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Comment by Nbox9 | Hacker News Reader

> It's particularly smart in this moment

It may be particularly smart for this moment in internal French politics, but energy independence is a smart move for any sovereign.

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Hinkley Point doesn't look so expensive now (Electricity forwards have been greater than the rate the reactor is supposed to cost since august)

Also keep in mind, a lot of the cost of Hinkley Point is not so much the cost to build the reactors, but the financing. Speaking from memory, we are talking about borrowing at something like 10% over 35 years.

If France finances these new power plants, financing cost goes virtually to zero. So even if actually building the new reactors cost the same (unlikely, I hope they learnt a thing or two over the last 10 years...) they will end up a lot cheaper than Hinkley Point.

Also insurance. All plants in the USA are insured by the government, I'm sure the same is true in France as well.

Finance is not free, there is always opportunity cost.

Interest rates are very low still though. Governments can borrow at nearer to 1% than 10%.

But that money could also be applied in other areas of the economy, that might have far better payback. And with France's current track record of nuclear construction, throwing more money at nuclear without fixing the fundamental problems first is serious misallocation of capital.

Just the latest news that is the same as the last decade of bad news:

> EDF now estimates the total cost of the project at 12.7 billion euros ($14.42 billion). Its expected cost has more than quadrupled from the first estimate made in 2004.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-announces-new-de...

$15B of lithium ion battery factory would have far far greater carbon impact, dollar for dollar. $1B on early stage startups would similarly be more impactful.

The total cost (to date, as it isn't yet delivered) of the EPR was mid-2020 established by the "Cour des comptes" (Court of Audit) at 19,1 billions euros. A recent official announcement added 300 millions euros.

French: https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2019/06/24/epr-...

well, with nuclear you're (and in this case, we're) still dependent on uranium mines and all the equipment that's require to build and maintain those power plants, some of which might not be manufactured in the countries

That may be a problem in the long term, but there's not some spigot of gas you can turn off and cause an immediate problem.

Uranium is also much easier to trasport than gas thanks to the ridiculously high energy density of uranium. Reactor grade uranium has an energy density of about 3,500,000 MJ/kg in a light water reactor, whereas natural gas is about 55 MJ/kg - so uranium is about 64,000 times more energy dense on a per kilo basis. You don't need pipelines or fancy LNG terminals, either - it's pretty easy to transport in relatively unexciting bulk containers.

So, once the security concerns are addressed, you can buy uranium from any country willing to sell it to you and ship it. The number two and number three producers of uranium worldwide are Canada and Australia, both of which France is very friendly with (a submarine kerfuffle with the latter notwithstanding).

Sure, and France reprocesses, too, which aids fuel security.

Of course, this doesn't mean they control the entire supply chain for needed parts for nuclear-- but if some critical piece broke they wouldn't have no energy immediately, either.

The top four producers of uranium (per tonnage) are Kazakhstan, Australia, Namibia, Canada:

* https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...

Better than being dependent on oil and gas, especially if your current supplier is Russia.

uranium doesn't matter, its fairly common. It's enriching that uranium that is held closley and is considered the 'Hard' part.

Fun fact; This was the key measure in obamas iran deal. The US would give them the enriched uranium if they shut down their nuclear research.

Dependencies are a fact of life.

Question is, does Europe really want to depend on journalist/dissident-murdering Russia?

It is even in Russia's best interest to ne encouraged to diversify their economy before they simply run out of natural resources. If there is a steady decrease in the sale price of fossil fuels instead of a sudden one they will have more time to adapt right?

I don't think that's really a worry (running out of resources). Our deepest mines are a paltry 4km; forests can be managed. Oil, gas, and coal will eventually run out, but the prices will have by then have risen to the point that use at scale will be impractical.

Those natural resources will last longer than Putin and his friends will be around.

The largest uranium fuel depot in the world is Chernobyl, Ukraine.

Russia nearly bankrupted itself when it contained the nuclear disaster and even Gorbachev thinks it was Chernobyl that ultimately destroyed the Soviet Union.

Now with this in mind, I wouldnt be surprised considering the sanctions on Russia, if they perhaps make a grab for the uranium in Chernobyl and sell it, to claw back some of the costs they incurred for cleaning up Chernobyl.

Strategically, it was useful for Russian politics to have something as risky as the Chernobyl nuke power station in the Ukraine during the soviet union era, ie different country if anything went wrong nothing to do with us sort of thing.

However thats how it remains until now where the Iranians need uranium after their enrichers were destroyed with Stuxnet, so you have one potential customer there, you also have India & Pakistan, Israel as well as the UK and France who will all be needing a bit more uranium as we get off fossil fuels to reduce greenhouse gases.

