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Presidential election is next year and some candidates want to completely get rid of nuclear as fast as possible, so this can change. Not sure these candidates

Presidential election is next year and some candidates want to completely get rid of nuclear as fast as possible, so this can change. Not sure these candidates understand this means more CO2, bigger dependency on Russia for gaz and more expensive electricity in the end.

southerntofu 5y ago
> this means more CO2, bigger dependency on Russia That's arguable, but certainly not definitive. This is based on the assumption that energy usage will only ever rise (until the final collapse of industrial civilization), generating an ever-increasing abundance of waste (food, electronics and other supplies) and empty buildings (3 million empty dwellings and counting). Some of us do want to build a lowtech society in which we don't have to choose between killing millions of species due to capitalist activity or living under a rock. > more expensive electricity in the end This part though goes against all current studies. When public subsidies for building/deconstructing nuclear plants are taken into account, nuclear is by far the most expensive energy source. This is of course assuming that they even know how to deconstruct those. It's not like like a site they stopped in 1985 and claimed would be a showcase ("vitrine") of how to dismantle nuclear plants had its plans go 20 times over budget and the estimation kept climbing along the due date currently scheduled for 2040. Or is it in fact just like that?! [0] [0] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_nucl%C3%A9aire_de_Brennilis#Un_d.C3.A9mant.C3.A8lement_exp.C3.A9rimental https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_nucl%C3%A9aire_de_Brennil...
- champtar 5y ago
  Our energy usage will definitely decrease and I'm all for it, I just hope it's in a controlled way and not a brutal collapse. I'm talking "short" term, if you shutdown nuclear plant for political reasons, you just burn more fossil fuel, Germany was nice enough to do the experiment for us, invest massively in renewables but shutdown nuclear plant so they can burn coal and emit 3x more CO2 per kWh than France ... (https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/FR https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/FR) For the price just have a look at latest RTE report: https://www.rte-france.com/analyses-tendances-et-prospectives/bilan-previsionnel-2050-futurs-energetiques https://www.rte-france.com/analyses-tendances-et-prospective... / https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2021-12/Futurs-Energetiques-2050-principaux-resultats.pdf https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2021-12/Futurs-Ene... The scenario with the most nuclear is the cheapest (deconstruction included). This report show the cost in 2060 which is less than half life of nuclear plant and full life of solar panel and wind turbine, I would love the numbers for 2080. Here some comments on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/france/comments/qon812/jai_recompil%C3%A9_les_graphs_du_rapport_rte_en_une/ https://www.reddit.com/r/france/comments/qon812/jai_recompil...
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    Thanks for the link. That's an interesting material even though i disagree with some of the principles laid in the study. It takes for granted that electricity usage will continue to rise and that's a good thing. Personally i would argue electricity as a layer of abstraction is really good at hiding pollution, but is not energy-efficient for many tasks. It also assumes that we keep a giant interconnected grid (with huge losses) and that we need to centralize production just like we do with fuel/nuclear plants. That's what the "artificialisation des sols" line is about, and does not account for the possibility to produce energy more locally if we consume less of it. For example, what's more ecological: - a solar farm produced from high-waste silicon wafers that take many Watt-hours to build, deeply anchored in tons of concrete, running electricity for kilometers until it reaches an electric stove that itself comprises complex/polluting materials? - or a simple gaz stove made of simple metal, running gaz recycled from your cooking waters by bacteria (yes that's a thing) or from methanization of your local compost? Even these two scenarios i'm laying don't cut it if we want to investigate actual degrowth: what's the environmental cost that everybody has their own kitchen (stove/fridge/pans) and cooks for themselves? There's economies of scale to be made by reinstating communal kitchens. Even their scenario advocating for "sobriety" is very naive. It's focused on personal actions (or lack thereof), when the biggest energy/resources waste we have as a society is due to big business not individual actions. For example, they mention "digital sobriety" for users, when we tech people know the biggest resources used are because of surveillance/tracking companies (Google/Amazon/CloudFlare..) keeping huge datacenters filled with data that does not provide any value to the users: what does it matter if you trash 100KB of emails every day from your Gmail if Google keeps 500KB of data points about you in that timeframe (numbers from the top of my hat)? All in all, there's a lot to account for, and this RTE study unsurprisingly only accounts for what's related to their profiting of the situation. In such a biased setup, not surprising that green alternatives doesn't seem economically viable. I haven't finished reading the study, but if it claims nuclear is cheaper, that warrants serious proof: all studies so far point to the opposite as true.
sofixa 5y ago
None of those presidential candidates has a chance to win, at least as of now. French presidential elections have a habit of sudden scandals changing the landscape.
- champtar 5y ago
  And yet we closed Fessenheim nuclear plant early.

