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I will hazard that the problems with nuclear are not technological but political, and the economic problems with nuclear are there because of political reasons.

I will hazard that the problems with nuclear are not technological but political, and the economic problems with nuclear are there because of political reasons. France gets ~75% of its power from nuclear, safely and economically. France inhabits the same physical world as the rest of us, but is different politically. If there were a will, there would be a way. If the environmental movement had paid more attention to James Hansen's testimony in 1989 than it did to Chernobyl in 1986 then we would be living in a different world. There is no amount of damage from nuclear accidents that will be worse than what we are suffering from climate change, with no end in sight. Proliferation is another story, but how's that going anyway...?

adrianN 4y ago
France is currently not building enough reactors to replace those that will need to be shut down due to age in the near future. They would need to build a lot more if they wanted to satisfy demand for heating and transportation. I assume they have good reasons not to build more reactors.
- Jorge1o1 4y ago
  The reasons are political… just like in the United States. HBO with their Chernobyl miniseries single-handedly undid years of progress in the perception of nuclear energy.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    Or perhaps the reasons are economical. Recently nuclear construction projects became a lot more expensive and took a lot longer than initially planned.
    - kwere 4y ago
      scale matter expecially with brand new designs and constructions teams/tecnologies
    - anonporridge 4y ago
      Some of those economical problems are burdened on the nuclear industry because of political problems. For example, because everyone is terrified of nuclear, regulations may require an absurd level of safety expenses that no other energy producer is burdened with. If the political climate lead to burdening fossil fuel burners with costs to reduce their pollution and GHG emissions that directly and indirectly lead to orders of magnitude more deaths than nuclear ever has, then nuclear might actually be price competitive. As another example, since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the US started in 1975, they have never, not once, approved the construction of a new nuclear site in the US. They've approved expansion of existing sites, but never a new one. In fact, it was a huge deal when the NRC approved the expansion of a site several years ago, for the first time in 30 years, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nuclear-license/nrc-approves-first-new-nuclear-plant-in-a-generation-idUSTRE8181T420120209 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nuclear-license/nrc-a... How much pain and death is the NRC ultimately responsible for for holding nuclear energy to such a high safety standard that it's been literally impossible to build a new site for almost 50 years? Because all that means, is that we've burned drastically more fossil fuel than necessary over the past 50 years. Shame on the NRC and the US government for using irrational fear to protect the fossil fuel industry at the expense of nuclear energy. And shame on environmentalists for falling for the same trap and failing to think holistically and systemically.
      - logifail 4y ago
        > because everyone is terrified of nuclear, regulations may require an absurd level of safety expenses that no other energy producer is burdened with "The researchers start out with a historic analysis of plant construction in the US. The basic numbers are grim. The typical plant built after 1970 had a cost overrun of 241 percent—and that's not considering the financing costs of the construction delays [..] while safety regulations added to the costs, they were far from the primary factor [...] In the end, the conclusion is that there are no easy answers to how to make nuclear plant construction more efficient. And, until there are, it will continue to be badly undercut by both renewables and fossil fuel."[0] [0] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-nuclear-plants-so-expensive-safetys-only-part-of-the-story/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-nuclear-plan...
  - heretogetout 4y ago
    The ascendancy of wind and cheap natural gas probably had a greater effect, considering the miniseries is only a couple years old.
    - trashtester 4y ago
      I suppose now that some of the sources of such gas is being cut, those French nuclear plants will be extremely profitable for a while.
  - jlkuester7 4y ago
    > HBO with their Chernobyl miniseries single-handedly undid years of progress Wait, seriously? That miniseries was not perfect, but I thought it did a pretty good job of pointing out the issues with Chernobyl were largely political and not technical. (Sure the RBMK reactors were flawed, that is a technical issue. But the only reason that escalated into a disaster was due to gross mismanagement and flagrant disregard of safety systems...)
    - rectang 4y ago
      > gross mismanagement and flagrant disregard of safety systems... Gross mismanagement and flagrant disregard of safety systems are inevitable, inherent features of power utilities. If your technology is disastrous without perfect handling, your technology is disastrous.
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > your technology is disastrous without perfect handling, your technology is disastrous Did we watch the same miniseries? Chernobyl went beyond gross negligence. To say nothing of perfection. In the reactor design, in its operation and in post-crisis management.
        ncmncm 4y ago
        No, it was absolutely typical gross negligence, with unfortunately outsized consequences. Fukushima was exactly equal negligence, with absolutely expected consequences.
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        They didn't need perfect handling, just halfway competent. But since the rest of the world doesn't build reactors of that type, and never built any without even a containment building AFAIK, it's not really applicable to modern nuclear power plant designs.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - pydry 4y ago
    If something cant operate without lavish subsidies it automatically becomes political. E.g. Bill Gates' nuclear startup would be dead in the water without its subsidies. That makes it political.
  - Retric 4y ago
    The reasons are economic. France has been heavily subsidizing nuclear for years and can swap to cheaper alternatives for less money. It’s not that nuclear is any worse, it’s just that the alternatives got better.
