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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

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.
- edot 5y ago
  How long does it take for CO2 sequestered in the ground to form hydrocarbon chains?
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    Thousands? Probably millions of years. Far longer than human civilization/species will last or need to worry about.
- radicalbyte 5y ago
  Sort of - but it doesn't solve the issue with air quality. Electrification of transport isn't just about CO2. We'll see more instant benefits from having air we can breathe.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Air quality is a problem that basically all of the first world has solved to varying extents that depend mostly on whether the local areas are affected are rich enough that it tops their lists of problems. When the developing world gets rich they'll care too.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      Is that why the richest people in london enjoy illegally toxic air? https://www.clientearth.org/latest/press-office/press/top-court-confirms-uk-has-broken-air-pollution-law/ https://www.clientearth.org/latest/press-office/press/top-co... Every megacity is mega polluted, you cant have clean air with cars
  - dividedbyzero 5y ago
    Since you couldn't realistically replace all ICE vehicles right away, it'd help ease the transition and especially in rural areas, air quality might not be a big concern anyway. If you end up with a surplus of clean gas, you could just burn it in dedicated plants and take care of the NOx there, or use it for aviation and in agriculture.
  - epistasis 5y ago
    A lot of the air pollution from cars is from brake dust and tire micro particles. EVs do result in less brake dust, but the tires are still a problem. And if you live on the West coast, it was recently discovered that an essential chemical used for tire durability and safety causes mass deaths in salmon. (Or rather, the chemical breaks down into another chemical, which causes mass salmon death, and probably other fish death too). I will appreciate never having to hear a damn diesel truck again, however. Those things should be taxed heavily for noise pollution in addition tk their massive particulate emissions.
- hagbard_c 5y ago
  Just make sure to do something about NOx emissions, the cause of the downfall of Diesel in many countries. As long as you burn just about any fuel - hydrocarbon or otherwise - using air you'll end up with NOx as a combustion by-product. Filtering out nitrogen from air is possible - zeolites are used for this purpose in oxygen concentrators - but hard to do at a high enough capacity to satisfy the needs of even modest-sized ICEs so a post-combustion NOx capture/conversion step will be needed regardless of the provenance of the fuel [1]. [1] http://www.meca.org/technology/technology-details?id=5&name=Catalytic%20Converters http://www.meca.org/technology/technology-details?id=5&name=...
- jhallenworld 5y ago
  They call them e-fuels.. but the overall efficiency is low. There is a recent Engineering Explained video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d0MPg7DxbY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d0MPg7DxbY But liquid fuels are incredibly convenient, so maybe they will be worth the high price in certain applications. For example in jet engines for airplanes.
beambot 5y ago
2025 is a pipedream -- they'd be lucky to break ground by 2025. > Median construction time required for nuclear reactors worldwide oscillated from around 84 months to 117 months, from 1981 to 2019 respectively. https://www.statista.com/statistics/712841/median-construction-time-for-reactors-since-1981/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/712841/median-constructi...
- ethbr0 5y ago
  We need a law that for megaprojects, local governments and/or federal agencies must respond to requests within X days, or be fined an escalating per-day rate. And if their responses are incomplete, same. The timeline ballooning as all external parties take their time weighing in and covering their asses, and costs associated with idling construction waiting for same, are getting ridiculous. Either it's a priority (in which case everyone should treat it as such), or it's not (in which case we should accept we just can't build non-priority projects over a certain scale).
  - bduerst 5y ago
    You'd never get megaprojects built then, because no-one would reasonably commit to them given the risk that they undergo scope creep and the steepness of that punishment.
    - robbedpeter 5y ago
      Yeah, that would simply put more obstacles in place. We need less ass covering and bureaucracy and more action. You don't solve that by creating more risk and the need for more ass covering.
  - themitigating 5y ago
    Sometimes a five year delay could be a community that sues over a new reactor, then appeals, appeals, etc. Then if that lawsuit was posted here the title might be "US government tries to rush reactor, threatens small town life".
  - 5y ago
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Maybe they and China will create a little power envy in the USA, and we can get back on track for some real change and improvements in CO2 pollution containment.
martinald 5y ago
France already has 80-90% of electricity supply being supplied by nuclear. It also exports an enormous amount of power to other European countries. I don't know exactly how true this is but I believe gas usage for heating is much rarer in France than other countries. They have a lot of electrical storage heating due to the cheap off peak baseload that nuclear gives.
DrJaws 5y ago
uranium may not be a fossil fuel but it shares all the problems of them - pollution and waste - it's limited At the current consumption, uranium would only last 80 years, if all the countries start to build new power plants, won't last more than 2 decades before it's depleted, and we will have the same problem again. nuclear power is not a solution, is just a small patch.
- wavegeek 5y ago
  > uranium would only last 80 years Thank you for pointing this out. People blithely assume that U235 is available in unlimited supply when it is not. My own view is that it is a useful partial interim solution that buys us some time. That is worth quite a lot.
  - drran 5y ago
    Uranium can be used to create weapons, so we don't want to allow Uranium mining everywhere except a few safe spots. If demand for Uranium will increase, then price for Uranium will skyrocket (buyer marker will switch to seller market) and will match prices for other kinds of energy.
- collinmanderson 5y ago
  > At the current consumption, uranium would only last 80 years Interesting. I had not heard this before, and Wikipedia seems to somewhat agree. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Uranium_resources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Uranium_resource...: > As of 2011 the world's known resources of uranium, economically recoverable at the arbitrary price ceiling of US$130/kg, were enough to last for between 70 and 100 years.[60][61][62] In 2007, the OECD estimated 670 years of economically recoverable uranium in total conventional resources and phosphate ores assuming the then-current use rate.[63] > Light water reactors make relatively inefficient use of nuclear fuel, mostly using only the very rare uranium-235 isotope.[64] Nuclear reprocessing can make this waste reusable, and newer reactors also achieve a more efficient use of the available resources than older ones.[64] With a pure fast reactor fuel cycle with a burn up of all the uranium and actinides (which presently make up the most hazardous substances in nuclear waste), there is an estimated 160,000 years worth of Uranium in total conventional resources and phosphate ore at the price of 60–100 US$/kg.[65]

