Not building/using nuclear is almost criminal negligence. People will die from that mistake.
Nuclear certainly is crucial in the mix. And used as such: Europe has a lot of nuclear power.
But nuclear is slow. Terribly so. Even an operational plant needs days to react to increasing or decreasing demands. And building such plants from scratch, or extending existing ones, takes decades. Never months.
you can read about this concept here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heating_element
Anyone using electric baseboards is getting highly subsidized electricity because any other energy source is cheaper.
Only place I saw baseboard heating was in school portables.
It’s something I’ve always wondered:
At night, it might be more cost effective to heat a bedroom electrically than an entire household with gas. But that’s a forced air heating issue: you can’t block 75% of a furnace’s airflow and expect it to keep working. Europe usually has boilers and radiators so dialing down heating to just a room is possible.
Or better yet, heat the person with a mattress pad instead of the building air at night.
Electric water heaters and baseboard heaters are common, and extremely efficient. In fact, resistive heaters in the scientific sense (watts in vs. watts out) are the most efficient form of heating.
They're extremely reliable and cheap because of how simple they are.
They may not be _cost effective to run_ in many regions due to high cost of electricity (per watt as compared to gas). But here in BC Canada, resistive elements are extremely common due to relatively cheap power (Hydro in our case). For whole home heating, heat pumps are usually used in new builds because of their advantages, but they're still very tied to the grid and have elements in them for defrosting and the like.
If you scaled up nuclear you'd similarly see prices of electricity drop, and if you have the grid infrastructure (or build it), electric heating (for your home, water, cooking, whatever) becomes pretty attractive.
But I'm glad you've been convinced :)
Electric resistive heaters are 100% efficient - they convert 100% of the electricity into heat.
Electricity heating does produce a bunch of heat at other places though, and it all comes from work, whereas the gas could only produce maybe 70% as much work if used some other way.
Yes there are inefficiencies at generation and transportation. But I don't think those are usually counted when talking about the efficiency of a home device. And it certainly won't be enough to bring it down to 0%.
As an illustrative example, you could get the same heating effect by putting the electricity through a computer or other appliance, or by putting the gas through a heat engine to produce electricity which is used inside the home and warming the house with the waste heat.
I know about heating by computer because for the last several years I've heated my apartment solely by mining Ethereum on my computer. The only dedicated heaters that my apartment has are resistive electric heaters built into the walls, so it's better for me to get a little Ethereum plus heat than just heat.
You could frame it as fraction of the heating that is possible at carnot efficiency, I guess. Ie. the amount of heat you put into your room / the amount of heat you with a perfect machine could at typical temperature differentials.
Then an element would be about 10-15% efficient (as measured at the wall vs. an ideal heat pump) and gas would be...awkward to calculate (I'd have to open up a textbook if not just multiplying max COP and max thermal efficiency of a heat engine), but somewhere in the 20-30% efficient range. Electric including a thermal generator would be in the 8-10% range somewhere.
Electric heat pumps would be around 50-70% by this metric, or in the 25-40% range somewhere if using a thermal generator.
Thinking about it, I like this metric because it really highlights how much more wasteful burning gas to heat a home with electricity is if you're not using the waste heat for something. If you're not using renewable electricity, even heat pumps don't break even if they're not high quality and well maintained.
Really drives home the importance of insulation and good curtains in cold areas.
Edit: looking at absorption heat pumps, they seem to be a little better than my guesstimate. I think they outperform fossil fuel powered electric heat pumps.
Electric heating is about the simplest machine you can possibly make (it's just NiCr wire and a thermostat which is already there), and the cost would almost exclusively be the labour of installation. Even heat pumps (including for water) could be built in relatively short order.
The problem is it would entail quadrupling the electricity generating and transmission infrastructure. This is the hard part that takes decades.
