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Decisions like these seldomly are about engineering alone. France didn't embrace nuclear out of the goodness of their hearts - they wanted to become a nuclear
by bildung 5y ago
Decisions like these seldomly are about engineering alone.
France didn't embrace nuclear out of the goodness of their hearts - they wanted to become a nuclear power, and needed the infrastructure and specialists and so on to become one (establish study paths, and give those students the prospect of jobs so that they actually choose the new paths etc.).
Now that this isn't of strategic importance anymore, France lost interest in nuclear plants (just look at what gets built in recent decades in France). Because nuclear power by itself isn't that interesting, mostly because it is so hugely expensive and inflexible.
Germany was never allowed to get nuclear infrastructure because they started two world wars, and at the time no one was interested in Germany having nukes for the third attempt. Even research alone wasn't allowed for decades after the end of WW2. That's also the reason why Germany has no capacity for processing used fuel rods and does this in France to this day - its dual use tech.
- realusername 5y ago> Now that this isn't of strategic importance anymore, France lost interest in nuclear plants (just look at what gets built in recent decades in France). Because nuclear power by itself isn't that interesting, mostly because it is so hugely expensive and inflexible. Half of the problem in France are the green activists & the public to build more and the other half is that the EU is extremely against nuclear and does all of what they can to sabotage the funding.
- cinntaile 5y agoThe EU isn't against nuclear, the EU is against illegal state subsidizing in a liberalized market.
- realusername 5y agohttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-eu-transitionfund-idUSKBN2472HN https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-eu-transit... That's maybe how they are trying to spin it yeah.
- cinntaile 5y agoI'm confused, I thought we were talking about France? The above makes sense though, nuclear power plants are a bit too expensive to build compared to other alternatives. You get more bang for your buck by investing it elsewhere. I wonder what their definition of green is, it's clearly not CO2-based. Nuclear energy is not renewable so maybe that's their angle?
- realusername 5y agoI'm going to tell you the truth nobody want's to hear in the EU, a lot of EU countries bet very big on renewables and they can't afford to fail so they are doing everything they can to go their way, this includes clever definitions of subsidizing & so-called "green" funds.
- fomine3 5y agoJapan is also loser for WW2 but their lab/company do nuclear development from 1950s, thanks to relationship to US.
- bildung 5y agoYes, because in the case of Japan, the US heavily lobbied for them to develop nuclear power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan#Early_years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan#Early_y...