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.
edot 5y ago
How long does it take for CO2 sequestered in the ground to form hydrocarbon chains?
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Thousands? Probably millions of years. Far longer than human civilization/species will last or need to worry about.
radicalbyte 5y ago
Sort of - but it doesn't solve the issue with air quality. Electrification of transport isn't just about CO2. We'll see more instant benefits from having air we can breathe.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Air quality is a problem that basically all of the first world has solved to varying extents that depend mostly on whether the local areas are affected are rich enough that it tops their lists of problems. When the developing world gets rich they'll care too.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Is that why the richest people in london enjoy illegally toxic air? https://www.clientearth.org/latest/press-office/press/top-court-confirms-uk-has-broken-air-pollution-law/ https://www.clientearth.org/latest/press-office/press/top-co... Every megacity is mega polluted, you cant have clean air with cars
- dividedbyzero 5y ago
  Since you couldn't realistically replace all ICE vehicles right away, it'd help ease the transition and especially in rural areas, air quality might not be a big concern anyway. If you end up with a surplus of clean gas, you could just burn it in dedicated plants and take care of the NOx there, or use it for aviation and in agriculture.
- epistasis 5y ago
  A lot of the air pollution from cars is from brake dust and tire micro particles. EVs do result in less brake dust, but the tires are still a problem. And if you live on the West coast, it was recently discovered that an essential chemical used for tire durability and safety causes mass deaths in salmon. (Or rather, the chemical breaks down into another chemical, which causes mass salmon death, and probably other fish death too). I will appreciate never having to hear a damn diesel truck again, however. Those things should be taxed heavily for noise pollution in addition tk their massive particulate emissions.
hagbard_c 5y ago
Just make sure to do something about NOx emissions, the cause of the downfall of Diesel in many countries. As long as you burn just about any fuel - hydrocarbon or otherwise - using air you'll end up with NOx as a combustion by-product. Filtering out nitrogen from air is possible - zeolites are used for this purpose in oxygen concentrators - but hard to do at a high enough capacity to satisfy the needs of even modest-sized ICEs so a post-combustion NOx capture/conversion step will be needed regardless of the provenance of the fuel [1]. [1] http://www.meca.org/technology/technology-details?id=5&name=Catalytic%20Converters http://www.meca.org/technology/technology-details?id=5&name=...
jhallenworld 5y ago
They call them e-fuels.. but the overall efficiency is low. There is a recent Engineering Explained video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d0MPg7DxbY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d0MPg7DxbY But liquid fuels are incredibly convenient, so maybe they will be worth the high price in certain applications. For example in jet engines for airplanes.