- Large parts of the Uranium are coming from Russia
- Nuclear power is not competitive and nuclear power is very expensive (especially if you conside the costs the government will be left holding the bag on, becuase nuclear power plant companies will spin off their power plants to new companies to go bankrupt once the profiting is done and the cleaning up the nuclear remains starts), no matter how much the pro-nuclear people want to lie about it
- Nuclear power is statistically not dangerous compared to fossil fuels, but not compared to renewables.
- The world's uranium supply is running out. Already since the late 1980s, uranium mines have been unable to meet the world's annual demand. The nuclear industry has so far filled the fuel gap with material from military and civilian stockpiles.
- Nuclear waste is a problem no country except Finnland is anywhere near solving. Germany has been trying to find a permanent nuclear waste storage location since 1999 and have not come closer to finding one since then, because every time the current favorites are revealed the "not in my backyard" screeching starts and local politicials force a restart of the search.
- Many of the world's nuclear power plants are old, because hardly any new ones have been built in ages, because ...
- The construction of nuclear power plants is unbelievably expensive and takes decades, and much of the know-how on how to build nuclear power plants has been lost in europe over the past decades because so few are being built, which drives up the costs even further.
- We still have 7 years of CO2 budget in Germany, so why do some politicians talk about building new ones, although they would only be finished in 20 years at the earliest (and we in DE can't even get the berlin airport built in anything close to the deadline, how long does a nuclear power plant take then ?)
- Budgets for nuclear power plants take budget away from renewables
- We have to change from a centralised to a decentralised grid, nuclear power is a step in the wrong direction
- Nuclear power plants make us dependent on dictators
- Climate change has an impact on reactor operations. With global warming, extreme weather events are on the rise. Unlike renewables, however, nuclear power plants are not adaptable. Rather, their danger increases in our changing climatic conditions.
- Our neighbour france has heavily invested in nuclear power and is is a complete shtshow. There are constant headline to the extend of "Low temperatures caused another french nuclear power plant to go off the grid, worsening the skyrocketing energy prices in france" (The same with "too high temperatures" any many other reasons). Even before the war they had an energy shortage.
The 3 remaining nuclear power plants in germany are: - Emsland (1335 MW) - Isar/Ohu 2 (1410 MW) - Neckarwestheim 2 (1310 MW)
All three are pressurised water reactors and thus not as bad as boiling water reactors, but total rubbish compared to liquid salt reactors.
Moreover, all three have been in operation for over 30 years and all three are due for a "periodic safety review" (every 10 years), which was allowed to be ignored during their last 3 years of operation due to a "grace period under the Atomic Energy Act". If they were allowed to continue running, the operation time extension of the of all three would start with at least one month downtime, because these inspections would have to be started again. These inspections would most likely also reveal necessary repairs, wich would further delay the timeframe.
By the way, all three power plants have not been employing new staff for some time because they knew the would soon be shut down soon anyway.
In short: these nuclear power plants have been preparing for their shutdown since 2011 and have let everything slide over the last few years because everything will soon be demolished anyway. There are not the necessary fuel rods, not the necessary personnel, not the necessary will of the operating companies and no safety checks that would be necessary for continued operation.
Also: Merkel decided in 2011 (one day after the nuclear power plant disaster in Fukushima) to not allow nuclear power after the 31.12.2022. Merkel, famously in the green party . (for anybody with no clue about german politics: Merkel is in the conservative party)
The conservative opposition needs things to disagree on with the government, the current government had no scandals so far and the conservatives are still salty for being voted out of government, so they just make sh*t up and currently that is the myth of our magical saviour nuclear power.
There is no exploration going on to find new uranium deposits because there isn't much willingness to make new mines
Nuclear power is about as safe as wind and solar if looked at per TW. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
A nuclear reactor can be built in three years, though admittedly this hasn't happened in Europe. They are mostly (85%) built in under ten years. Figure 3 shows we should expect around 5 years. https://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nucl...