    - anonporridge 4y ago
      Wind and solar got better, but it seems fundamentally problematic to me to suggest that those are the alternatives to nuclear. They're not. Fossil fuel is the alternative to nuclear (and possibly battery supported wind/solar) as the base load. Fossil fuels are fundamentally cheaper because they can more easily avoid paying the cost of their negative externalities than nuclear can. If we could actually internalize the negatives of fossil fuel burning (i.e. by carbon tax) then nuclear might actually be the most economical option for the base load with solar and wind picking up the slack.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        Renewables + storage is the alternative to nukes. And, there is simply no contest. Nukes have been left far behind.
      - Retric 4y ago
        Even with that line of thinking, France was well past the point of using Nukes for base load power. France had nuclear capacity factors around 70% when America and much of the worlds nuclear power plants where closer to 90%. It physically worked, but dramatically increased production cost per KWH. Assuming they cut back to 30% or even 40% of all electricity being supplied by nuclear that’s still a significantly reduction.
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    According to perceptions and advertising about nuclear we should have unlimited power and everything from our cars to our stoves would be running of nuclear. All this should have been possible with just a containers worth of nuclear waste (experts in the 50s,60s seriously said operating a whole country of nuclear would result in maybe a ton of nuclear waste). Nuclear completely undelivered on this promise. Tschernobyl was just the nail in the coffin. On top of that has the nuclear industry been one of the strongest lobbying groups against wind and solar, mainly to protect their investments. I would argue on the whole we would have been much further in terms of renewable energy if it wasn't for the nuclear industry.
- BenoitP 4y ago
  6 + an additional 8 are being planned at the moment. It is still dependent on legislative elections (starting this weekend), and on the EU energy taxonomy (currently going final rounds in the EU parliament) Both should be sort of ok, fingers crossed. But this is only replacement. If we're serious and want to reduce iron ore with hydrogen for our steel needs, and use the same electrolytic hydrogen for fertilizers, we would need to build about 50 of them. The technology is there, but yes, it is more of a political issue in France as well.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    France has over fifty nuclear plants, most of them older than 40 years. You probably want to replace most of them in the next twenty years or so. Since building one can easily take a decade or two from planning to power output, you would want to have a couple of dozen in the planning stage right now if you expect to continue producing the same amount of power. Since only about a third of France's primary power consumption is satisfied by nuclear, realistically they'd need to drastically increase the number of reactors in the next decades to reach climate goals.
- lelag 4y ago
  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...
  - logifail 4y ago
    > 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-delay-higher-costs-flamanville-3-reactor-2022-01-12/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-announces-new-de...
    - lelag 4y ago
      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.
- phh 4y ago
  Even though there are political reasons, the biggest reason is... we had enough reactors for our own usage. We built them so fast, that even if we had cross-partisan will to keep forever using nuclear, we'd still have 30-40 years of gap without making any new reactor. And after a generation of engineers, we need to make reactors again and we're basically doing it from scratch again. There are other reasons: people's fear of nuclear became quite real (either because of greenpeace, or local green political parties). There's also a bit of hubris I think, rather than making some "easy" "usual" reactor model, we decided to do our brand new own, which has its own cost: If Flamanville's EPR had succeeded, we would likely have made more reactors and we would already be producing >100% of nuclear power
  - adrianN 4y ago
    Only a third of France's primary power consumption comes from nuclear. That's a long way to go to carbon neutrality.
    - rswskg 4y ago
      Not including transport? That's awful.
      - phh 4y ago
        One third is including transport and heating.
    - trashtester 4y ago
      In other words, France needs to hurry up and double if not triple their nuclear capacity, so they can switch to electric cars and heating. Somewhere to the north-east of Strasbourg would be ideal, not only for the abundant water supply, but also because the location is ideal for export to places in Europe that have not invested enough in stable sources of energy, lately. And if France plans to import power when the wind is blowing in those countries, the grid capacity out of that area will be needed anyway.
      - 4y ago
dukoid 4y ago
If you can't insure something reasonably it's not economical. The risk is just externalized.
- acidburnNSA 4y ago
  If fossil and biofuel had to insure against air pollution health effects they directly cause (8 million deaths/yr according to WHO), and climate change, then clean/carbon-free nuclear fission would absolutely dominate today.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Fossil and bio fuel are not what nukes and nuke construction are competing with, so mentioning them at all is an attempt to distract. We are not distracted.
    - acidburnNSA 4y ago
      The entire energy project right now is to decarbonize rapidly. The world energy mix is more than 80% fossil and biofuel. Nuclear is competing with fossil and biofuel. https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        No, nuke construction competes with renewables construction, and nuke operation with renewables operation. Nukes are absolutely obliterated on both. Only political bias allows nukes to continue.
pydry 4y ago
