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French power grid agency RTE made a report[0] forecasting 2050 France energy mix, and because of loss of knowledge and increased security measures, even with st

French power grid agency RTE made a report[0] forecasting 2050 France energy mix, and because of loss of knowledge and increased security measures, even with strong political will, France won't be able to maintain its 70% nuclear power electricity share. Most nuclear-intensive scenario in this report is max 50% nuclear energy. [0]https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2021-12/Futurs-Energetiques-2050-principaux-resultats.pdf#page=17 https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2021-12/Futurs-Ene... in french

jhgb 5y ago
Even if you didn't have loss of knowledge or increased security measures, unless future French nuclear power can lower its costs, it will inevitably have a lower share in the French energy mix.
- speedgoose 5y ago
  The CO2 cost is low though. You don’t need to fire coal and gas power plants when it’s dark and not windy.
  - mdorazio 5y ago
    One would hope that by 2050 energy storage and/or long-range transmission will be a non-issue for renewables, rendering this argument moot.
    - speedgoose 5y ago
      I hope too.
    - foobiekr 5y ago
      Given the latency for big projects we’d likely have at least a somewhat clear idea of what that storage would be approximately now. Do we?
      - caoilte 5y ago
        wind/solar/battery projects are very fast to spin up. That's another thing which makes them attractive over nuclear.
  - Joeri 5y ago
    The long term vision is for those gas plants to be hydrogen-powered, with the hydrogen generated by the surplus of wind and solar during peak times. Pumped hydro for power storage is also something that will become viable. You lose a lot in conversion, but excess wind power is very cheap.
    - mlindner 5y ago
      Honest question, but do people actually believe that? It sounds like a tactic by oil companies to sucker in gullible people in order to punt a problem down the road. It also acts as a great excuse by politicians to avoid having to deal with a problem. IMO, the reality is that these plants will never convert to anything other than natural gas and will eventually be shut down, still running on natural gas. Hydrogen is not a fuel, it's an energy storage mechanism, and not a very good one at that. If you're going to store energy there's much more efficient and/or cheaper ways of doing it. Natural gas is still a good fuel but I don't think anyone in the US at least is under any illusion that these will ever run on anything other than natural gas.
      - lcvw 5y ago
        I seem to remember that you can’t even pump hydrogen through existing natural gas infrastructure because the smaller hydrogen molecules are more prone to leaking. I would imagine the equipment at a plant has a similar problem and combine that with lower efficiency from burning a fuel that the plant wasn’t designed for, and the abysmal efficiency from converting electric energy to hydrogen and it seems like pure snake oil. Edit: the problem I am remembering is that hydrogen actually degrades the metals used in pipelines (https://www.hollandsentinel.com/story/opinion/columns/2021/08/20/citizens-climate-lobby-replacing-natural-gas-hydrogen/8178031002/ https://www.hollandsentinel.com/story/opinion/columns/2021/0...) so I don’t see how any of this infrastructure is useful at all for hydrogen.
        m4rtink 5y ago
        Not to mention ignited hydrogen leaks being invisible in daylight! You can walk right into one if you are not careful - which is why you might see people walking with brooms in front of them around hydrogen equipment. :)
topynate 5y ago
That's 28 years away. People not yet born will be trained nuclear engineers by then. On what basis does RTE regard the loss of knowledge as already locked-in?
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  Probably on the basis of not expecting a rapid increase in people wanting to become nuclear engineers...
  - topynate 5y ago
    That would contradict "even if she wanted to, France couldn't". If she wanted to, France could make nuclear engineering a highly-paid profession with strong job security. It would just cost more money.
    - ta988 5y ago
      I have serious doubts that would ever happen. Everything is gridlocked for programs like that in France.
    - jltsiren 5y ago
      It's impossible to make binding long-term promises in a democracy. Voters are allowed to change their minds, and the risk that they do that and completely destroy nuclear engineering as a career option is always present. Something like software engineering is a much safer career option, because the risk that your country will categorically ban it is pretty low. And because it doesn't tie you to a small number of possible employers or force you to live in a specific location.
      - Gare 5y ago
        Austria comes to mind - they built the fully functional nuclear power plant, and never had it started - because the public referendum was narrowly (50.47%) against it. Billions of dollars down the drain, hundreds of careers derailed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
Spooky23 5y ago
It’s funny when I read the Foundation novels, it seemed silly to me that people could lose track of technology and fall backwards. Then you read something like this and realize Asimov had a point!
- isolli 5y ago
  On this topic, I recommend watching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko
  - visitect 5y ago
    Thanks for posting that link; I had not seen that lecture before and found it highly enjoyable. For others that might gloss over a random link to youtube, this is a lecture from 2019 delivered by Jonathan Blow titled "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization." In this talk, he discusses the problem of generational transfer of knowledge within the historical context of civilizations who failed to do so successfully. At about the halfway point, he transitions to the related topic of declining software quality, which I suspect will resonate strongly with many programmers on this forum.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > It’s funny when I read the Foundation novels, it seemed silly to me that people could lose track of technology and fall backwards. > Then you read something like this and realize Asimov had a point! And also wildly over-optimistic (as is typical for SF). In the books, I think it took something like 10,000 years to loose the technical knowledge. I bet we could do it in 100.
  - avidiax 5y ago
    20 years. A complicated technology like present aircraft, nuclear energy, petrochemical refining, pharmaceuticals, etc. is resting on the shoulders of a few thousand 40-something-year-olds that have the book learning of the 25-year-olds coupled with the experience and judgement that makes the technology practical, and particularly the knowledge of how to go from zero to one multiplied across many many sub-problems. If something puts a particular technology out of practice for 20 years, many of those now-60-somethings, while still alive, will have forgotten much of what they knew, and not be suitable to put the hard hats back on and get in the field. And this is not accounting for the effects of whatever catastrophe put the technology out of practice to begin with.
BlueTemplar 5y ago
In unrelated news, lowering nuclear to 50% of electricity is set as a political goal. In other unrelated news, safely maintaining the current nuclear electric power would have required a massive buildup starting 10 years ago (to replace the reactors that are currently arriving at the end of their life).
- pfdietz 5y ago
  I thought the political goal was maintaining nuclear as high as 50%.
  - BlueTemplar 5y ago
    Political promises are rarely so detailed. Though that sarcasm of mine is slightly outdated, a new promise (exploiting the recent high energy prices) is indeed to build some new reactors, postponing the previous promise of reaching 50% (from the current 75%) from 2025 to 2035 : https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Macron-says-France-will-construct-new-reactors https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Macron-says-Fran... (Because it's not like the politicians aren't aware of these issues, it's just that it's rarely politically convenient to raise them.)