Not immutable. There are other sources that are much friendlier
>- Nuclear power is not competitive and nuclear power is very expensive (especially if you conside the costs the government will be left holding the bag on, becuase nuclear power plant companies will spin off their power plants to new companies to go bankrupt once the profiting is done and the cleaning up the nuclear remains starts), no matter how much the pro-nuclear people want to lie about it
I doubt this hyperbolic assertion. Prove it.
>- Nuclear power is statistically not dangerous compared to fossil fuels, but not compared to renewables.
Again, prove it. This is unsupported, and in fact from what I've seen, false. So provide some evidence.
>- The world's uranium supply is running out. Already since the late 1980s, uranium mines have been unable to meet the world's annual demand. The nuclear industry has so far filled the fuel gap with material from military and civilian stockpiles.
This is again, an unsourced claim. In fact, a quick google shows: "There is not now, nor has there even been a shortage of uranium. Fear about reliability of the supply of uranium has been used in the past as an excuse to get something else done." Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/llewellynking/2020/06/08/uraniu...
>- Nuclear waste is a problem no country except Finnland is anywhere near solving. Germany has been trying to find a permanent nuclear waste storage location since 1999 and have not come closer to finding one since then, because every time the current favorites are revealed the "not in my backyard" screeching starts and local politicials force a restart of the search.
I agree this is a problem, but it isn't one that is unsolvable. It's a cultural issue, not a physical one.
>- Many of the world's nuclear power plants are old, because hardly any new ones have been built in ages, because ... >- The construction of nuclear power plants is unbelievably expensive and takes decades, and much of the know-how on how to build nuclear power plants has been lost in europe over the past decades because so few are being built, which drives up the costs even further.
This isn't inherent, it can change, especially with political need.
>- We still have 7 years of CO2 budget in Germany, so why do some politicians talk about building new ones, although they would only be finished in 20 years at the earliest (and we in DE can't even get the berlin airport built in anything close to the deadline, how long does a nuclear power plant take then ?)
CO2 budgets are now irrelevant currently. China and Russia do not give a shit about CO2 emissions; their energy and GDP are heavily dependent on them. Globalization was the only mechanism that allowed the world to enforce these two countries to behave with emissions, and with the ongoing breakdown of the globalized system, there's no reason they'll reduce emissions. Why cripple Germany's economy to meet a target that the world's largest emitters aren't willing to get anywhere close to?
>- Budgets for nuclear power plants take budget away from renewables
Possible, but renewables have their own downsides, which are well articulated everywhere.
>- We have to change from a centralised to a decentralised grid, nuclear power is a step in the wrong direction
Why?
>- Nuclear power plants make us dependent on dictators
How? How does solar not do the same, in the case of China? 80% of the world's solar panels are made in China, in fact, that rely heavily on the consumption of Coal to produce. Source: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/14/us-chinese-solar-panels...
>- Climate change has an impact on reactor operations. With global warming, extreme weather events are on the rise. Unlike renewables, however, nuclear power plants are not adaptable. Rather, their danger increases in our changing climatic conditions.
This makes sense, but I'd suggest that it's probably possible to take this into reactor design.
>- Our neighbour france has heavily invested in nuclear power and is is a complete shtshow.
Source on this, I don't know much about it. I've heard only good things about France's nuclear program.
I agree this is a problem too, and this is why people point out there is also a physical issue which transcends culture.
In terms of radioactive properties remaining over a period of millennia during which a culture can be expected to have lost its identity, or been forgotten completely.
If the problem is not truly unsolvable, a permanent solution may still not be possible without close co-operation with a future sympathetic culture.
Yes, there was some anti-nuclear sentiment after Fukushima which made for an opportunity. But it was long in the running. Both the SPD and CSU/CDU had interests here. Lots have been written on this in established media, should you wish to delve deeper.
The Merkel government then stopped it, then resumed it again.
And now Greens try to claim it wasn’t their fault, despite it being the foundation of their party since the mid-1980s.