southerntofu 5y ago

> this means more CO2, bigger dependency on Russia That's arguable, but certainly not definitive. This is based on the assumption that energy usage will only ever rise (until the final collapse of industrial civilization), generating an ever-increasing abundance of waste (food, electronics and other supplies) and empty buildings (3 million empty dwellings and counting). Some of us do want to build a lowtech society in which we don't have to choose between killing millions of species due to capitalist activity or living under a rock. > more expensive electricity in the end This part though goes against all current studies. When public subsidies for building/deconstructing nuclear plants are taken into account, nuclear is by far the most expensive energy source. This is of course assuming that they even know how to deconstruct those. It's not like like a site they stopped in 1985 and claimed would be a showcase ("vitrine") of how to dismantle nuclear plants had its plans go 20 times over budget and the estimation kept climbing along the due date currently scheduled for 2040. Or is it in fact just like that?! [0] [0] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_nucl%C3%A9aire_de_Brennilis#Un_d.C3.A9mant.C3.A8lement_exp.C3.A9rimental https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_nucl%C3%A9aire_de_Brennil...

champtar 5y ago
Our energy usage will definitely decrease and I'm all for it, I just hope it's in a controlled way and not a brutal collapse. I'm talking "short" term, if you shutdown nuclear plant for political reasons, you just burn more fossil fuel, Germany was nice enough to do the experiment for us, invest massively in renewables but shutdown nuclear plant so they can burn coal and emit 3x more CO2 per kWh than France ... (https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/FR https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/FR) For the price just have a look at latest RTE report: https://www.rte-france.com/analyses-tendances-et-prospectives/bilan-previsionnel-2050-futurs-energetiques https://www.rte-france.com/analyses-tendances-et-prospective... / https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2021-12/Futurs-Energetiques-2050-principaux-resultats.pdf https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2021-12/Futurs-Ene... The scenario with the most nuclear is the cheapest (deconstruction included). This report show the cost in 2060 which is less than half life of nuclear plant and full life of solar panel and wind turbine, I would love the numbers for 2080. Here some comments on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/france/comments/qon812/jai_recompil%C3%A9_les_graphs_du_rapport_rte_en_une/ https://www.reddit.com/r/france/comments/qon812/jai_recompil...
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Thanks for the link. That's an interesting material even though i disagree with some of the principles laid in the study. It takes for granted that electricity usage will continue to rise and that's a good thing. Personally i would argue electricity as a layer of abstraction is really good at hiding pollution, but is not energy-efficient for many tasks. It also assumes that we keep a giant interconnected grid (with huge losses) and that we need to centralize production just like we do with fuel/nuclear plants. That's what the "artificialisation des sols" line is about, and does not account for the possibility to produce energy more locally if we consume less of it. For example, what's more ecological: - a solar farm produced from high-waste silicon wafers that take many Watt-hours to build, deeply anchored in tons of concrete, running electricity for kilometers until it reaches an electric stove that itself comprises complex/polluting materials? - or a simple gaz stove made of simple metal, running gaz recycled from your cooking waters by bacteria (yes that's a thing) or from methanization of your local compost? Even these two scenarios i'm laying don't cut it if we want to investigate actual degrowth: what's the environmental cost that everybody has their own kitchen (stove/fridge/pans) and cooks for themselves? There's economies of scale to be made by reinstating communal kitchens. Even their scenario advocating for "sobriety" is very naive. It's focused on personal actions (or lack thereof), when the biggest energy/resources waste we have as a society is due to big business not individual actions. For example, they mention "digital sobriety" for users, when we tech people know the biggest resources used are because of surveillance/tracking companies (Google/Amazon/CloudFlare..) keeping huge datacenters filled with data that does not provide any value to the users: what does it matter if you trash 100KB of emails every day from your Gmail if Google keeps 500KB of data points about you in that timeframe (numbers from the top of my hat)? All in all, there's a lot to account for, and this RTE study unsurprisingly only accounts for what's related to their profiting of the situation. In such a biased setup, not surprising that green alternatives doesn't seem economically viable. I haven't finished reading the study, but if it claims nuclear is cheaper, that warrants serious proof: all studies so far point to the opposite as true.

sofixa 5y ago

None of those presidential candidates has a chance to win, at least as of now. French presidential elections have a habit of sudden scandals changing the landscape.

champtar 5y ago
And yet we closed Fessenheim nuclear plant early.