jhgb 5y ago

Even if you didn't have loss of knowledge or increased security measures, unless future French nuclear power can lower its costs, it will inevitably have a lower share in the French energy mix.

speedgoose 5y ago
The CO2 cost is low though. You don’t need to fire coal and gas power plants when it’s dark and not windy.
- mdorazio 5y ago
  One would hope that by 2050 energy storage and/or long-range transmission will be a non-issue for renewables, rendering this argument moot.
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    I hope too.
  - foobiekr 5y ago
    Given the latency for big projects we’d likely have at least a somewhat clear idea of what that storage would be approximately now. Do we?
    - caoilte 5y ago
      wind/solar/battery projects are very fast to spin up. That's another thing which makes them attractive over nuclear.
- Joeri 5y ago
  The long term vision is for those gas plants to be hydrogen-powered, with the hydrogen generated by the surplus of wind and solar during peak times. Pumped hydro for power storage is also something that will become viable. You lose a lot in conversion, but excess wind power is very cheap.
  - mlindner 5y ago
    Honest question, but do people actually believe that? It sounds like a tactic by oil companies to sucker in gullible people in order to punt a problem down the road. It also acts as a great excuse by politicians to avoid having to deal with a problem. IMO, the reality is that these plants will never convert to anything other than natural gas and will eventually be shut down, still running on natural gas. Hydrogen is not a fuel, it's an energy storage mechanism, and not a very good one at that. If you're going to store energy there's much more efficient and/or cheaper ways of doing it. Natural gas is still a good fuel but I don't think anyone in the US at least is under any illusion that these will ever run on anything other than natural gas.
    - lcvw 5y ago
      I seem to remember that you can’t even pump hydrogen through existing natural gas infrastructure because the smaller hydrogen molecules are more prone to leaking. I would imagine the equipment at a plant has a similar problem and combine that with lower efficiency from burning a fuel that the plant wasn’t designed for, and the abysmal efficiency from converting electric energy to hydrogen and it seems like pure snake oil. Edit: the problem I am remembering is that hydrogen actually degrades the metals used in pipelines (https://www.hollandsentinel.com/story/opinion/columns/2021/08/20/citizens-climate-lobby-replacing-natural-gas-hydrogen/8178031002/ https://www.hollandsentinel.com/story/opinion/columns/2021/0...) so I don’t see how any of this infrastructure is useful at all for hydrogen.
      - m4rtink 5y ago
        Not to mention ignited hydrogen leaks being invisible in daylight! You can walk right into one if you are not careful - which is why you might see people walking with brooms in front of them around hydrogen equipment. :)