It was reverted as soon as the CDU took over, and reverted back after Fukushima. But it is originally a "Green" idea and ideology, and it remains to be one today (see: Bavaria trying to get their plants recertified after 2022, because of the gas situation, and Berlin - staunchly Green - fighting it.)
Read up on your history once more. Schröder/Fischer were both voted out of office in 2005.
Let's respectfully disagree here.
Anyway, don't let this cloud your judgement. There are economic issues here, and economics concerns trumps environmental, in Germany and elsewhere. This would have happened even if no anti nuclear campaigning had ever taken place.
In fact, it might even have happened faster if there wasn't also a big push for renewables, which have taken a lot of resources. The people really responsible should answer for this and not some convenient scapegoats.
A non nuclear mix is also cheaper and isnt uninsurable without a catastrophe liability waiver.
The best time to build a nuclear plant is 40 years ago.
Everyone thinks about power like you need one big dam, or one big plant (coal or otherwise). There's a lot of small fast flowing streams that have potential to create extra energy.
I think hydro needs to be reimagined. IT always need to flood valleys to be in the mix.
I actually have no idea how to estimate that. Anyone have a good estimate on that? Intuitively, I'm thinking that most of those rivers are fed by many small streams, so it would be approximately equal. I'm entirely unsure of that though so treat it as having huge error bars.
Sure the water in that creek might be falling hundreds of meters, or even kilometers, but without a dam the height differential at your generator is only going to he a few metres at best. Enough to power the lighting, fridge, and washing machine in the houses that the creeks happen to run by, but not much else.
With the advent of long lasting perovskites and (hopefully) some less polluting battery technologies you're not even better off cost-wise.
You might be able to do something with a long pipe parallel to the creek to get more head, but then you're going to spend a lot of your energy on wall friction unless it's very wide.
Could be, but that's a bunch of stuff you don't have to power with the existing system. Given how many creeks there are, that seems like it could really add up.
> With the advent of long lasting perovskites and (hopefully) some less polluting battery technologies you're not even better off cost-wise.
That's fair. I've learned in my life that I don't have a good intuition for what the costs of large infrastructure projects are.
A nuclear plant will probably have multiple 1GW reactors, with very high capacity factors. I think your numbers are very optimistic.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Star
2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Sunlight_Solar_Farm
Plus transitioning to nuclear just builds another set of kochs and saudis.
Plus it makes your entire economy beholden to one of China, Russia, France, or the US.
Plus it just kicks the can down the road. If you consider direct thermal forcing. We are exactly where we were in the late 19th century with greenhouse gases. There is no option but to transition to a steady state economy, and starting a bunch of projects that only pay off if you use as much energy as possible from them (and even then, solar + storage will be a fraction of the cost by the time they open) isn't the way to get there.
Plus those same five countries won't even let half the world have nuclear power plants.
Plus the world's uranium reserves won't actually last very long if you carry on with exponential growth (doubly so without reprocessing and breeding).
Then there's all the usual risks people mention.
The solution is the same as it has ever been. Degrowth, stopping waste, and renewables.
Then comes storage, curtailment, and backup (always necessary: fossil-fuel plants always produce around 9% of electricity in fully-nuclearized France).
Moreover backup is now provided thanks to gas turbines, and we know to run them thanks to hydrogen (clean), which can be green hydrogen (cleanly produced thanks to renewable sources overproduction).
Sure. Let me just build hydro dam where there's no hills and dig some geothermal where's no geothermal activity and we're all set!
At any rate you could build nuclear faster than that will take to be ready for market in the best case.
Those benefiting from huge potential for hydro, offshore wind or solar (deserts...) are at an advantage. Those benefiting from a low production time-profile correlation with most other ones also are blessed.
Those totally unable to deploy anything probably don't need huge amounts of energy or are rich to the point of already importing it (is there a counter-example?).
If however Europe can't continue to burn gas and oil when demand exceeds supply because of the weather, then there is a major problem that is going to need fixing in a very expensive and time consuming way. If green hydrogen don't drop in price and no other storage solution can arrive to become cheap than gas and oil, then the climate change goals won't be achieved.