France has nuclear plants because in the 1970s it decided it didnt want to be dependent on middle eastern oil. It was very very expensive. It was also nothing to do with global warming. Those plants are fully paid off but nearly all close to death. Replacing them will still be very very expensive. Extending their lives will be dangerous. France isnt quite sure what to do. If there's unlimited money and patience for years long delays then yes nuclear power is just fine. If you want it reasonably priced it either wont happen at all or you're risking catastrophe.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  >Those plants are nearly all close to death. No, these plants are close to the end of their original grant for exploitation. Many of them get renewed for 10, 20 years easily. The US has had plants renewed for 40 years and are still running just fine. > France isnt quite sure what to do. We know what to do, every single scientist from the ASN knows what to do, every economist knows what to do. The non-renewal of nuclear plants is purely a political play to gain votes. Stop spreading your ignorant, fearmongering, unsubstantiated opinions.
  - phh 4y ago
    > We know what to do, every single scientist from the ASN knows what to do, every economist knows what to do. The ones who underestimated Flamanville's cost by 80%? (and it's still not in production) Let's maybe not trust them completely, and have our eggs in other baskets as well.
    - sofixa 4y ago
      > The ones who underestimated Flamanville's cost by 80%? (and it's still not in production) It's an entirely new design of a complicated piece of technology, of course it will be over budget and delayed. Grand Paris Express and the Paris Philharmonic were also over budget and delayed, does that invalidate the opinion of all experts involved in both projects?
      - 4y ago
cycomanic 4y ago
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.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > 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?
  - scoopertrooper 4y ago
    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?
    - syrrim 4y ago
      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.
- fartsucker69 4y ago
  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.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
boringg 4y ago
The problems with Nuclear are simple and straight forward: (1) Economic not viable if you include the total life cycle cost of the system (i.e. nuclear waste storage and dismantling the asset. Theres a large difference between building new reactors vs running the old ones until the end of life (in terms of economics). Also the modular reactors that are getting a lot of hype right now also still have a nuclear waste disposal issue. I would like to see Nuclear thrive but until it gets the cost / waste disposal resolved it's a tough sell.
- acidburnNSA 4y ago
  > not viable if you include the total life cycle cost of the system (i.e. nuclear waste storage and dismantling the asset. On the contrary! Nuclear plants pay a fraction of their revenue through their life into special decommissioning funds that have so far been more than enough to perform full greenfield decommissioning. For waste, there's a separate fund called the Nuclear Waste Fund in the US (and other nuclear-operating countries) that has a current balance around $50B. https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/RL33461.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/RL33461.pdf
  - boringg 4y ago
    Sorry should have been more clear. True cost of permanent waste disposal. They cant find anywhere to put it so while 50B sounds nice it doesn't have a home and the lifetime cost of operating a facility is probably significant higher (if they can find one). Read: problem not resolved.
    - acidburnNSA 4y ago
      It's being done in Finland and Sweden [1] just fine, and for reasonable cost. NIMBY is a big problem but once we figure out how to solve that in the USA like Finland did, then it is basically a solved problem. [1] https://www.posiva.fi/en/index.html https://www.posiva.fi/en/index.html
      - boringg 4y ago
legulere 4y ago
> the economic problems with nuclear are there because of political reasons. France gets ~75% of its power from nuclear, safely and economically. EDF, Areva have a long history of bailouts, buyouts and subsidies by the French government. You are right that it's a political decision that France has so much nuclear, but it is not an economical one. Even though they decided to replace old reactors with new ones, they do not manage to build enough reactors fast enough and especially not economically. Flamanville has a budget overrun of around 500% and time overrun of around 300%. Nuclear is neither fast nor economical enough to be built. Only building renewables can help push down CO2 emissions fast and cheap enough.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  The most reliable output of the nuke industry has always been dishonesty and corruption. Power is a distant second.
Joeri 4y ago
You don’t have to hazard. This subject has been studied extensively and there are clear answers. The high cost of nuclear is due to the inherent complexity of nuclear power plants, and the rise in particular is principally due to a nuclear industry that no longer knows how to construct plants affordably, with increased regulatory compliance a minor contributor. Source: https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118 https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118 The result of that high cost is that nuclear is a lot more expensive to build than renewables for the same amount of energy. This difference is growing and not shrinking, because the solar and wind industries keep getting better at cheaply rolling out capacity. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth Because most of a nuclear project’s cost is upfront, earned back over the lifetime of the plant, a profitable project has to be able to assume it can outcompete renewables + storage over multiple decades. This already is not the case today, and less so in the coming years. No private business can make these numbers work, so no private business is willing to fund a nuclear plant without subsidies. Renewables however can and are being funded privately to a large degree, because they turn a profit more quickly and can be built in smaller increments. Subsidies come out of taxes, which means the money can’t be spent on something else. Government budgets are already stressed. Between the choice of a largely privately funded solar/wind/hydrogen/storage path and a mostly government-funded nuclear path governments around the world are choosing the cheaper option. And yes, there is the public perception of nuclear which doesn’t help. But people are also opposed to solar and wind projects. NIMBY is always a thing. Besides, even if you could convince people of the safety of nuclear energy, the numbers still wouldn’t work out. There are challenges to rolling out solar and wind at scale with grid redesign and hydrogen storage and distribution, but nuclear at scale has similarly sized problems. TANSTAAFL when it comes to energy production.