> Strategically, it was useful for Russian politics to have something as risky as the Chernobyl nuke power station in the Ukraine during the soviet union era, ie different country if anything went wrong nothing to do with us sort of thing.

The same type of reactor as Chernobyl is still in operation at the Leningrad NPP

It would appear that some countries also view nuke power stations like offensive firewalls, that's the Baltic sea nations captured in some respect.

Germany's car industry and Russian Oil wealth is also a partnership I see.

> The same type of reactor as Chernobyl is still in operation at the Leningrad NPP

Along with three units each in Kursk and Smolensk NPPs. Plus I think a lot of people don't realize some of the other reactor units at Chernobyl continued operating until the last one finally shut down in 2000.

The other reactors at Chernobyl continued to operate for years after the incident at reactor 4. The last reactor there closed in 2000, and only as a result of being strongly incentivized by the international community. All the RBMK reactors were retrofitted with additional safeties after the incident. They're not really a risk.

"The very architecture of the Chernobyl reactor was faulty", often repeated in some media, is a lie, and therefore the more-or-less implicit "our architecture cannot lead to such a disaster" falls flat.

On the wiki page, a weakness was powergrid failure and the minute or two it took for the diesel generators to come online. They looked at whether any of the energy from the reactor turbines could be used to keep the water pumps going in this 1-2minute window until the diesel generators were up to full speed.

It needed a massive amount of water to pumped around which explains why many nuke power stations are positioned on the coast.

Of course, wiki is wiki, but is no more or less valid or invalid, than other reports when being mindful of bias.

In terms of Chernobyl and radiation leaks, an airburst instead of ground burst would spread more radiation and could parts of the Ukraine become radioactive wasteland to prevent Nato pushing right upto Russia border?

Russia hasnt moved an inch, but NATO has so could NATO end up on the wrong side of history with this one? Wars are always good distractions for domestic failures.

There's tons of uranium everywhere. You certainly don't have to put on the lead underpants and root around in Pripyat for it. Canada and Australia have massive amounts.

I know, I can pull uranium nodules out of the cliffs along the Jurassic Coast in Dorset UK. They are like blobs of clay, its the enrichment process which requires lots of it, so with all that enriched uranium in Chernobyl, why not flog it?

Do you really think there's any just lying around? The other reactors continued operating at Chernobyl after the accident - the last one didn't close until 2000. I seriously doubt there's piles of usable ready to go enriched uranium just lying there for the exclusion zone visitors to trip over.

Its all still there on site and will be for at least another 10 years. 09 September 2020 https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chernobyl-used-f...

Question is just what is the state of the fuel? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_nuclear_fuel#Plutonium

And what developments have been made here? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarov

Reactor grade: more than 19% 240Pu and less than 80% 239Pu

If the irradiation period has been short then the plutonium is weapons-grade (more than 93%).

Chernobyl's life span was cut short, so do we really know what things are like?

Edit.

Lets not forget being a member of NATO means nuclear weapon sharing, so is Russia not justified if it made a grab or made Ukraine a radioactive buffer zone?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferatio...

Where does China come into all this with their new missiles after backing Russia?

Edit 2 Nato has become unpopular in Europe since the middle east wars and the ensuing migrant crisis. How do you know there isnt a concertive effort to rein in the Americans who spend the most on their military, not just within EU NATO members but within the wider global community? In other words are the Americans walking into a trap?

Thanks for following up, that's super interesting!

Speaking about independence: where does the uran come from?

And how is this clever since the EDF cannot sell their nuclear power without making losses?

Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia

Followed by Namibia, Niger, Russia, Uzbekistan, the US and China.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Uranium_...

> where does the uran come from

All over the place. Uranite is pretty common. E.g. Canada has 200+ locations: https://www.mindat.org/min-4102.html (scroll to the very bottom).

If a nuclear 'renaissance' arises, strategy will be at play: Russia and the US will obtain uranium from their 'partners', in Africa China will probably gain new partnerships, and other nations may encounter some difficulties.

Moreover (source: UNECE): "mining impacts are technically highly dependent on ore grade, as the efforts required to extract a fixed quantity of ore is proportional to the amount of rock to be extracted, therefore inversely proportional to the grade. This is true at the individual mine level, for which such a model could be derived; more importantly, this assumption is valid for open pit and underground mines. Warner and Heath test this relationship and its influence over the full life cycle of the technology, showing that a lowering ore grade may lead to tripling life-cycle GHG emissions by 2050 in case of a sustained growth of installed nuclear capacity"

Read: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1530-9290... "Depending on conditions, median life cycle GHG emissions could be 9 to 110 g CO2-eq/kWh by 2050."

One does not exclude the other :p

In general, whatever a politician's motivation is for any particular bill may or may not be aligned to yours, even though you may both agree on the outcome of that bill. And that's ok.

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