To add to the problem in northern Europe, the locations for hydropower is practically already at maxed utilization. They are also quite old and with large maintenance debts. They are also is causing extinction of several species, and fixing that would cost prohibitively much money, and the solutions will reduce outputs.
The thing is, 5x solar and wind sounds great but if I can specific the time and space for it, I would make a great profit of trading 5 units of energy for 1x at a different space and time. The price difference in northern Europe can be a factor of 10 or even higher between low and high. 5 kwh worth 3 cent each is worth much less than 1 kwh worth 40 cent.
Some added information so: The Green party pushed for an exit of nuclear power as part of a social-docrat government. This exit eas actually pretty well worked out and planned. When Merkel took, one of the forst things was to throw that rather good plan out. Only to revert that decision, hastly at that, after Fukushima. That second nuclear exit, the one Germany is currrently going through, was hastly done, ill planned and rushed.
And lastly, nuclear power does exactly nothing to compensate for reduced gas deliveries. Germany, as in deed a good portion of Europe, is heating with gas. And not nuclear power or electrical.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
The amount of flak that purple sliver garners is way disproportionate to its importance - especially since it's not even dispatchable.
Plus germany relies on natgas for a ton more than just electricity. Will we make fertilizer with nuclear power too?
But yeah, people are definitely being a little over dramatic on the severity.
(Yeah it's about that expensive).
Im not sure if shifting that allocation would have been such a good idea though coz theyd now be using even more gas and coal.
Heat is the main challenge and heating alone is problematic all by itself.
Gas dependence was a huge mistake, nuclear is not the short term solution we are looking for and getting away from gas dependence in the past couldn’t have relied on nuclear.
Think heating when you hear gas, not electricity.
Are you able to expound on why this is the case? Are you specifically talking about furnaces that use some kind of oil being very common in Europe?
Also, in an emergency situation, can't nuclear be used for heating, albeit through powering things like space heaters rather than the normal furnaces?
So no, nuclear power cannot be used for heating and Europe definitely doesn't have an electricity problem.
And stop spreading FUD about people freezing to death in there houses in winter, please.
Edit: Assuming a plug in wall-heater does all of that, just how many of them would you need by November this year to change something?
1. Cool, nuclear power, cheap electricity, great.
2. Hmm, looks like sometimes they explode in a pretty rude, nukey way. Maybe we should stick with coal, oil, and gas.
3. Yikes, climate change. But if we pull all our coal/oil/gas plants down we won't have enough energy and prices will skyrocket. Not enough wind/solar/hydro yet.
4. So... maybe nuclear is a good idea again? Cheap electricity?
We're here. So your argument is we can't use nuclear because electricity is too expensive in Europe, when the whole idea is to increase the supply of electricity and thus bring down the price?
> Also, that wall heater doesn't heat your water supply
There are electric water heaters.
> how many of them would you need by November this year to change something
Maybe someone in this thread is arguing that we can both build a bunch of nuclear plants and distribute electrical heaters to people in ~4 months, but I'm not. This is all a long term thing isn't it? Don't we have to do this anyway for green energy?
Also, nobody will freeze to death in his house over this.
Please don't condescend! I agree this is a big job.
> Of course you can heat with electricity, in the case of heat pumps even sustainable. Thing is, there are millions of house holds, commercial and industrial users that have decades of infrastructure in place heating with gas. No way to replace that in mid, let alone short term.
Again we agree. My point is that we have to electrify for green energy anyway. May as well do it, right? Is your argument that we should only ever heat with gas, and electrification is a waste of time and money? Is there enough gas to do that?
> Also, nobody will freeze to death in his house over this.
The thing you're referring to is someone saying "In an emergency situation (a matter of life and death for the vulnerable)". Isn't it reasonable to consider this scenario? Why is it FUD?
Electric heaters are extremely expensive to run relative to gas or heat pumps.