adrianN 4y ago

France is currently not building enough reactors to replace those that will need to be shut down due to age in the near future. They would need to build a lot more if they wanted to satisfy demand for heating and transportation. I assume they have good reasons not to build more reactors.

Jorge1o1 4y ago
The reasons are political… just like in the United States. HBO with their Chernobyl miniseries single-handedly undid years of progress in the perception of nuclear energy.
- adrianN 4y ago
  Or perhaps the reasons are economical. Recently nuclear construction projects became a lot more expensive and took a lot longer than initially planned.
  - kwere 4y ago
    scale matter expecially with brand new designs and constructions teams/tecnologies
  - anonporridge 4y ago
    Some of those economical problems are burdened on the nuclear industry because of political problems. For example, because everyone is terrified of nuclear, regulations may require an absurd level of safety expenses that no other energy producer is burdened with. If the political climate lead to burdening fossil fuel burners with costs to reduce their pollution and GHG emissions that directly and indirectly lead to orders of magnitude more deaths than nuclear ever has, then nuclear might actually be price competitive. As another example, since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the US started in 1975, they have never, not once, approved the construction of a new nuclear site in the US. They've approved expansion of existing sites, but never a new one. In fact, it was a huge deal when the NRC approved the expansion of a site several years ago, for the first time in 30 years, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nuclear-license/nrc-approves-first-new-nuclear-plant-in-a-generation-idUSTRE8181T420120209 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nuclear-license/nrc-a... How much pain and death is the NRC ultimately responsible for for holding nuclear energy to such a high safety standard that it's been literally impossible to build a new site for almost 50 years? Because all that means, is that we've burned drastically more fossil fuel than necessary over the past 50 years. Shame on the NRC and the US government for using irrational fear to protect the fossil fuel industry at the expense of nuclear energy. And shame on environmentalists for falling for the same trap and failing to think holistically and systemically.
    - logifail 4y ago
      > because everyone is terrified of nuclear, regulations may require an absurd level of safety expenses that no other energy producer is burdened with "The researchers start out with a historic analysis of plant construction in the US. The basic numbers are grim. The typical plant built after 1970 had a cost overrun of 241 percent—and that's not considering the financing costs of the construction delays [..] while safety regulations added to the costs, they were far from the primary factor [...] In the end, the conclusion is that there are no easy answers to how to make nuclear plant construction more efficient. And, until there are, it will continue to be badly undercut by both renewables and fossil fuel."[0] [0] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-nuclear-plants-so-expensive-safetys-only-part-of-the-story/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-nuclear-plan...
- heretogetout 4y ago
  The ascendancy of wind and cheap natural gas probably had a greater effect, considering the miniseries is only a couple years old.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    I suppose now that some of the sources of such gas is being cut, those French nuclear plants will be extremely profitable for a while.
- jlkuester7 4y ago
  > HBO with their Chernobyl miniseries single-handedly undid years of progress Wait, seriously? That miniseries was not perfect, but I thought it did a pretty good job of pointing out the issues with Chernobyl were largely political and not technical. (Sure the RBMK reactors were flawed, that is a technical issue. But the only reason that escalated into a disaster was due to gross mismanagement and flagrant disregard of safety systems...)
  - rectang 4y ago
    > gross mismanagement and flagrant disregard of safety systems... Gross mismanagement and flagrant disregard of safety systems are inevitable, inherent features of power utilities. If your technology is disastrous without perfect handling, your technology is disastrous.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > your technology is disastrous without perfect handling, your technology is disastrous Did we watch the same miniseries? Chernobyl went beyond gross negligence. To say nothing of perfection. In the reactor design, in its operation and in post-crisis management.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        No, it was absolutely typical gross negligence, with unfortunately outsized consequences. Fukushima was exactly equal negligence, with absolutely expected consequences.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      They didn't need perfect handling, just halfway competent. But since the rest of the world doesn't build reactors of that type, and never built any without even a containment building AFAIK, it's not really applicable to modern nuclear power plant designs.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- pydry 4y ago
