on this news.
I wonder whether any will change their minds based on this news.
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 an ideal world, nuclear might be great. In the existing US world, it seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
Edit: found this text on the problems of standardization of nuclear power in the US. http://www.strategicstandards.com/files/NuclearEnergy.pdf
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_in_South_Korea#H...
[2]: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/average-annua...
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).
> When the United States built nuclear plants at scale, in serial production, plant costs were also much lower.
Let's put this in simpler terms:
* Lots of plants that started construction in the 1960s-1970s time frame -> lower cost per GW
* Smaller number of plants started in the 1970s and beyond -> higher cost per GW
Thus, a strong relationship between a greater number of plants build built and lower cost per plant. Construction time frame doesn't matter much. If 100 plants are started in 1965 and finished in 1980 and 10 plants are started in 1975 and finished in 1990, the 5 years of overlap doesn't change the fact that the former is going to have a much better economy of scale than the latter.
Point being that multiple countries and companies had very successful nuclear power programs, and they didn't collapse because of intrinsic failure of the industry but lack of political will. And as you note, overall large-scale construction in the US in general has turned into a dumpster fire regardless of what is being built due to stupid policies and no small amount of graft.
Hello from Ontario, Canada! Have a look at the 'supply' tab of this page: https://www.ieso.ca/power-data. Most of our energy production is from nuclear. It works well, and is relative inexpensive and consistent (I mean, look at that graph, it's INSANELY consistent).
The current hike in electricity pricing is pretty much solely based on the fact that way too much of Europe's electricity is produced with Russian natural gas...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Nuclear_Generating_Stati...
Only water cooled reactors really have that problem. Nuclear plants could be much smaller. But innovation has just done very badly.
Nuclear scale, regulation is its own worst enemy and the social movements against it didn't help.
In the US for a while they did nuclear right as well. Nuclear always does well if you actually build many in a row. Learning effects are massive in large projects. Look at any countries that build many nuclear plants, it always works.
We could literally have had 100% green energy 40 years ago no problem. It was cheap coal that prevented that. We would be way better of having built nuclear.
And Switzerland, Sweden and others have successful networks with nuclear that are very green. Also parts of Canada.
That really depends on your definition of "making it work". France's current nuclear fleet is already underfunded by several tens of billions [0]
Now we have Marcon announcing "tens of billions" for new reactors, the first of which is supposed to go online over a decade from now, with presidential election coming up soon.
Which begs the question; If France has so many spare tens of billions lying around to invest in nuclear, why don't they use those to cover already underfunded nuclear positions?
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-nuclear-idUKKCN0VP...
Nuclear from a cost perspective continues to be expensive; also for the French. And they will in any case continue to build out solar and wind as well. So, there's that.
And finally, building nuclear plants is something the French do abroad too. So, it's actually something they export that generates jobs and revenue in that way. So, they would want to at least build a few plants to keep that going. And of course they also have military interests tied up with uranium enrichment. France is fiercely protective of its status as a nuclear power.
But I think overall nuclear will be slowly declining proportionally in France; just like almost everywhere else. Unless something changes on the cost front. Which does not seem to be happening
A cynical person might even imagine French infiltrators behind the scenes supporting anti-nuclear sentiments in neighboring countries in order to eventually sell them electricity. Energy independence and energy costs have started wars before, so it would just be pocket change spent for a future "investment".
The former German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder is now chairman of Russian energy company Rosneft, and was a strong advocate of the Nord Stream pipeline project.
You can also look at this plot of fossil fuel as fraction of all consumption and try to point out the point there there's a jump from nuclear switching off: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels-share-energy...
It's not funny, it's bluntly wrong.
The German nuclear phase-out was precedented by the EEG, the first green electricity feed-in tariff scheme in the world [0]. It was part of the Energiekonsensgespräche that went on in the 90s, and ultimately resulted in ratifying the nuclear phase-out in 2002 [1] where nuclear would be replaced with renewables subsidized trough the EEG.
It's particularly wrong in the context of Germany using most of its gas not for electricity production, but rather for industrial and chemical production, and household utilities, only 14% of German gas is used for electricity generation [2].
Nuclear fission reactors would do nothing for that, they don't help with high temperature smelting were gases need to be injected, as it's for exampled needed for metal alloys that go into all those cars Germany manufactures.
They only way nuclear fission could help there is by using nuclear energy to electrolyze hydrogen, and use that as natural gas replacement. But renewables can very much do the same, without creating very complicated waste, while also fixing what's currently holding renewables back the most; Storage [3]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Source...
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomkonsens
[2] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/37985/umfrage...
[3] https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/dutch-pin-hopes...
So, over 50% of German natural gas usage can be replaced by nuclear electrical power, based on the citations you provided :)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance
Who is gonna pay for that? When are you gonna do that? During the 10+ years of building reactors? What if your new reactors don't finish on time?
That does not mean heating pumps are not a thing in Germany, they have been steadily gaining share particularly with newly constructed buildings [0] that have to abide by even harsher energy regulations.
But what you are suggesting would involve replacing tens of millions of "old stock" households, all to justify nuclear fission power generation while not fixing any issues as to why Germany is actually phasing nuclear fission out.
You still offer no solution to the waste, just like you don't seem to give a single thought about financing such a change or who would be willing to invest in new German nuclear reactors.
Because German nuclear companies most certainly won't, they are just as happy with this phase out as everybody else, particularly as it gave them several huge government pay outs, not just for the disposal of the waste [1], but also for the phase out [2], can't even tax the fuel rods to pay for their disposal [3].
Which makes German nuclear fission energy very likely some of the most profitable on the planet because, unlike EDF, these companies are not majority state owned.
[0] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2021/10...
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/german-government-does-nuclear-waste-d...
[2] https://www.dw.com/en/vattenfall-wins-case-against-german-nu...
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 times coming up for the French taxpayers.
Why would you need conspiracies when the failure is so clear in front of you?
[0] https://then24.com/2022/02/08/three-nuclear-reactors-shut-do...
[1] https://www.edf.fr/sites/default/files/epresspack/2447/5c9aa...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-announces-new-de...
Why diversify? If you have enough power when you need it without emitting CO2 I would think that would be enough.
However, no new nuclear construction for that many years does look like a mistake as France looks like it is slightly increasing use of coal this winter: https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20220112-france-fires-up-coal-p...
If France had more NREs it would still face the same issues without adding considerable storage capabilities (any big country that does 80% NRE thanks to storage?)
Ask that question next summer when the rivers get too hot again and they have too shut down.
Sense of purpose. Mere incompetence is disheartening.
Reasonably, to drop CO2 emissions by 5% each year, ie. to have a change of keeping climate drift below 2°C avg, these reactors won't even be enough for French energy needs...
I mean, it's very relevant to the population of France, who are currently relying on a huge number of aging nuclear plants that will be retired in the coming few decades. I for one am hugely relieved to hear this news and hope it works out.