Heat pumps are great and extremely efficient, but not they are as hard to install as air conditioners (because they are air conditioners that work in reverse).
Same with portable air conditioners.
But heat pumps are also available in single units now. They're getting quite popular because they can be self installed (no refrigerant engineer necessary).
Home heating is primarily a luxury for comfort, not survival. Given sufficient insulation, we generate enough heat from food to muddle through.
Is it fun to shiver under blankets during an energy crisis? No, not at all. But are people going to die? Not likely, assuming access to space alien technology like blankets and coats.
Public Health England say:
> The most recent data on fuel poverty in England indicates that there were 2.28 million fuel-poor households in 2012. 5. Cold homes can affect or exacerbate a range of health problems including respiratory problems, circulatory problems and increased risk of poor mental health. Estimates suggest that some 10% of excess winter deaths are directly attributable to fuel poverty and a fifth of excess winter deaths are attributable to the coldest quarter of homes. 6. Cold homes can also affect wider determinants of health, such as educational performance among children and young people, as well as work absences
in the summary at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Excell winter deaths (excluding COVID19) were in the ~29,000 region in 2019, which makes for ~2,900 deaths even though blankets and coats exist.
Europe is still going to have access to gas if Russia cuts its whole supply come winter -- in fact, 60% of the European gas supply will still be present. Probably a bit more, since lots of crisis efforts have been made to provide gas from other sources. Only part of the heating needs have to be replaced.
Let's say Germany still had the, what, 8000 gigawatts of nuclear power online that it has shut down during the last decade? Wild-ass guess, but it's a lot. That's base load, of course. Electric power.
Resistive heating is dirt cheap to deploy in terms of capital costs. You can buy a 2000W heater for $20, perfect for domestic use. So the operating costs dominate. Using a heat pump is 3-4 times better in terms of operating costs; that's not as easy to deploy but many places will already have A/C installed and that's usually the same thing.
So then it becomes a question of economics; many industrial processes cannot be replaced with electricity. But as we've seen, heating of living spaces can easily be done with electricity.
So in the kind of crisis we're discussing here, those thousands of gigawatts of nuclear electricity would be pretty damn useful for emergency heating of German homes and businesses, during months where the gas would be more profitably used for the industrial processes that require it.
It sure as hell wouldn't have been cheap, but it would be cheaper than shutting down half the economy, which is what we're preparing for right now.
It's a moot point, of course, because those ~17 nuclear plants are already shut down. But it would very much have made the issue dramatically less painful.
Population Germany: 80+ million
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/could-germany-keep-i...
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=104&t=3
Also probably helpful to think about it on a per person basis. Another comment corrected me that Germany has 80 million people, so let's use that. 8000 gigawatts (8 terawatts) divided by 80 million looks like 8,000,000,000,000 watts / 80,000,000 persons gives you 100,000 watts per person which does not seem realistic. With my air conditioner running at full blast, that's probably just a couple kilowatts, and that covers 3 people. Lights use a few watts. A beefy computer is around 100 watts.
It's possible that Reuters got gigawatts and gigawatt hours confused.
But I don't think it ruins the core of my argument; it wasn't hinging on Germany having reduced their annual power production by 99%. If Germany in fact shut down 15GW of nuclear production (15 plants), that's still on the order of 200 watts for every person in Germany, or one new 1000W resistive heater running 24/7 for every fifth household.
That's the kind of "on the margins" capacity that would indeed make a Russian gas embargo dramatically less painful.
Different types of power have different characteristics. Nuclear power plants runs at constant load and changes in power are slow. They take on the order of days to start and stop, and can not on their own follow load changes on a country wide network.
This isn't good or bad, it just is. They can manage the same base load day every day until they need servicing. But that also means you need other power sources to take the top load. That's usually natural gas turbines, even if it could be other things. Hydro is optimal, but most countries have a limited capacity for that. Which is, somewhat ironically, a similar situation as wind and solar have, but for completely different reasons.
