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Comment by lelag | Hacker News Reader

That's in large part due to the work of the german-influenced green movement which did manage to get France to stop building reactors for 30 years or so. In the meantime, the french nuclear industry lost the competency to build new one as demonstrated by the struggling EPR project in Normandy. But at least the many older reactors have been producing low-carbon power since then...

Germany's electricity production has emitted about 8 times more CO2 emission than France over the last 30 years: I blame the german political ecologists for being directly responsible for a massive amount of our current ecological woes by demonising the nuclear industry and limiting it's spread across the world for the last 30 years.

It's really a sad story to be so misguided to end up contributing to destroy the one thing you wanted to save...

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> In the meantime, the french nuclear industry lost the competency to build new one as demonstrated by the struggling EPR project in Normandy.

If the French (of all people) can no longer get it together to build new reactors even remotely on time and on budget, then maybe we just need to be honest and give up on the "build lots of new nuclear plants, quickly" as a credible medium-term component of a plan to deal with climate change.

"France's Flamanville 3 reactor will cost 300 million euros more than forecast and fuel loading is being pushed back by up to six months, EDF (EDF.PA) said on Wednesday, in the latest setback for a project already running more than a decade late.

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."[0]

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

It's very possible that you are right, that it's too late, that we can't redevelop enough nuclear capacity in time, that we are doomed to see the world burn.

That won't prevent me from blaming the anti-nuclear crowd that put us in that situation in the first place.

Yes, nuclear is expensive, yes it can be messy but it was our best shot to produce abundant amount of low carbon power. All this talk about switching to wind and solar power omit the inconfortable fact that the current low prices for those technologies are low because we are using fossil fuel to make them.

When you have to make advanced renewable tech with only renewable energy, you will see that it's no longer possible to make it economically either.

We are not doomed to see the world burn. We know what to do: just build renewables. It is dishonest to claim that using carbon to build them is a problem. The more we build, the less carbon is used on them.

When you need falsehoods to make your case, you have no case.

Falsehood ? What do you know about building windmills ?

I admit that I don't myself know much, but I can tell you that you need at least:

- A modern metallurgy industry using coal to make steal

- Possibly a chemical industry to make composite material

- A logistic industry to move components around the world using petrol (all the solar and wind renewable production is based in china)

- Cement to build your fondation (using gas)

Remove all this and try to build it locally and see how much they cost you...

> A modern metallurgy industry using coal to make steal

Nuclear reactors also require steel (and a chemical industry and cement) but fortunately that doesn't require coal:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/19/green-steel-...

Sure but that wasn't the point.

The point is that those that claim that we can replace fossils fuel entirely by wind and solar based on the current price of wind and solar production produced by an industry doped with fossil fuels at every stage are deluding themselves.

It's precisely the point for ALL primary energy sources.

everything is built with the current fossil fuel powered industry. cement, steel, uranium mining and enrichment all is subsidized by the fossil fuel doped industry. Same with wind and solar.

The fact that nuclear power costs more than fossil fuel power is really a reflection that its whole supply chain is consuming more fossil fuel energy than its producing. it is not the magical bullet you think it is.

furthermore, as certain installations of solar and wind are actually producing power cheaper than fossil fuels, its contributing to a trajectory where the % fossil fuels in industry can actually diminish.

Koreans and Russians (political refugees) have still the skills to build reactors at time and "costs"

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