beambot 5y ago

2025 is a pipedream -- they'd be lucky to break ground by 2025. > Median construction time required for nuclear reactors worldwide oscillated from around 84 months to 117 months, from 1981 to 2019 respectively. https://www.statista.com/statistics/712841/median-construction-time-for-reactors-since-1981/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/712841/median-constructi...

ethbr0 5y ago
We need a law that for megaprojects, local governments and/or federal agencies must respond to requests within X days, or be fined an escalating per-day rate. And if their responses are incomplete, same. The timeline ballooning as all external parties take their time weighing in and covering their asses, and costs associated with idling construction waiting for same, are getting ridiculous. Either it's a priority (in which case everyone should treat it as such), or it's not (in which case we should accept we just can't build non-priority projects over a certain scale).
- bduerst 5y ago
  You'd never get megaprojects built then, because no-one would reasonably commit to them given the risk that they undergo scope creep and the steepness of that punishment.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    Yeah, that would simply put more obstacles in place. We need less ass covering and bureaucracy and more action. You don't solve that by creating more risk and the need for more ass covering.
- themitigating 5y ago
  Sometimes a five year delay could be a community that sues over a new reactor, then appeals, appeals, etc. Then if that lawsuit was posted here the title might be "US government tries to rush reactor, threatens small town life".
- 5y ago

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Maybe they and China will create a little power envy in the USA, and we can get back on track for some real change and improvements in CO2 pollution containment.

martinald 5y ago

France already has 80-90% of electricity supply being supplied by nuclear. It also exports an enormous amount of power to other European countries. I don't know exactly how true this is but I believe gas usage for heating is much rarer in France than other countries. They have a lot of electrical storage heating due to the cheap off peak baseload that nuclear gives.

DrJaws 5y ago

uranium may not be a fossil fuel but it shares all the problems of them - pollution and waste - it's limited At the current consumption, uranium would only last 80 years, if all the countries start to build new power plants, won't last more than 2 decades before it's depleted, and we will have the same problem again. nuclear power is not a solution, is just a small patch.

wavegeek 5y ago
> uranium would only last 80 years Thank you for pointing this out. People blithely assume that U235 is available in unlimited supply when it is not. My own view is that it is a useful partial interim solution that buys us some time. That is worth quite a lot.
- drran 5y ago
  Uranium can be used to create weapons, so we don't want to allow Uranium mining everywhere except a few safe spots. If demand for Uranium will increase, then price for Uranium will skyrocket (buyer marker will switch to seller market) and will match prices for other kinds of energy.
collinmanderson 5y ago
> At the current consumption, uranium would only last 80 years Interesting. I had not heard this before, and Wikipedia seems to somewhat agree. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Uranium_resources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Uranium_resource...: > As of 2011 the world's known resources of uranium, economically recoverable at the arbitrary price ceiling of US$130/kg, were enough to last for between 70 and 100 years.[60][61][62] In 2007, the OECD estimated 670 years of economically recoverable uranium in total conventional resources and phosphate ores assuming the then-current use rate.[63] > Light water reactors make relatively inefficient use of nuclear fuel, mostly using only the very rare uranium-235 isotope.[64] Nuclear reprocessing can make this waste reusable, and newer reactors also achieve a more efficient use of the available resources than older ones.[64] With a pure fast reactor fuel cycle with a burn up of all the uranium and actinides (which presently make up the most hazardous substances in nuclear waste), there is an estimated 160,000 years worth of Uranium in total conventional resources and phosphate ore at the price of 60–100 US$/kg.[65]