topynate 5y ago

That's 28 years away. People not yet born will be trained nuclear engineers by then. On what basis does RTE regard the loss of knowledge as already locked-in?

bayesian_horse 5y ago
Probably on the basis of not expecting a rapid increase in people wanting to become nuclear engineers...
- topynate 5y ago
  That would contradict "even if she wanted to, France couldn't". If she wanted to, France could make nuclear engineering a highly-paid profession with strong job security. It would just cost more money.
  - ta988 5y ago
    I have serious doubts that would ever happen. Everything is gridlocked for programs like that in France.
  - jltsiren 5y ago
    It's impossible to make binding long-term promises in a democracy. Voters are allowed to change their minds, and the risk that they do that and completely destroy nuclear engineering as a career option is always present. Something like software engineering is a much safer career option, because the risk that your country will categorically ban it is pretty low. And because it doesn't tie you to a small number of possible employers or force you to live in a specific location.
    - Gare 5y ago
      Austria comes to mind - they built the fully functional nuclear power plant, and never had it started - because the public referendum was narrowly (50.47%) against it. Billions of dollars down the drain, hundreds of careers derailed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

Spooky23 5y ago

It’s funny when I read the Foundation novels, it seemed silly to me that people could lose track of technology and fall backwards. Then you read something like this and realize Asimov had a point!

isolli 5y ago
On this topic, I recommend watching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko
- visitect 5y ago
  Thanks for posting that link; I had not seen that lecture before and found it highly enjoyable. For others that might gloss over a random link to youtube, this is a lecture from 2019 delivered by Jonathan Blow titled "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization." In this talk, he discusses the problem of generational transfer of knowledge within the historical context of civilizations who failed to do so successfully. At about the halfway point, he transitions to the related topic of declining software quality, which I suspect will resonate strongly with many programmers on this forum.
tablespoon 5y ago
> It’s funny when I read the Foundation novels, it seemed silly to me that people could lose track of technology and fall backwards. > Then you read something like this and realize Asimov had a point! And also wildly over-optimistic (as is typical for SF). In the books, I think it took something like 10,000 years to loose the technical knowledge. I bet we could do it in 100.
- avidiax 5y ago
  20 years. A complicated technology like present aircraft, nuclear energy, petrochemical refining, pharmaceuticals, etc. is resting on the shoulders of a few thousand 40-something-year-olds that have the book learning of the 25-year-olds coupled with the experience and judgement that makes the technology practical, and particularly the knowledge of how to go from zero to one multiplied across many many sub-problems. If something puts a particular technology out of practice for 20 years, many of those now-60-somethings, while still alive, will have forgotten much of what they knew, and not be suitable to put the hard hats back on and get in the field. And this is not accounting for the effects of whatever catastrophe put the technology out of practice to begin with.

BlueTemplar 5y ago

In unrelated news, lowering nuclear to 50% of electricity is set as a political goal. In other unrelated news, safely maintaining the current nuclear electric power would have required a massive buildup starting 10 years ago (to replace the reactors that are currently arriving at the end of their life).

pfdietz 5y ago
I thought the political goal was maintaining nuclear as high as 50%.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  Political promises are rarely so detailed. Though that sarcasm of mine is slightly outdated, a new promise (exploiting the recent high energy prices) is indeed to build some new reactors, postponing the previous promise of reaching 50% (from the current 75%) from 2025 to 2035 : https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Macron-says-France-will-construct-new-reactors https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Macron-says-Fran... (Because it's not like the politicians aren't aware of these issues, it's just that it's rarely politically convenient to raise them.)