Keep that in mind when people talk about replacing natural gas with nuclear. They do different things.
This mostly isn't physics, but rather a reflection of nuclear power's high capital costs. Nuclear plants have demonstrated that they can ramp up and down pretty quickly compared to e.g. most combined cycle natural gas plants.
https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12...
"For example, according to the current version of the European Utilities Requirements (EUR) the NPP must at least be capable of daily load cycling operation between 50% and 100 % of its rated power Pr , with a rate of change of electric output of 3-5% of Pr per minute. " - it goes on to discuss how most modern light water plants significantly outperform this requirement.
"Most of the modern designs implement even higher manoeuvrability capabilities, with the possibility of planned and unplanned load-following in a wide power range and with ramps of 5% Pr per minute. Some designs are capable of extremely fast power modulations in the frequency regulation mode with ramps of several percent of the rated power per second, but in a narrow band around the rated power level. "
> Keep that in mind when people talk about replacing natural gas with nuclear. They do different things.
Having some nuclear base load certainly helps, though, if natural gas is disrupted. Instead of having both the dispatchable power and variable power impacted from reduced natural gas supply, you instead only have a portion impacted.
One strategy is to build a bunch of renewable for during the day. Add some nuclear base load. And then with the surplus power you get sometimes, do power-to-gas with electrolyzer cells. Finally, use natural gas peaker plants and burn natural gas where justified in industry. This is a nice diverse mix with storage.
Yes, last winter France imported a lot, because more than 4 reactors were shut down for maintenance due to corrosions problems that has been found. These problem should had been found earlier, and would allowed to make the maintenance before the winter, but due to covid, inspections have been postponed.
If you look at previous years winter: https://www.rte-france.com/eco2mix/synthese-des-donnees?type...
For example, 01/11/20 to 26/12/20 (their website allow only 8 weeks period graph) you can see that overall France exported a lot of electricity to other EU countries in the middle of the winter.
That is not a law of Physics. Electric heating is perfectly fine. It’s true that we cannot do it quick enough to matter in this case, but that is not a good reason to just shrug and not learn anything from this. We will need a long-term strategy, because even if we manage to come up with a temporary solution, it’s clear that these things will happen again in the future. It’s just too good as a way of applying pressure on European countries. Long term, it will have to be electric if we want to improve our energy supply and have a remote chance of not staying too far from our climate goals.
We should have seen this coming for quite a while. It was in fact predicted, but mostly ignored by politicians who seemed to thing that oil crises from the 1970s were fun and that energy independence was irrelevant.
"People will die" from this mistake is hysteria. Nobody informed about the energy problems will take that seriously. Gas is not electrical power to start with.
If a Jumbo crashes you expect around 400 death. If 2 crash into each other it's twice as many (search for Tenerife if you are too young to remember). If you build 2 skyscrapers for 16,000 employees you risk 16,000 deaths if the worst happens ("Less" than 3000 died, so the cold facts aren't that bad after all.) If you build build a nuclear power station with millions of people around, you risk many more deaths. Not everyone of them immediately, but cancers caused by radiation will continue for decades. Building such things is engineer hubris and some day something worse than what we have seen so far will happen.
Dramatic, sure, but nuclear power kills far, far, far fewer people than buckets of water or BIC lighters.
For Chernobyl the overall death toll is estimated between 50 and 4000. Nobody knows and nobody knows how to even count. How do you count the disabled and sick babies born after it?
For Fukushima 1600 fatalities were reported during evacution. I am not an expert, but I guess it's difficult to attribute because the whole area was devastated already by the tsunami.
There will be lucky outcomes also in the future. But if you have hundreds of thousands or millions of people around, some day we'll be out of luck.
> "If you build build a nuclear power station with millions of people around, you risk many more deaths."
Don't build it near millions of people. See this map of the UK[2]; London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Sheffield are where the most people are, and where the nuclear power plants aren't.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/09/fossil-f...
[2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...