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Why is sensible behavior suddenly political? The owner/operator of the facility, EDF, envisaged a 40 year life for all 2nd generation reactors. That would hav
by cptskippy 6y ago
Why is sensible behavior suddenly political?
The owner/operator of the facility, EDF, envisaged a 40 year life for all 2nd generation reactors. That would have meant the reactor would have been shut down 2 years ago.
It's in a flood zone and a 2011 commission found that it didn't have necessary redundant cooling in place should the canals around it fail.
It's in a seismically active area.
It's on a river over an aquifer so any leakage will have severe consequences.
It has to be shut down during heat waves because the excess heat it dumps into the neighboring river will kill wildlife.
In the last decade it has had a number of small incidents.
It has served it's purpose for longer than it's expected lifespan and it's being shutdown safely before a catastrophe happens.
The SOP of Capitalism to do it until something bad happens doesn't mesh with Nuclear power.
- Kuinox 6y agoAs stated in the article, the 40 year lifespan is a lie from 'les verts'. The facility was built for 40 year with minimal maintenance. This is not the lifespan if the facility was well maintained.
- guerby 6y agoMaintenance for nuclear in France is not "minimal": for the past two years (2018 2019) capacity factor of nuclear power in France has been around 70% mainly due to maintenance according to RTE (1) For reference best UK offshore wind farm had 55.3% capacity factor in 2019 and UK offshore wind average capacity factor was 40.6% in 2019 (2) (1) https://media.rte-france.com/bilan-electrique-2019-2/ https://media.rte-france.com/bilan-electrique-2019-2/ 379.5 Twh produced, 63.1 GW installed, 68.7% capacity factor (2) https://energynumbers.info/uk-offshore-wind-capacity-factors https://energynumbers.info/uk-offshore-wind-capacity-factors
- Kuinox 6y agoYes, that the point, the maintenant is not minimal, the facility could run more than 40 years if it was minimal maintenance.
- rurban 6y agoYou can shorten that to that it's not considered safe to operate by international standards and not the national RFS standards for decades (leaked in 2002). The nuclear lobby conveniently forgets to mention that.