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Macron says France will build new nuclear energy reactors

• eecc 5y ago
  I get the fascination with base load and the incredible amount of energy compared to chemical based alternatives. But: 1. What will the net online time be? (Lots of these plants go in maintenance for long stretches of time) 2. Spent fuel? 3. Proliferation risk? 4. Accident mitigation?
  • funklute 5y ago
    None of those questions are new, nor show stoppers for existing plants. Why do you think the existing procedures may not be satisfactory? (I'm assuming you think so based on the way you ask the question) EDIT: to be clear, I'm not asking this as a backhanded question. I'm genuinely curious why this is not seen as a "solved problem", at least in a country with relatively strong government institutions
    • eecc 5y ago
      Well, the way previous generations fizzled suggests these problems aren’t that solved after all. Just 1 long term waste storage has ever been built in the world, plant productivity has always been relatively low (initial manufacturing delays, refueling, minor accidents, refurbishments), many anti-proliferation techniques just over-produce rad-waste. Oh, and if we were to buildout nuclear globally how long would the ore reserves last?
      • R0b0t1 5y ago
        It fizzled due to FUD. Existing plants work and are defensible. The waste can be stored safely. In emerging economies new designs can be used, but they'll probably have to be trialed in a developed economy. You could also pursue economic policy that has developing economies fund the research instead of letting them expect handouts.
        • wolverine876 5y ago
          > It fizzled due to FUD. You're saying there were no actual, serious problems with nuclear plants? > Existing plants work and are defensible. That's survivorship bias to a degree: Te plants that work and are defensible are the plants you see. It's also a bias of sunk costs: The surviving plants could have been way over-budget and late, but it's still worth operating them.
          • vkou 5y ago
            > You're saying there were no actual, serious problems with nuclear plants? Compared to other forms of energy generation, measured in illnesses, injuries, maimings, and deaths, past and plausibly attributed to the future, per KWH? Not really, no.
            • wolverine876 5y ago
              I tire of the 'say something bold and prove me wrong' rhetoric, when people know exactly what's wrong with what they are saying. It doesn't contribute to anyone's understanding, and wastes my time. Hope the rest of your day goes well.
              • vkou 5y ago
                The realization that industrial processes are dangerous, that power generation is an industrial process, and therefore dangerous, and that the only meaningful way to measure the danger of an industrial process is by comparing it to that of another industrial process should contribute to the understanding of some. Is nuclear power generation dangerous? Yes. Is all power generation dangerous? Yes. How dangerous is nuclear power generation compared to alternatives? Not very. It's pretty accurate to say that nuclear fizzled due to FUD. The conversation ended after the answer to the first question was 'yes'.
              • johncolanduoni 5y ago
                I’d appreciate if you could clarify what’s wrong. Even if both you and your interlocutor understand it, the point has unfortunately gone over my head (and possibly the same for others reading).
      • blendergeek 5y ago
        > Oh, and if we were to buildout nuclear globally how long would the ore reserves last? If we fully burn all available nuclear fuel, it will last about 5 billion years. [0] [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20130114062518/http://sustainablenuclear.org/PADs/pad11983cohen.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20130114062518/http://sustainabl...
        • eecc 5y ago
          Ah that’s breeders, it’s a different game. They’re technically more challenging (the French spent billions on their plants which didn't quite deliver) and have a significant nuclear weapons proliferation risk. Somewhere I read (sorry for the lack of sources) that with single-pass fuel use, known reserves would only last a couple decades, a century at best.
          • effie 5y ago
            > have a significant nuclear weapons proliferation risk. Why. What risk of proliferation is there in France, UK or U.S.? These states already have nuclear weapons.
            • onecommentman 5y ago
              A global buildout of breeders is the issue. The rich countries telling the poor countries they can’t have nice things because of “our” security concerns. Big talking point in the 1960s. Tom Lehrer even wrote a cute song about nuclear proliferation in 1964, “Who’s Next?”. If you get any expansive policy and process wrong, the negative global consequences are dramatic and long-lasting. So, first, do no harm.
  • user_7832 5y ago
    I can try to answer your questions. (Disclaimer, I'm a masters student studying systems with a focus on energy systems. Obviously not an expert, and am somewhat biased pro-nuclear.) 1. Net online time for nuclear isn't particularly bad, especially when you consider that other alternatives too go down. [1] Of course you'll need some extra capacity/more plants, but that was anyway the case. 2. I feel this is probably the strongest point that can be held against nuclear. Short-term fuel management is not an issue/already figured out, and climate change is a much quicker risk in the next 50 years, so I'd argue it's still better to go 0-carbon instead of finding a perfect solution right now. 3. I'm not sure if you're referring to proliferation of the fuel or technologies, but both are reasonably well-developed fields that France should not have major problems. 4. Similar to point one - nuclear accidents vs risks/deaths from coal is like comparing flight safety with cars. Sure, airplanes feel unsafe but are statistically MUCH safer than cars. Chernobyl and Fukushima were both avoidable (though that can admitably be said for a lot of accidents). Deaths from pollution itself are in the millions instead. [2] 1. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliable-energy-source-and-its-not-even-close https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliab... 2. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
    • majou 5y ago
      Proliferation in the context of nuclear is the risk of terrorists or states intercepting fuel that can be refined to weapon-grade. Some reactors don't have this risk, but I'm not read on it.
      • ineedasername 5y ago
        Decades with hundred of nuclear power plants in the world have not seen them be a significant source of fissionable material for terrorists or new nations developing nuclear weapons. See Iran, a nation that has devoted significant resources to such an endeavor, as a case in point. Spent fuel from nuclear power plants-- probably the more vulnerable point in the supply chain-- is nonetheless difficult to the point of extreme expense & impractical to refine to weapons grade. You would need such large quantities that it would be extremely difficult to steal enough without notice: Someone is going to notice the 200,000 lb cask leaving a storage facility. Then the refinement process is difficult, requiring immense sums of money to built the significant infrastructure required for refinement. North Korea, the newest nuclear power, got there with significant help from the Soviets extending back in the 60's and it still took them decades to get there. This is all on top of the fact that any modern plant designs use feedstock fuel that is even harder to refine into anything weapons grade, and is much more efficient to the point that spend fuel refinement difficulties dwarfs the above roadblocks for fuel from older designs. Dirty bombs are more problematic, but also significantly less destructive, and suffer from many of the same logistical hurdles, notably that the material most useful for a dirty bomb is also material that requires massively robust precautions to ensure the thieves don't kill themselves with radiation exposure long before any chance of making use of it. Less useful material that requires fewer precautions is not practical for dirty bombs without significant refinement capacity. All of this at a time when real measurable deaths from fossil fuel powerplants, their pollution, and their industrial accidents, are themselves more dangerous, right now, than theoretical & difficult to achieve usages of fuel from new nuclear power plants.