  If something cant operate without lavish subsidies it automatically becomes political. E.g. Bill Gates' nuclear startup would be dead in the water without its subsidies. That makes it political.
- Retric 4y ago
  The reasons are economic. France has been heavily subsidizing nuclear for years and can swap to cheaper alternatives for less money. It’s not that nuclear is any worse, it’s just that the alternatives got better.
  - anonporridge 4y ago
    Wind and solar got better, but it seems fundamentally problematic to me to suggest that those are the alternatives to nuclear. They're not. Fossil fuel is the alternative to nuclear (and possibly battery supported wind/solar) as the base load. Fossil fuels are fundamentally cheaper because they can more easily avoid paying the cost of their negative externalities than nuclear can. If we could actually internalize the negatives of fossil fuel burning (i.e. by carbon tax) then nuclear might actually be the most economical option for the base load with solar and wind picking up the slack.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Renewables + storage is the alternative to nukes. And, there is simply no contest. Nukes have been left far behind.
    - Retric 4y ago
      Even with that line of thinking, France was well past the point of using Nukes for base load power. France had nuclear capacity factors around 70% when America and much of the worlds nuclear power plants where closer to 90%. It physically worked, but dramatically increased production cost per KWH. Assuming they cut back to 30% or even 40% of all electricity being supplied by nuclear that’s still a significantly reduction.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  According to perceptions and advertising about nuclear we should have unlimited power and everything from our cars to our stoves would be running of nuclear. All this should have been possible with just a containers worth of nuclear waste (experts in the 50s,60s seriously said operating a whole country of nuclear would result in maybe a ton of nuclear waste). Nuclear completely undelivered on this promise. Tschernobyl was just the nail in the coffin. On top of that has the nuclear industry been one of the strongest lobbying groups against wind and solar, mainly to protect their investments. I would argue on the whole we would have been much further in terms of renewable energy if it wasn't for the nuclear industry.
BenoitP 4y ago
6 + an additional 8 are being planned at the moment. It is still dependent on legislative elections (starting this weekend), and on the EU energy taxonomy (currently going final rounds in the EU parliament) Both should be sort of ok, fingers crossed. But this is only replacement. If we're serious and want to reduce iron ore with hydrogen for our steel needs, and use the same electrolytic hydrogen for fertilizers, we would need to build about 50 of them. The technology is there, but yes, it is more of a political issue in France as well.
- adrianN 4y ago
  France has over fifty nuclear plants, most of them older than 40 years. You probably want to replace most of them in the next twenty years or so. Since building one can easily take a decade or two from planning to power output, you would want to have a couple of dozen in the planning stage right now if you expect to continue producing the same amount of power. Since only about a third of France's primary power consumption is satisfied by nuclear, realistically they'd need to drastically increase the number of reactors in the next decades to reach climate goals.
lelag 4y ago
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...
- logifail 4y ago
  > 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-delay-higher-costs-flamanville-3-reactor-2022-01-12/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-announces-new-de...
  - lelag 4y ago
    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.
phh 4y ago
Even though there are political reasons, the biggest reason is... we had enough reactors for our own usage. We built them so fast, that even if we had cross-partisan will to keep forever using nuclear, we'd still have 30-40 years of gap without making any new reactor. And after a generation of engineers, we need to make reactors again and we're basically doing it from scratch again. There are other reasons: people's fear of nuclear became quite real (either because of greenpeace, or local green political parties). There's also a bit of hubris I think, rather than making some "easy" "usual" reactor model, we decided to do our brand new own, which has its own cost: If Flamanville's EPR had succeeded, we would likely have made more reactors and we would already be producing >100% of nuclear power
- adrianN 4y ago
  Only a third of France's primary power consumption comes from nuclear. That's a long way to go to carbon neutrality.
  - rswskg 4y ago
    Not including transport? That's awful.
    - phh 4y ago
      One third is including transport and heating.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    In other words, France needs to hurry up and double if not triple their nuclear capacity, so they can switch to electric cars and heating. Somewhere to the north-east of Strasbourg would be ideal, not only for the abundant water supply, but also because the location is ideal for export to places in Europe that have not invested enough in stable sources of energy, lately. And if France plans to import power when the wind is blowing in those countries, the grid capacity out of that area will be needed anyway.
    - 4y ago

