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Comment by foolfoolz | Hacker News Reader

nuclear has been declining in france for 20 years

This was literally legislated by green party politicians. They passed a law mandating that the nuclear fleet must go from 75% to 50% of generation. They also forced the company that owns the fleet (EDF) to sell power at a loss to energy traders and placed a tax on all power bills that went directly to funding their renewable portfolio.

Thankfully, they have changed course since the war and are now planning a new nuclear buildout as well as have removed the 50% cap. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/french-parliament-votes...

And now they have to play putin games because they need gas.

Not really.

Pre-war it only imported 17% from Russia, and like most European countries it has since switched to other suppliers. Turns out bringing LNG regasification plants online can be done in a few months, and plenty of countries are willing and able to supply that.

Yeah now we in Europe pay 3x more for energy that we used to, and the process of liquifying natural gas generates 2-se the emissions that we did when we got gas from pipeline. Shipping LNG around the world is a greenwashing disaster, it's like when Europe burns biomass from trees chopped in the amazon and calls it 'sustainable'

Electricity peaked in August 2022, and has returned pretty much back to pre-war levels. You might be paying 3x more, but your electricity provider definitely is not.

Besides, the claim I responded to was that the decline of nuclear in France led to a dependency on Russia for gas. The fact that Europe rapidly switched to LNG shows that this is not true, regardless of your opinion about anything else. Nobody is pretending that LNG is green, and biomass is heavily criticized for exactly that reason.

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