  • axlee 5y ago
    France has been running on 75%+ nuclear power mix for the past 50 years and is doing better energy/emissions-wise than almost every other country in the world. Your questions have already been answered, it seems. They seem to have bet on the right horse, and went full steam ahead with it (no pun intended). And now they are supplying all their neighbours with surplus clean energy.
    • stjohnswarts 5y ago
      I always point at this when my American "environmental" friends yell at me as a proponent of a Manhattan style project in nuclear tech here in the USA as the solution to climate change.
      • throw0101a 5y ago
        See also the province of Ontario ("Supply" tab): * https://www.ieso.ca/power-data https://www.ieso.ca/power-data
  • monocasa 5y ago
    France has significantly less spent fuel to deal with since they allow civilian energy production to reprocess spent fuel back into usable fuel.
    • eecc 5y ago
      True, but breeder technology has a lot more potential for weaponry proliferation (part of the reason France is so much invested in nuclear is precisely because of that.) And it’s not as easy as recycling empty glass bottles… the French struggled to keep their breeders online and keep them economical (but then the military we’re still happy so…)
  • godelski 5y ago
    > 1. What will the net online time be? Hard to say tbh. But these reactors probably aren't offline as much as you think. They shut down for 1 month every 18-24 months for refueling. > 2. Spent fuel? France is the world leader in this regard. Remember that 17% of France's entire power comes from _recycled_ nuclear. But if you want to see what their entire nuclear waste. This is _decades_ worth, and I'm betting much smaller than you expected.[0] (coal is doing this on a a daily or weekly basis). Just for fun, let's look at Russia's too.[1] We're literally just talking a warehouse. People vastly overestimate the waste and what to do with it. It is fine where it is for hundreds of years. The only "problem" that we have with "long term storage" is how to store it somewhere where if somehow all knowledge was lost that future humans with no radiation detecting equipment could accidentally release waste (quite a high bar, and not one we're concerned with other long lasting waste like lead or heavy metals). We have a few hundred years to figure that out. > 3. Proliferation risk? None? It is France. They already have nuclear weapons. But while we're talking about it, Megatons to Megawatts[2] has been the best deproliferation project in history, reducing the number of nuclear warheads by over 20,000. > 4. Accident mitigation? Very low. This is also over estimated. We have a very early reactor which no other country besides Russia built because it had the ability to explode. And we have another event where we didn't know earthquakes could happen of that size until basically right before said earthquake happened. These are major disasters, but the two should not be conflated. Even including these, they are far less environmentally damaging than the fossil fuels we've been using. The major problem with nuclear is that disasters are both temporally and spatially localized. There's advantages and disadvantages to this in terms of dealing with the consequences. On one hand, it is a lot to clean up. On the other hand the country that created the disaster is the one that suffers the most (as opposed to what we're seeing with oil spills and the entire climate crisis, which is not temporally localized and thus the danger is not weighted properly). [0] https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968 https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5uN0bZBOic&t=105s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5uN0bZBOic&t=105s [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program
    • wolverine876 5y ago
      >> 3. Proliferation risk? > None? It is France. They already have nuclear weapons. But while we're talking about it, Megatons to Megawatts[2] has been the best deproliferation project in history, reducing the number of nuclear warheads by over 20,000. More nuclear trained personnel, designs, materials, and plants mean more opportunities for someone to acquire technology or materials.
  • Manuel_D 5y ago
    1. What will the net online time be? (Lots of these plants go in maintenance for long stretches of time) The term you're referring to is capacity factor. Nuclear power typically has the highest capacity factor of any energy source. [1] [2] For reference, nuclear is 92%, while wind is 35% and photovoltaic solar at 25%. > 2. Spent fuel? It can be reprocessed, reclaiming over 90% of fuel. Even without reprocessing, nuclear fuel's energy density is such that a tiny amount of waste is produced per unit of energy. For comparison, the sum total of all of the USA's nuclear electricity production occupies a volume the footprint of a football field, and 10 yards high. [3] > 3. Proliferation risk? Nuclear fuel is refined to about ~20% fissile material. Nuclear weapons typically need over 80% or 90%. Countries would need to build their own enrichment facilities to bring nuclear fuel to weapons grade uranium, and then further refine that to plutonium. If they had such facilities they'd be able to refine natural uranium to weapons grade anyway. > 4. Accident mitigation? First of all, even if you include Chernobyl nuclear power (which didn't even have secondary storage) has the lowest fatalities per unit of energy produced [4]. People often neglect the fact that fossil fuels kill millions each year due to air pollution. Renewables like hydroelectricity have had accidents far more devastating that nuclear power [5]. Nuclear plants are expensive because a lot of effort is made to make them safe, and to contain a potential failure. People often forget that the USA had a reactor meltdown analogous to Chernobyl during the Three Mile Island incident. Except nobody died and there was no widespread contamination because the reactor had a big concrete condom over it, unlike Chernobyl. 1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/183680/us-average-capacity-factors-by-selected-energy-source-since-1998/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183680/us-average-capaci... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor#Worldwide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor#Worldwide 3. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-... 4. https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw... 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
    • wolverine876 5y ago
      > Nuclear fuel is refined to about ~20% fissile material. Nuclear weapons typically need over 80% or 90%. Countries would need to build their own enrichment facilities to bring nuclear fuel to weapons grade uranium, and then further refine that to plutonium. If they had such facilities they'd be able to refine natural uranium to weapons grade anyway. I've wondered about that. On one hand, the reasoning above makes sense. On the other, people who know far more than I do say there is proliferation risk. I suspect there is something I don't understand.
  • BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    1 - During my study, I visited a nuclear plant. They explained to us the plant is designed around 4 quadrants, each one capable of turning on and off independently of each other. So when one needs maintenance, you just put this one offline, and the others keep running. This way the reactor is never totally shut off, as I understand that starting it from scratch is an expensive operation. 2 - For the spent fuel, France has plenty of strategically maintained relationships in what used to be West African colonies with uranium mines. Why do you think we sent the army during the Mali war ? We cultivate those alliances because they bring a lot on the table, from resources to routes and bases. Nuclear is doubly interesting for us, because we can source it even if Russia or China decide to tell us to go to hell. In case of a conflict, this is priceless. 3 - I don't know anything about proliferation, so can't answer this one. 4 - Accident mitigation is the big problem, IMO. I've seen how they operate inside, and let's just say I'm glad the people that designed the thing were very, very, _very_ good at their job. Because the ones maintaining it have a very relaxed attitude. And the plants are pushed to produce way past their initial expected life span. But I insist, I'm amazed at how good engineers of the 70' were. Those plants are old tech, but they are incredible. However, even if the probability of an accident is low (there are triple safety mechanisms everywhere), the severity of a potential accident is such that I consider nuclear disasters a huge risk that we don't take seriously enough. What's more, it nourishes the growing anti-nuclear sentiment, so we should really get our act together.
