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Comment by yodsanklai | Hacker News Reader

Short answer: Lack of investment caused by incompetent politicians, supported by public opinion. Lot of French are anti-nuclear.

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Wikipedia says the plants are managed by EDF, a private company. Ordinary asset management would have prevented known problems, so there must be a few things that went wrong at the same time.

A "private company", owned to 85% by the French state, taking price policy orders from the French state, getting regular cash injections from the French state to not go bankrupt.

EDF being a public company owned by the state means that it gets hurt by two things:

* It has to make money, instead of being a utility that the state provides, so decisions have to be taken in accord with all shareholders.

* When it does make these decision, well, politicians have been selling off EDF piece by piece on the right, and sacrificing it to get votes from the green party on the left.

All in all, incompetent fucks with a 5 year foresight running it like a pawn on a chessboard, happily sacrificing it to get a meager advantage.

"Électricité de France S.A. (literally Electricity of France), commonly known as EDF, is a French multinational electric utility company, largely owned by the French state." - from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lectricit%C3%A9_de_Franc...

Investment in what? The plant is still running, no? Do they need more plants, repairs to existing, or upgrades to existing? How do I dig further?

> Do they need more plants, repairs to existing, or upgrades to existing?

All of these... but no political will because "nuclear bad, renewables good".

Well, what is there to say given the state of Flamanville 3? Currently sitting at ~ €13 B compared to the initial estimate of €3.3 B. With a tentative start date for end of 2023.

All the while EDF is being nationalized. Should more money have been spent in even deeper pits?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

> Should more money have been spent in even deeper pits?

If we want electricity in a world without less fossil fuels, I'd say yes.

EDIT: renewable can't be the only solution. They are cheap only because they are built on top of existing nuclear/fossil solutions.

Renewables already fill that gap at vastly lower costs. Unless you specify that you're one of the about a million people living north of the arctic circle, then sure, do whatever you need.

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