dukoid 4y ago

If you can't insure something reasonably it's not economical. The risk is just externalized.

acidburnNSA 4y ago
If fossil and biofuel had to insure against air pollution health effects they directly cause (8 million deaths/yr according to WHO), and climate change, then clean/carbon-free nuclear fission would absolutely dominate today.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Fossil and bio fuel are not what nukes and nuke construction are competing with, so mentioning them at all is an attempt to distract. We are not distracted.
  - acidburnNSA 4y ago
    The entire energy project right now is to decarbonize rapidly. The world energy mix is more than 80% fossil and biofuel. Nuclear is competing with fossil and biofuel. https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      No, nuke construction competes with renewables construction, and nuke operation with renewables operation. Nukes are absolutely obliterated on both. Only political bias allows nukes to continue.

pydry 4y ago

France has nuclear plants because in the 1970s it decided it didnt want to be dependent on middle eastern oil. It was very very expensive. It was also nothing to do with global warming. Those plants are fully paid off but nearly all close to death. Replacing them will still be very very expensive. Extending their lives will be dangerous. France isnt quite sure what to do. If there's unlimited money and patience for years long delays then yes nuclear power is just fine. If you want it reasonably priced it either wont happen at all or you're risking catastrophe.

ohgodplsno 4y ago
>Those plants are nearly all close to death. No, these plants are close to the end of their original grant for exploitation. Many of them get renewed for 10, 20 years easily. The US has had plants renewed for 40 years and are still running just fine. > France isnt quite sure what to do. We know what to do, every single scientist from the ASN knows what to do, every economist knows what to do. The non-renewal of nuclear plants is purely a political play to gain votes. Stop spreading your ignorant, fearmongering, unsubstantiated opinions.
- phh 4y ago
  > We know what to do, every single scientist from the ASN knows what to do, every economist knows what to do. The ones who underestimated Flamanville's cost by 80%? (and it's still not in production) Let's maybe not trust them completely, and have our eggs in other baskets as well.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    > The ones who underestimated Flamanville's cost by 80%? (and it's still not in production) It's an entirely new design of a complicated piece of technology, of course it will be over budget and delayed. Grand Paris Express and the Paris Philharmonic were also over budget and delayed, does that invalidate the opinion of all experts involved in both projects?
    - 4y ago

cycomanic 4y ago

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.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> 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?
- scoopertrooper 4y ago
  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?
  - syrrim 4y ago
    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.
fartsucker69 4y ago
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.