    • enaaem 5y ago
      The risks of nuclear energy is far more favourable than global warming. Global warming effects are global, non-linear and there are still many unknowns, which makes it more risky. Nuclear risks are local and the harm is well known. Also nuclear energy is anti-fragile (more disasters means saver plants). I believe we are far too cautious with building new nuclear plants. Not because I think that nuclear energy is not dangerous, but I believe global warming is a far greater risk.
      • BiteCode_dev 5y ago
        It's not an "or" proposition. Nuclear energy should not be our only source of energy for other reasons like resiliance (diversity in sources make a society more robust), power balance (you don't want one type of industry to have it all) and long term cost opportunity (some energy may prove cheaper later if we also develop them). And since we are using nuclear energy, we engage in this risk, which we should mitigate given the magnitude of it. Ignoring it is not rational. Opposing the risk of a nuclear accident to globalm warming is a false dichotomie. Like stating we don't spend money on fighting covid because cancer is more deadly, more likely, and need all the money we have.
  • stjohnswarts 5y ago
    1. if a real effort is put in, 10 years or so 2. Solved problem. Spent fuel is not really an issue, we have solutions and areas to put it in both Europe and the USA. Only green Luddites hold it back. Storage really does not take up a lot of space. 3. Next to none if the right type of fuel stock and reactor is chosen. Obviously security comes in, but that is also a solved issue 4. Lots of modern designs literally cannot go critical, I suggest we use those, instead of old designs just because they're "a known known". 5. don't build reactors that can go critical near known tsunami shorlines. 6. At worst we'll surely have fusion by the end of the century and can then retire the nuclear plants. Solar and wind without a 100x improvement in battery storage tech do not make sense right now as the sole producer of energy like a lot of unrealistic "environmental" groups claim.
    • effie 5y ago
      This was going well until point 6. Fusion isn't anywhere near practical in 2021, it requires lots of investment and research to do even a first prototype. And it is a high tech marvel that won't be cheap to operate. So the funding for it may eventually dry out in favour of boring tech fission plants.
      • stjohnswarts 5y ago
        I said by the end of the century, not 2021. Fission plants are the answer until fusion becomes practical.
        • effie 5y ago
          OK point taken. But predicting things 80 years into future is extremely difficult. It is by no means certain we will get there in under 80 years.
• sebow 5y ago
  Good, though i really have to wonder how much is this Macron's own idea and how much is France's elite (which is very influential towards the state compared to other european nations).
• jessriedel 5y ago
  Was the full article title, "President Macron: France to build new nuclear energy reactors", too long? It's much more accurate.
  • dang 5y ago
    Perhaps the submitter thought it was clickbait. I can see the argument either way, but have restored the fuller title now.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• alboy 5y ago
  Not mentioned there that >France derives about 70% of its electricity from nuclear energy, due to a long-standing policy based on energy security. Government policy is to reduce this to 50% by 2035. [1] according to the target set in the "Energy transition for green growth" bill. [1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
• 1cvmask 5y ago
  The Chinese have committed to building over 150 new nuclear reactors. The British government will subsidize Rolls Royce. Japan will reactivate over 30 nuclear reactors. It seems this is the biggest energy story of the year. The comeback of nuclear energy. https://smallcaps.com.au/china-supercharge-uranium-race-150-new-nuclear-reactors/ https://smallcaps.com.au/china-supercharge-uranium-race-150-... The HN discussion on the China story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29151741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29151741 Japan reactivating nuclear reactors: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210501/p2a/00m/0op/007000c https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210501/p2a/00m/0op/00... UK. Rolls-Royce gets funding to develop mini nuclear reactors: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59212983 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59212983
  • AtlasBarfed 5y ago
    It's only good news if they aren't PWR/LWR meltdown-possible 70 year old designs. I do like there is a large market to this startup. Hopefully that will result in a somewhat price-competitive reactor design. But I doubt that will happen for another 10 years. I think solar/wind/battery will eat the lunch of any new nuclear plant in cost once it goes online. Hoping for the best!
  • Gwypaas 5y ago
    That announcement of 150 reactors in China is no real change to the long term plans either. Still simply keeping the option barely open which is very sensible to do when you're such a huge economy, even if it comes from subsidies. In 2019, China had a new target of 200 GWe of nuclear generating capacity by 2035, which is 7.7% out of predicted total electricity generating capacity of 2600 GWe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China So with about 50 GWe from 50 reactors today adding another 150 gives you the same goal of about 200 GWe. Unless we're talking SMRs because then the goal just got reduced to a fraction of the original.
  • toomuchtodo 5y ago
    It's not a comeback until you push the first kwh to the grid for the price you said you'd build the new generator for. Japan turning back on mothballed reactors is a Big Deal (and a quick win for avoiding CO2 emissions), but getting new reactors built in less than a decade or for less than billons of dollars is where the proof lies. Talk and promises are cheap, action has a cost and can't be faked. https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-... (Lazard’s latest annual Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis (LCOE 15.0) shows the continued cost-competitiveness of certain renewable energy technologies on a subsidized basis and the marginal cost of coal, nuclear and combined cycle gas generation.)
• kemenaran 5y ago
  The construction of the only new nuclear reactor in France started fourteen years ago (2007), and is not due before two more years. It was expected to cost 3.3B€, but in the end will probably cost around 19B€.
  • Kuinox 5y ago
    Context needed. This is the cost to get the tools and craftsmenship to build it, thats we lost.
    • epistasis 5y ago
      Is it? I've never seen anybody in the field claim that. What has been learned at Flamanville that could be transferred elsewhere?
      • physicsguy 5y ago
        Well, the plant in the UK being constructed by EDF, Hinckley Point C is the same design as Flamanville.
        • epistasis 5y ago
          At the start of construction, Hinkley Point C is estimating €8.1/W. This is still four times the initial estimates cost for Flamanville 3, €2/W. But it's a bit less than the current estimated cost of Flamanville 3, €11.5/W. However this is all assuming that Hinkley Point C stays in budget and on schedule, which would be a strange assumption to make given recent history. So I'm not sure anything is being learned, or construction capability is increasing. Which is a shame, because that area of the world is the area with the strongest need for nuclear. The rest of the world will get by fine without it. And for that matter, it's likely that Northern Europe can build enough wind and storage to get around their need for nuclear. But it all would have been a lot easier if the nuclear industry was anywhere close to delivering on its lofty promises.
