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But there are places with much larger portions of their power supplied from nuclear plants, e.g. France, with >70% nuclear power.
by TheCoelacanth 7y ago
But there are places with much larger portions of their power supplied from nuclear plants, e.g. France, with >70% nuclear power.
- Jedd 7y agoYup, undeniably France is an interesting outlier. As I understand it, the bulk of their reactors were produced over a relatively short boom period of construction, and their projected EOL's were consequently going to coincide -- the number of safety incidents, ageing designs, costs of attending to both, public opinion swaying against, resulted in the relatively recent decisions to try to reduce the reliance on fission. But, even so, this speaks to my point -- in countries with a positive history of nuclear fission, and little 'red tape' to stall new builds, they're still moving away from it.
- Retric 7y agoThat’s incorrect. France generation is over 70% nuclear power, but in 2018 exported 86.3 TWh mostly nuclear and imported 26TWh mostly non nuclear. So they actually use less than 70% nuclear power. This is important because of how hard it is to match nuclear generation with demand resulting in a 77% capacity factor vs ~90% in the US nuclear industry even with all those exports. In other words they built enough nuclear to cover well over 80% of demand, but only use ~60% internally. They are also looking to significantly reduce nuclear production. Closing up to 17 reactors by 2025. https://www.france24.com/en/20170710-france-hulot-could-close-nuclear-plants https://www.france24.com/en/20170710-france-hulot-could-clos...