deleted 4y ago

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boringg 4y ago

The problems with Nuclear are simple and straight forward: (1) Economic not viable if you include the total life cycle cost of the system (i.e. nuclear waste storage and dismantling the asset. Theres a large difference between building new reactors vs running the old ones until the end of life (in terms of economics). Also the modular reactors that are getting a lot of hype right now also still have a nuclear waste disposal issue. I would like to see Nuclear thrive but until it gets the cost / waste disposal resolved it's a tough sell.

acidburnNSA 4y ago
> not viable if you include the total life cycle cost of the system (i.e. nuclear waste storage and dismantling the asset. On the contrary! Nuclear plants pay a fraction of their revenue through their life into special decommissioning funds that have so far been more than enough to perform full greenfield decommissioning. For waste, there's a separate fund called the Nuclear Waste Fund in the US (and other nuclear-operating countries) that has a current balance around $50B. https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/RL33461.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/RL33461.pdf
- boringg 4y ago
  Sorry should have been more clear. True cost of permanent waste disposal. They cant find anywhere to put it so while 50B sounds nice it doesn't have a home and the lifetime cost of operating a facility is probably significant higher (if they can find one). Read: problem not resolved.
  - acidburnNSA 4y ago
    It's being done in Finland and Sweden [1] just fine, and for reasonable cost. NIMBY is a big problem but once we figure out how to solve that in the USA like Finland did, then it is basically a solved problem. [1] https://www.posiva.fi/en/index.html https://www.posiva.fi/en/index.html
    - boringg 4y ago

legulere 4y ago

> the economic problems with nuclear are there because of political reasons. France gets ~75% of its power from nuclear, safely and economically. EDF, Areva have a long history of bailouts, buyouts and subsidies by the French government. You are right that it's a political decision that France has so much nuclear, but it is not an economical one. Even though they decided to replace old reactors with new ones, they do not manage to build enough reactors fast enough and especially not economically. Flamanville has a budget overrun of around 500% and time overrun of around 300%. Nuclear is neither fast nor economical enough to be built. Only building renewables can help push down CO2 emissions fast and cheap enough.

ncmncm 4y ago
The most reliable output of the nuke industry has always been dishonesty and corruption. Power is a distant second.

Joeri 4y ago

You don’t have to hazard. This subject has been studied extensively and there are clear answers. The high cost of nuclear is due to the inherent complexity of nuclear power plants, and the rise in particular is principally due to a nuclear industry that no longer knows how to construct plants affordably, with increased regulatory compliance a minor contributor. Source: https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118 https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118 The result of that high cost is that nuclear is a lot more expensive to build than renewables for the same amount of energy. This difference is growing and not shrinking, because the solar and wind industries keep getting better at cheaply rolling out capacity. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth Because most of a nuclear project’s cost is upfront, earned back over the lifetime of the plant, a profitable project has to be able to assume it can outcompete renewables + storage over multiple decades. This already is not the case today, and less so in the coming years. No private business can make these numbers work, so no private business is willing to fund a nuclear plant without subsidies. Renewables however can and are being funded privately to a large degree, because they turn a profit more quickly and can be built in smaller increments. Subsidies come out of taxes, which means the money can’t be spent on something else. Government budgets are already stressed. Between the choice of a largely privately funded solar/wind/hydrogen/storage path and a mostly government-funded nuclear path governments around the world are choosing the cheaper option. And yes, there is the public perception of nuclear which doesn’t help. But people are also opposed to solar and wind projects. NIMBY is always a thing. Besides, even if you could convince people of the safety of nuclear energy, the numbers still wouldn’t work out. There are challenges to rolling out solar and wind at scale with grid redesign and hydrogen storage and distribution, but nuclear at scale has similarly sized problems. TANSTAAFL when it comes to energy production.