      • belorn 5y ago
• BoumTAC 5y ago
  With the sell of Alstom to the US, is France still able to build nuclear reactor ?
  • espadrine 5y ago
    Alstom hasn’t been purchased by a US company AFAIK. Are you talking about the sale of its power sector to GE in 2014? It is mostly about turbines, not the nuclear aspect, which is more typically under the expertise of Areva NC / Orano Cycle <https://www.orano.group/en https://www.orano.group/en>.
    • byroot 5y ago
      > It is mostly about turbines Turbines used in nuclear power plants as well as nuclear ships. That sale was/is a major scandal in France.
      • liketochill 5y ago
        Steam turbine is steam turbine no matter where steam comes from
        • byroot 5y ago
          You'd think so but that's not the case. Anyway the problem is mostly an independance one and there was no other French companies doing this.
          • liketochill 5y ago
            What characteristic does steam turbine at nuclear plant have that is different from steam turbine at coal power plant? I’ve worked on steam turbine before that had boiler fed from bio-fuel or kerosene. Is the turbine itself not just a shaft with a series of blades, an inlet and an outlet? Any specifics you can get in to would be very interesting to me! Thanks
• PaulHoule 5y ago
  They oughta give up on the EPR and build AP1000s.
  • AceJohnny2 5y ago
    Why would France, which has specifically built its civilian nuclear fleet for independence from the US, want to rely on the American company Westinghouse?
    • Shadonototra 5y ago
      Because mr PaulHoule from hackernews owns shares from the company that makes them Same from people all over europe who for decades pushed down France for its Nuclear efforts Now that the US is working toward catching up, they all voice they pro-"US"-nuclear It's very sad, europe is full of cowards But yet again China ahead of everyone else because they are free from these little "marketshare" fights
      • PaulHoule 5y ago
        Westinghouse is bankrupt many times over, if I was a shareholder I would be busted. EPR was designed by followers of Amory Lovins that wanted to make a reactor which is unconstructable at any cost and schedule. They tried building an EPR in Finland and it is a decade behind schedule and nobody cares because the people working on it have the best paying job they ever had. They did get an EPR running in China but had fuel damage right away. AP1000 is running in China for real and will be running at Vogtle in Georgia USA next year. There have been so many ownership changes that I would have said AP1000 was a Japanese design 10 years ago, now it is effectively a Chinese design.
        • Shadonototra 5y ago
          I don't buy it Btw, just recently: https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsukraine-agrees-to-construct-westinghouse-ap1000-reactors-9051424 https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsukraine-agrees-to-const... US, ukraine, trump, 2019, doesn't that ring bells?
• woodpanel 5y ago
  Well, somebody has to help Germany accomplish its "Energiewende"
  • hunterb123 5y ago
    Nah it's cool they got Nord Stream 2, so they good. Russia will provide them all the energy they need, and the US will provide them defense against Russia. Perfect! - edit - Is it still morally sound if you outsource the immorality elsewhere?
    • president 5y ago
      I imagine adversaries of the West are having the biggest laugh at us voluntarily giving up key commodity production abilities in the name of combatting climate change.
      • thriftwy 5y ago
        The historical problem of Russia is inability of exporting any produce other than raw materials, on account of having Europe as neighbour which can produce anything easier and often cheaper. But now, with the carbon tax and gas prices in EU, I wonder if Russian mfg capacity will suddently become competitive. The funniest thing would be Europe pricing itself out of Russian oil due to carbon tax, and then buying now-cheap goods from Russia made based on affordable oil.
        • makerofspoons 5y ago
          Carbon tariffs would be a good way to even the playing field in that scenario.
        • jabl 5y ago
          There's been serious talks about carbon border adjustments, that is, levying an extra import tax on products from countries that don't have a sufficiently ambitious domestic climate change policy, so probably not.
• truthwhisperer 5y ago
  Greenpeace is shooting itself in the feed. No more coal. Okay.. Then build more nuclear. Nohoooo
• radicalbyte 5y ago
  If this is combined with a move away from fossiel fuel for heating and logistics - and a significant investment in renewable - then it is an excellent move for France. I would sign up today for nuclear power in 2025 if it replaced all natural gas and diesel/petrol vehicles on the roads.
  • drBonkers 5y ago
    If you create hydrocarbon fuels with sequestered CO_2, driven by nuclear electricity, you have a clean, energy-dense battery. Plus, you don’t have to retrofit the entire automobile fleet.
    • throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      >Plus, you don’t have to retrofit the entire automobile fleet. The entire transportation fleet, a good chunk of the grid and a good chunk of the infrastructure for heating things.
    • throwawayboise 5y ago
      But big auto bought into EVs and climate change once they realized it was a way to make everyone have to buy new cars. So your idea is a non-starter.
      • tonyedgecombe 5y ago
        Except most manufacturers are losing money on every EV they sell.
      • kibwen 5y ago
        People already cycle through cars quite frequently. Big Auto doesn't need to convince anybody to buy a new car. This would be a purposeless conspiracy.
      • wyager 5y ago
        I don't think it's about making everyone buy new cars as much as about realizing that there's a new category of ultra-palatable government subsidies for them to cash in on.
• datameta 5y ago
  Are there any existing reactor types, blueprints or built, that are engineered toward utilizing spent fuel first and foremost? If not, I hope France seriously considers using breeder reactors to reduce leftover radioactive material. Otherwise, I think this is fantastic news. In fact even if they build light water reactors I think it is the ideal base load solution to bridge the gap from oil and coal.
  • PaulHoule 5y ago
    This may be the one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8ApH-0YHkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8ApH-0YHkA After Superphenix I don't think they are in any hurry to develop the LMFBR.
    • jabl 5y ago
      There was ASTRID, another sodium cooled fast reactor design, that was cancelled a couple of years ago before it got off the drawing board. (Answering again as the previous answer was attached to the wrong parent when the articles were merged)
      • natmaka 5y ago
        These 'fast breeder reactors' are difficult to tame. In France: ASTRID burnt ~700 millions euros and didn't get past plans. Before it the 'Superphenix' project burnt ~8 billions euros, was built, had a long chain of incidents, then was canceled. Before it the 'Phenix' project ran then had serious problems ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix#Earlier_work_and_Ph%C3%A9nix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix#Earlier_work_... ). Before it the 'Rapsodie' project also ended with problems. Notwithstanding numerous projects in other nations. Nowadays Russia (and India, to an extent) is the only nation pursuing this path.
