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Comment by cycomanic | Hacker News Reader

France is not using their reactors economically. They have been told multiple times by the EU that the reserves that operators have to provide for decommissioning of plants are much too low. So this means that the government/the taxpayers have to foot the bill. And we have not even talk about long term storage cost which are typically never taken into account.

So yes it is a political decision, France is willing to highly subsidise their nuclear industry.

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> France is willing to highly subsidise their nuclear industry.

And most of the world is willing to subside Oil and Gas to the tune of $5.9 trillion in 2020 or about 6.8 percent of the _world's_ GDP. [0]

Tax payer's money will be sunk anyway, choose your poison.

[0] https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Sti...

This is afaik true about nuclear power plants in general. They are one of the least cost-efficient energy generation sources out there because of their insane construction and running costs. In some countries they never make their money back, even if run by private companies, and only exist because of subsidies when they were built.

However, they are by far the most practical and safe way to generate ludicrous amounts of environmentally friendly energy out of all technologies that we have available. Even solar can't match up. If you factor in the really long term cost on every country on this planet due to climate change for example, this footed bill is chump change.

Each dollar diverted from renewables to nukes brings climate catastrophe nearer.

Starting a new nuke means burning coal for an extra decade, and at the end of that decade getting much less power per euro, displacing correspondingly less CO2, than if you had built out renewables instead.

There is simply no contest.

Even refurbishing a nuke instead of building out renewables is a losing proposition. Just continuing to operate a nuke instead of building out and then operating renewables is a losing proposition.

The only legitimate use for keeping a nuke running is while you are waiting to bring enough renewables you are building online to wholly displace it, because what you are spending operating it is using up money that could be building more renewables.

This is the magic of exponentially falling costs.

At the point where enough spare renewable generating capacity is available to charge storage, it will be time to start building out increasingly cheap storage.

you dont need 10 years to build a nuclear plant, most of delays are due to " political limitations" and construction/design inexpertise. South Korea build them on 56 months on average. Scale matter

In the US and Europe, it takes ten years. Or 20.

> have been told multiple times by the EU that the reserves that operators have to provide for decommissioning of plants are much too low

Why is the EU more trustworthy on these estimates than the French?

Well in fairness, the French government currently in power have an economic incentive to kick the can down the road to subsequent governments. Reduce reserve requirements now, next generation of taxpayers foot the bill later.

Does the EU have an incentive to inflate the reserve requirement?

The "EU" is just the client countries of the EU. Some countries neighbouring france are strongly against nuclear energy, and thus would have cause to exaggerate the costs.

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