        • PaulHoule 5y ago
          In the US the EBR I melted down as did the Enrico Fermi reactor in Detroit. Both of them were put back together and operated after the fuel damage. EBR II and FFTF operated with no major problems in the US, but the Clinch River project was canceled. However the US has failed to construct a mixed-oxide fuel facility which is the most developed fuel for a fast reactor (e.g. pure metal and nitrides are both options but oxide fuels seem to require a high energy ball mill that can turn harmless silica into deadly nanoparticles that can wreck your lungs, just imagine what it does with Pu) MONJU burned up in Japan. The Russians have documented hundreds of sodium fires in the BN-350 and BN-400 but they would say fires happen in industrial facilities all the time and people just put them out. They turned on the BN-800 in 2016 and it is now consuming nuclear weapons plutonium. Old literature suggests that the capital cost of the LMFBR is inevitably worse than the LWR. I'm not sure that's right. Both the LWR and coal burning power plants have been uncompetitive since 1980 against gas turbines for power generation. A closed-cycle gas turbine would fit in the employee break room of the turbine house of a nuclear reactor, but it is an undeveloped technology. A high temperature reactor with a gas turbine powerset could potentially be an order of magnitude smaller than an LWR, not have high pressures, have no risk of a steam explosion -- I think next generation nuclear is not worth pursuing unless the capital cost can be brought radically down with those factors. There is a precedent for commercial licensing of the LMFBR in the US. Terrestrial Energy (Bill Gates's company) is making noises about building one but they are holding their cards so close to their chest that it's hard to believe they have a realistic plan to do it.
• boyadjian 5y ago
  For me, what emerges from this story is the lack of anticipation on the part of the French government. For years, nuclear power was discredited because it was not environmentally friendly, so we shut down power plants, and now we have to refabricate them? All this makes no sense. Moreover, the production of a nuclear power plant is very long, how are we going to do it in the meantime?
  • VintageCool 5y ago
    Nuclear has been in a holding pattern for years in France while they waited to see if the EPR unit being built at Flamanville 3 would work out. There was also a scandal a few years ago when the state-owned nuclear construction company Areva acquired Le Creusot Forge. It turned out that there had been a decades long coverup of weaknesses in the steel forged there for nuclears plants, and falsification of documents.
  • fidesomnes 5y ago
    it was all a long con to get the price of uranium to bottom. Macron is long and doing well with it tyvm.
  • audunw 5y ago
    Wasn't many of the reactors shut down in Europe in need of being decommissioned anyway? You shouldn't run a nuclear reactor forever and ever, and most of the reactors in Europe are quite old. I know there are cases of decommissioning too early, or even a reactor that was fully built but not even started operation (I think Tom Scott had a video on that?), but I don't think that's the common case.
    • R0b0t1 5y ago
      They were in "need" of decommissioning because necessary repairs had been intentionally stalled to the point of making them politically untenable.
    • kazen44 5y ago
      many nuclear reactors in a lot of countries also have very low yields compared to modern reactors. (for instance, most nuclear reactors in the netherlands have been disbanded because they provided little power)
• m0zg 5y ago
  Smart man. I can't believe I'm saying this about _Macron_. We _have to_ figure out a way to build reactors cheaply and safely, and you can't do that without the political will, unfortunately. If you could, electricity would be "too cheap to meter" by now already.
  • Vapormac 5y ago
    Is the _underscores_ around words supposed to signify something? Or am I just using the wrong browser to view HN and it's not rendering or something. Sorry if this is an obtuse question I'm new here.
    • nitrogen 5y ago
      Probably habit on the part of the OP from other markup languages, to show emphasis. HN uses asterisks * for italics/emphasis: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
    • tupac_speedrap 5y ago
      It's a Reddit thing, it makes the text bold on there but people seem to use it on here by accident.
      • epukaza 5y ago
        It's older than that, gmail (also maybe MSN messenger?) used to have underscores italicize text, and asterisks would bold text.
        • handrous 5y ago
          Slack and WhatsApp do it, too. I bet also in most of the other major messengers around right now (Signal, Matrix, Telegram). It's a thing in MarkDown, as well. Now that I think about it, some of the only places I type prose where that's not what surrounding underscores do, are HN and various Apple programs (mail, notes, et c.) [EDIT] For that matter, we all did the same stuff in ascii for years. Asterisks for emphasis (bold, now, in many places), underscores for underlining (which, in the case of, say, book titles, is better represented as italics if you can print italics instead, so I'd guess that's where the "underscore = italic" thing comes from)
• echelon 5y ago
  Reddit has a few subreddits dedicated to uranium investing. I caught wind of this a few months ago, and my investments are doing well. Some in the community seem to think that the market will 10-20x due to the world waking up to the immediate, pressing need for nuclear. (Insufficient wind/solar capacity, storage, transmission, etc.) There are also some interesting behaviors going on in the uranium market, where certain players are buying up all of the supply. It's short-squeezeish in nature. China announcement, French announcement. US uranium exploration. Lots going on. https://www.reddit.com/r/UraniumSqueeze https://www.reddit.com/r/UraniumSqueeze
  • woah 5y ago
    Any investment that you caught wind of a few months ago would be doing well
    • dane-pgp 5y ago
      A better (unintentional) pun would be: Any investment that you were gassed about a few months ago would be doing well.
    • standardUser 5y ago
      Not this well... https://robinhood.com/stocks/DNN https://robinhood.com/stocks/DNN https://robinhood.com/stocks/UEC https://robinhood.com/stocks/UEC https://robinhood.com/stocks/CCJ https://robinhood.com/stocks/CCJ
  • Thorncorona 5y ago
    For those interested here's the thesis written out by someone at the start of this year. https://josephcollinsul.medium.com/the-uranium-bull-thesis-ce6d49ebd219 https://josephcollinsul.medium.com/the-uranium-bull-thesis-c...
• jedisct1 5y ago
  This new French energy supplier also advertises 100% nuclear-based energy: https://www.isotope.energy https://www.isotope.energy
  • jabl 5y ago
    EDIT: Huh, this was supposed to be a response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29168027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29168027 but apparently it got attached to the wrong parent when the articles were merged. There was ASTRID, another sodium cooled fast reactor design, that was cancelled a couple of years ago before it got off the drawing board.
• p1mrx 5y ago
  Am I reading correctly that the EPR only has enough water for 24 hours of passive cooling? https://www.google.com/search?q=epr+emergency+feedwater+system+%22*+hours%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=epr+emergency+feedwater+syst... I guess they have to build with the tech they have, but it would be nice if they'd spent the last few decades researching better designs.
• slownews45 5y ago
  Will this be EPR 2 style design? Flamanville has been super disappointing however in France.
• rbrbr 5y ago
  What a moron.
• jhylau 5y ago
  Vogtle nuclear delayed again due to shoddy work that needs redoing, raising cost to >$27.8 billion. New timeline means 16 to 17 years between planning and operation, thus 16-17 years of CO2 and pollution before a single kWh https://www.wabe.org/new-delay-for-georgia-nuclear-reactors-as-costs-mount/ https://www.wabe.org/new-delay-for-georgia-nuclear-reactors-... we are running out of time! the transition to WWS is faster and cheaper. see: https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/WWS-145-Countries.html https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/WWS-...
  • steeve 5y ago
    Oh stop with the "it's too slow" already: https://twitter.com/steeve/status/1426103525050814464?s=20 https://twitter.com/steeve/status/1426103525050814464?s=20
    • epistasis 5y ago
      I'm not sure what's been debunked. The US does not have the construction capabilities of 1970s France. And for that matter, neither does France, as is being proven in Flamanville and in Olkiluoto, Finland. Perhaps we can invite Slovakia or Russia to build in other countries, but there's no knowing if they could train local workforces accomplish what they have.
      • ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        UK is taking decades to buils a train line, and its gonna cost as much as the moon landings, all of them. Maybe this whole outsourcing of all technical skills and manufacturing actually has something to do with it? Maybe treating staff as disposable cpgs hollows out skills untill the companies can no longer do anything right?
        • toyg 5y ago
          I suspect the real reason is "maybe turning profit-skimming by intermediate layers of management into an art-form, makes any large-scale project-costs trend to infinity". HS2 spent ungodly sums on "consulting" and management fees to do stuff that, back in the day, would have probably been carried out by a couple of commandeered civil servants. But I'm sure all their Word reports have nice headings and lots of "holistic" something.
• rcpt 5y ago
  Mr Burns was the most environmentally responsible Simpson's character and likely a real scientific expert. Big shame they selected him for the villan.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • johnchristopher 5y ago
    Remind us again where he stored nuclear waste ?
    • asta123 5y ago
      The correct spelling is 'nucilar'.
    • justicezyx 5y ago
      If you don't believe that as part of the tragedy, and the misinfluenced public's opinion over nuclear industry, then you probably did not get what the parent really means...
      • legulere 5y ago
        The real tragedy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27Ndrangheta https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_waste https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactiv...
        • justicezyx 5y ago
          Indeed. But let's be clear that those practices are on the bad actors themselves. Let's not paint these tragedies as some form of inherent flaws of nuclear energy. One thing I cannot fully communicate with posts like this, is that it's not clear what the intention is. By these posts, I refer to posts which uses emotional summary, backed by human loss that has the subject involved. Then leave no trace of the actual rational conclusion from the facts. It looks just like an intentional emotional manipulation, which plagued most US news reports. This type of approach, makes rational discussion very difficult to progress. Edit: Look at the child reply. See what emotion brings to a discussion. From nuclear energy to illegal disposal of nuclear waste, then to holocaust. The emotion is increasing, but the subject of the discussion is dissolved in the process without any trace of respect to the other parties in the discussion. Emotion sucks the rationality from the discussion, and literally deprive the common grounds between people. In the end, achieve nothing.
• shtopointo 5y ago
  The recent gas shortage must have shaken everybody awake. There's been a lot of talk about nuclear (both fusion and fission) recently, and it's great news!
  • JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
    Or is the nuclear cartel astroturfing hard because they know they are circling the drain with regard to cheaper, safer renewables?
    • ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      OPEC is the official cartel, and its been working to kill off nuclear for decades
• Sophistifunk 5y ago
  Who's going to invest though, when an accident in an entirely different country caused by issues your reactor might not even be susceptible to can easily get your project shut down by the fleeting winds of public opinion?
• chris_wot 5y ago
  Makes me wonder if this is not push back from the U.S. submarine deal with Australia.
• baybal2 5y ago
  > Macron says France will build new nuclear energy reactors (reuters.com) France were about to build new nuclear energy reactors anyways. They had a 5-8 new plants in planning for this decade.
• natmaka 5y ago
  Macron said "We are going, for the first time in decades, to relaunch the construction of nuclear reactors in our country". This is a blatant lie, as France launched a project and never ceased trying to build. However it failed flat. The last delivered reactor was Civaux-2 (generation II), in 1999. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civaux_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civaux_Nuclear_Power_Plant Then in 2002 the project Flamanville-3 was launched (a generation III reactor, the "EPR", first one of its kind), and the building phase started in 2007. It is a major failure, not delivered, at least 11 years behind schedule, and will cost at least 19.1 billion euros (initial budget: 3.4 billions €). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
  • skywal_l 5y ago
    I believe the Flamanville EPR is considered as some sort of prototype. It was planned to be years in the making and difficulties were expected. However, they were not expecting this much. The reasons that they are pushing are: 1. Lack of proper trained personnel 2. More constraints imposed during the projects due to Fukushima 3. First design of that kind And as you said, the last nuclear reactor to be finished in France was 20 years ago[0]. The people who worked on that last plant were probably the one who worked on plants during the 70s, 80s and 90s and retired right after. It fits with reason 1. [0]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrale_nucl%C3%A9aire_en_France#/media/Fichier:Chrono-parc-nucleaire-francais.svg https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrale_nucl%C3%A9aire_en_Fra...
    • conradfr 5y ago
      It can get complicated [1] ... Honestly I don't know if we can really build nuclear plants anymore, at least for a reasonable cost in a timely fashion. [1] https://www.franceculture.fr/economie/scandale-de-la-forge-du-creusot-areva-et-edf-alertees-des-2005 https://www.franceculture.fr/economie/scandale-de-la-forge-d...
    • philipkglass 5y ago
      I believe the Flamanville EPR is considered as some sort of prototype. It was planned to be years in the making and difficulties were expected. It was scheduled to take 54 months to build when construction started in 2007: https://web.archive.org/web/20110613091002/http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectionCode=132&storyCode=2048041 https://web.archive.org/web/20110613091002/http://www.neimag... The last reactors to enter commercial operation in France, the 2 units at Civaux Nuclear Power Plant, took 13 and 11 years from construction start in 1988/1991 to commercial operation in 2002: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civaux_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civaux_Nuclear_Power_Plant I wonder if EDF succumbed to hubris in thinking that they could build a new reactor design twice as fast as the last-completed reactors, or if they published optimistic numbers because they thought that there was more institutional tolerance for constant slippage than for estimating unhappily large numbers right at the start.
• SubuSS 5y ago
  I really like the promise of green energy source. I do see the huge advancements made in terms of safety. I have a question around waste management though: Do we know if there are big improvements here? IOW - https://apnews.com/article/washington-business-nuclear-waste-environment-and-nature-0f4d8a61962f0984b4c20994cb19e7e1 https://apnews.com/article/washington-business-nuclear-waste... bothers me.
  • steeve 5y ago
    Yes: https://international.andra.fr/solutions-long-lived-waste/cigeo https://international.andra.fr/solutions-long-lived-waste/ci...
• panick21_ 5y ago
  The only way nuclear will come back is serious practical next generation reactors. We could have built these since the 70s and didn't. Rather waste money on fusion and renewables. Based on first principles, nuclear is the cheapest. Its historical path dependency that it isn't. Fission breeder reactors have the potential to use the least amount of land, be the safest form of energy, have the lowest cost of fuel (essentially free)and use the least amount of total resources (steel, concrete and so on). These could be used for all kinds of applications, including creating of medical isotopes, nuclear batteries, industrial heat and power. Non if this is new, these insights are from the 70s and in 50-100 years people will look back and ask 'why were these people don't doing it? They had all the technology, it makes no sense'.
• Animats 5y ago
  France already has one 3rd gen nuclear plant under construction, Flamanville 3, and it's 10 years behind schedule. That's discouraging. France did so well at nuclear plant construction in the 1980s.
  • nunja 5y ago
    France nuclear innovation was very linked to military force and bombs. Over the decades, skills where lost and biggest players in the field are failing companies deep in dept. The enregetical status quo looks good but there is absolutely no research in the field except fusion which is very far away. France lost his nuclear leadership times ago and there is absolutely no reason to wait for innovation here. The risk of a nuclear disaster in the center of e Europe is not to dismiss, with 55 aging reactors across the territory. Wasted genius ressources by politics 101.
• beders 5y ago
  Hopefully not one of those: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattenom_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattenom_Nuclear_Power_Plant
  • blamazon 5y ago
    What are you referring to? The list of industrial accidents? I don’t think it’s fair to criticize this without comparing to the record of a non nuclear facility of similar scale. Injuries and death are sadly a part of life at all large industrial plants.
• nunja 5y ago
  Jean Marc Jancovici is one of the most vocal of we can call "Nuclear ecologist" around in France, the content is amazing and he definitely have a point if you want to follow [0]. He is a realist, but in this field we need to go beyond and to open big money for the research into small and decentralized nuclear power. Every citizen have to know the pros and the cons, and be educated to the risks. Energy provide good living standards, but we have to know the drawbacks and we have to account for externalities in every business model. This will be the only way to keep our standards of living and keep an habitable home. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGt4XwBbCvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGt4XwBbCvA
  • Toine 5y ago
    Janco on HN, finally ! > This will be the only way to keep our standards of living and keep an habitable home. Jancovici uses physics and maths to prove we definitely won't have western standard of living for 8B people. Even for 2, not for long.
• littlestymaar 5y ago
  As happy as I am that nuclear is back, I really don't trust Macron on this. For the record, here is what he did in his current term regarding nuclear: - shut down the Fessenheim plant, one of the most reliable one. Yes it was the oldest, but not by far, and reports from the nuclear authority are pretty clear that this plant was in a much better shape than others built just a few years afterwards (Bugey, one year later which is now older than Fessenheim was when shut down, and Blayais started 4 years later). - promised to reduce the share of nuclear in the electricty mix to 50% by 2025. - shut down Astrid, the French research project for 4th generation nuclear (which is the only long term viable path for nuclear, since there will never be a shortage of fertile material (U238 or Thorium) whereas fissile one is pretty limited. Breeding reactors also solve the very-long lived nuclear waste issue). He did all of this when he was trying to seduce electors from the green party. Now he don't seem to care about them, but who knows for how long…
  • skywal_l 5y ago
    To promise to reduce the share of nuclear in itself means nothing. If you increase the production with renewable, automatically, nuclear will have a smaller share. It does not mean that you do not plan ahead. Fessenheim had been a thorn in the back of previous governments for years. Sometimes political move are not logical from a technical standpoint but can be seen as intermediate step in a larger plan. I don't blame him for that. Astrid though seems to be the real mistake. The new CEA boss at the time said that[0] we don't need that kind of reactor because uranium is cheap as nobody wants nuclear anymore since Fukushima. This is such a stupid reason that I cannot believe to be the real one. [0] https://www.lefigaro.fr/sciences/nucleaire-le-patron-du-cea-justifie-l-abandon-d-astrid-20191023 https://www.lefigaro.fr/sciences/nucleaire-le-patron-du-cea-...
  • satellite2 5y ago
    Maybe the green party elector finally realised that the battle against CO2 doesn't need to be 100% renewable? Regarding the closing of Fessenheim, it seems like a sensible decision. The central was designed to last 40 years and long exceeded its expiration date. In the last 10 years it had roughly one incident per year with graver and graver consequences. And in any case, France would have started lose a lot of money because, due to the geographical position and the risk it pose, its neighbours, Switzerland and Germany were not really happy with it and had started to repetedly attack the decision to maintain it open in courts. The fact that a politician had to take this decision (and not engineers) is in my opinion the most shocking part. It shows that the ANS probably became complacent with the state of security of centrals. Probably similar to finanicial markets or aviation regulators. And generally when that happens it's the begining of catastrophes.
• andygrd 5y ago
  Nuclear energy is THE power source of NIMBY-ism, relatively clean, ecological, always available but just so long as it's next door to somebody else. The Germany plans to do away with this power source with come back to bite them badly in the next thirty years.
  • jillesvangurp 5y ago
    Nuclear is the most expensive form of energy on the market. If you fast forward two decades, countries will be producing power at vastly different cost levels that will dictate their economic success. Those relying on nuclear will be piling on debt for getting power way above market prices. Germany never had a substantial nuclear deployment. It peaked around 20GW. About 8 remains. The disappearance of 16GW from the grid was a complete non event. No blackouts. No instability. It just happened gradually and now its gone. The remaining 8 are tiny compared to daily fluctuations in wind and solar that are also not an issue. In terms of base load it is completely irrelevant whether it stays or goes. It's certainly not worth paying a lot for. If you replace 20GW with a few hundred GW of wind and solar, you end up with plenty of capacity and baseload. That's more or less what happened in the last few decades. The French already import excess power from Germany and elsewhere below the price they are selling their own nuclear power quite often. Nuclear never mattered in Germany other than for military strategic reasons that stopped being relevant when Russia withdrew their tanks from the DDR 30 years ago. All that remains is cold war era obsolete plants that are expensive to keep going. Shutting them down was going to happen no matter what (because they are obsolete and near end of life) and the decision to not build replacement plants was pretty much a constant. The debate around that was pretty much over before Fukushima already. All that did was fast track some of the decision making. It remains a popular and uncontroversial decision in Germany. Macron is announcing intentions and plans in the middle of an election season where Macron is under a lot of pressure from right wing populist parties. This nuclear push is very much motivated by nationalist sentiments and Macron is in damage control mode as he's losing voters to several right wing parties; some of which you might classify as far right or even neo fascist. We'll see what remains of those intentions and plans after the elections. Election time posturing is not to be confused with actually policy to spend many billions on nuclear. Assuming he actually wins, he might find himself once more forming a government with a few other parties that will have strong opinions on this topic and not a lot of budget to allocate to a wide range of topics competing for attention. Until that government is a reality, all you have is a politician trying to stay in power trying to appeal to voters currently entertaining the thought to vote for someone else. Even with these announcements, we're still talking a net decline in nuclear capacity over time. It's just slowing it down slightly. Personally, I think it is wise for the French to keep the knowledge to build reactors going for another generation. Additionally, exporting that knowledge to e.g. the UK is good for their economy. Hinkley Point C is being built by French EDF. Of course, there are plenty of scandals surrounding that particular setup related to cost overruns, delays, etc. That seems to be a constant with nuclear. One thing is certain, it won't be cheap power. Gas is cheaper, even with the recent price increases. Saving money is not a reason to go nuclear. It never was. Whether the UK ends up buying more is very much up in the air. The drama around Hinkley Point C is probably not helping the nuclear case currently. And having to send the money to France is probably not helping that case.
• DrJaws 5y ago
  At the current consumption, uranium will only last 80 years, with the new surge for nuclear plants, will not even last 25 thorium won't last much more, and it's not even viable at this point, this seems like a desperate attempt to maintain the power consumption per capita for some more years before the inevitable collapse.
  • janmalec 5y ago
    That's not true. We can use breeder reactors to produce more fissile material. Also, the "80 years" estimate does not include uranium reserves that are not currently being exploited. There is plenty of uranium in the ocean and it is constantly being replanished from the ground.
    • jabl 5y ago
      Nick Touran, occasionally active on HN, has a nice overview at https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-is-longterm-sustainable.html https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-is-...
• phtrivier 5y ago
  This is great news for the Chinese subcontractors who'll get to do the parts we forgot about. At least we'll have a debate topic during next year election cycle that is not immigration or Islam - that will be a change. The job of the nuclear security agency will be tricky next year : they'll have to double their effort ("The President does not want an accident making the news") but also stay quieter than usual ("The President does not want any kind of small incident making the news".) They're independant in theory, of course, and they want to do their job well, but they have biases and bosses who have bosses, etc... I doubt they'll let anything big slip just for électoral purpose, but the scrutiny on their job (especially from the left wing press) will be interesting to see...
• cm-t 5y ago
  Bonjour. In France there are reactors, now they are OLD. OLD is a cost, and also a risk. France already has gaz (cost is hight), or hydrolic (water daws are all in use at its max in France), but it seems France doesnt want to go the german way and switch on the coal power plants. The press article mention green peace, while most of people think gren peace are communicant people who doesnt get aware about science news and will applause germany for leaving nuclear (but going COAL) and blame france for keeping nuclear (but having low CO2 energy ratio) like if wastes are worst than CO2 while CO2 is nowday issue. Government tryed to open the energy market in France, but since it has done that, the consumer prices are only getting highter and highter while the historic company EDF is making profit, and not the new comers who are often at the edge to termination plan. Also, Having a company not being EDF (governement has 80% part of it) to own a reactor is a risk, because profit always come first for a company. Having new reactor will give more low-CO2 emission energy and give more time to have more decent work (r&d) on renewable energy and stockage (not daws since we already use them all here) probably. There are risk to have reactor, and also wastes, but the CO2 costs look the best until there is something else. PS: I'm not a macron side voter; I think many french people think like this; I'm not backing anything with source, because it's just what it is on people minds i guess and i agree a bit to that; so I'm just sharing this here for the discussion
• sandGorgon 5y ago
  This is super good. Again, the point is not Europe in and of itself, but also India and China. The demand for power in India and China is outstripping everyone else. And it is still stuck using coal power. India and China do NOT have land (for renewables) commensurate with the population or energy demand. Also one of the biggest sources of renewable hydro power is a geopolitical flashpoint for India vs China (https://www.indiatoday.in/news-analysis/story/china-proposed-mega-dam-spells-concern-for-india-1851621-2021-09-10 https://www.indiatoday.in/news-analysis/story/china-proposed...). Almost a hundred soldiers died in an India vs China battle recently around this area. Both India and China have unilaterally rejected COP26 restrictive measures from developed nations... simply because it is not possible to reduce the power demand coming from populations (the size of Europe) being lifted up from poverty. The only answer for the next 50 years is nuclear tech. And France is literally the only game in town right now. So let us pray, this happens sooner than later. You do NOT want coal from 2 BILLION people in the atmosphere.
  • phicoh 5y ago
    Why do you say that China does not have the land for renewables? Population denstity in China (145/km2) is less than for example Germany (232/km2).
  • ChemSpider 5y ago
    Of course China as more than enough land for renewables. Ever heard of the Gobi desert?
    • sandGorgon 5y ago
      There are already massive solar array farms in the Gobi desert. You are misunderstanding the growth in power needed. If India and China move towards electric vehicles..... just New Delhi has 12 million cars. Just to compare, London has 2.6 million cars. New York has about 4 million cars. I don't think people grasp what 2 billion people really means.
  • krrrh 5y ago
    I’m no fan of the Chinese regime, but maybe they just concluded that the preening do-nothingness that goes on at these summits isn’t worth getting mixed up with. From last week: “China has reported overnight to be planning 150 new nuclear reactors over the next 15 years — more than have been built around the world since 1980 — a signal that uranium production needs to be stepped up, fast and soon.” That’s a reported planned investment of $440B. https://smallcaps.com.au/china-supercharge-uranium-race-150-new-nuclear-reactors/ https://smallcaps.com.au/china-supercharge-uranium-race-150-...
• itistricky 5y ago
  Excuse my ignorance but I'm wondering how difficult/feasible would it be to have all CO2 captured from burning coal etc and thus making them zero emission.
• N19PEDL2 5y ago
  As Europe's dependence on polluting coal and Russian gas increases, France is making the right move. I hope other major European countries will follow suit.
• amai 5y ago
  It would be more important if Macron would announce a solution for the nuclear waste problem in France. But I guess it won‘t be stored in his garden.
• martius 5y ago
  Macron says things a year before the next presidential election. Assuming they really set this project in motion, there's plenty of time for the next government to cancel it.
• neycoda 5y ago
  I appreciate you, nuclear energy. Just don't have meltdowns.