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Looks like a G20 country is serious about the impending "climate emergency". Regardless of the motives and timing behind this, I think its great to see a countr

Looks like a G20 country is serious about the impending "climate emergency". Regardless of the motives and timing behind this, I think its great to see a country is actually being serious and practical. Anyone going on about the climate and refuses to put nuclear energy at the forefront of the conversation is unserious and is only interested in virtual signaling in my opinion.

epistasis 5y ago
They will be serious if they actually build it, unlike Flamanville. While you call non-nuclear options "virtue signaling," the attempts at building it in France and the US have been virtue signaling. We don't have the industrial capacity to build nuclear. Meanwhile, we are deploying GW of solar, wind, and storage on time, on budget, ar ever decreasing costs. Locking in the high costs of nuclear, for the 60 year lifetime of a nuclear reactor, after a 15 year delay for building, is not a serious solution for climate change.
- visarga 5y ago
  Once a few years, we get a few weeks without much wind and solar. What do we do then? Solar and wind can't store enough energy to last for weeks.
  - innermate 5y ago
    Batteries can store enough energy to last for a few weeks.
    - azinman2 5y ago
      Industrial-scale batteries are far from a solved problem, and require a lot of excess energy production to fill them that doesn't already get depleted at night. A far more realistic solution is to be able to flex with things like gas plants that don't need to be always running and can function on demand.
      - epistasis 5y ago
        We are going to have massive amounts of excess energy production as renewables gain higher penetration on grids. The rea problem will be transmission capacity, or alternatively phrased, making sure storage is close enough to the generation. California usually curtails large amounts of renewable energy in the spring, but even their smallish installs of 1-2GWh of storage recently has massively reduced that wasted energy. And they aren't even at super high penetration yet for renewables. We will probably keep lots of backup gas turbines for a decade or two, but by the time significant nuclear could come online, other tech will probably have solved it. And unfortunately in the US, our nuclear fleet is really close to retirement, and we are going to be losing a ton of nuclear generation capacity soon, with no way to rebuild it. We need other solutions fast.
      - AtlasBarfed 5y ago
        Sodium Ion is supposed to commercialize this year if you can believe CATL, with high temp range, good safety, good charge cycles, all supposed to be better than LFP at ?half? the cost (we'll see when it hits the market). I think sodium ion batteries will be the game changer in utility storage, like good-density (200 Wh/kg) LFP will for mass EV/PHEV electrification (sodium ion will help there too in hybrid batteries). If we get sodium ion grid storage, another 50% drop in wind/solar utility LCOE, and residential solar gets on par with natural gas LCOE, and good-density LFP batteries deliver 100 mile PHEVs and 250-300 mile EVs in 10 years, then we might actually have a cslim hance of handling global warming It isn't a solved problem, but there is already industrial scale deployments happening, and what that means is there is a massive market to chase and the ball is rolling fast. It's not like fusion where we are waiting on tech hurdles before the economics are even tackled. Gas plants will have to do for flexing, much better than coal. It's not like politically they'll all get shutdown (I mean, they should or get a two year warning, but that won't happen). I think residential solar should be vastly more subsidized. That way the solar that does get made doesn't have as much transmission losses through the grid, it gets used directly, but maybe I'm wrong about that. I would also like a good synthetic fuels strategy that isn't a creep marketing conspiracy to keep fossil fuels business running (hydrogen "green/blue/gray" color BS falls into this category), that could handle aviation, long haul shipping, and home heating at at least carbon neutrality.
  - BurningPenguin 5y ago
    I'd say it's very unlikely that there will be no wind or sun all over Europe. There is constant exchange of excess energy between the countries anyway. Regardless of that, there are other options too. Like water or geothermal depending on the country. Sometimes there even will be too much energy. I can imagine this being used to make some hydrogen for later use.
    - polskibus 5y ago
      Lack of enough wind and sun is basically what happened in EU end of last year and caused energy and gas prices to sky rocket. It is not as rare as you think, moreover it happens over large areas at the same time which exacerbates stress on the grid.
      - misja111 5y ago
        This is nonsense. The crazy gas prices had two main causes: insufficient gas buffers during the uptick of the economy after Corona, and Russia closing part of its huge gas supply to Europe.
        polskibus 5y ago
        Some businesses have a choice whether to use gas or electricity for example for heating. High prices of one caused them to switch too. I agree that effects on gas demand were secondary relative to energy, nevertheless my point stands that it is not unusual, and also we can’t count on gas when wind and solar farms are quiet.
        thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
        > insufficient gas buffers during the uptick of the economy after Corona this is true > Russia closing part of its huge gas supply to Europe this isn't, afaik. Russia doesn't sell on spot market, they prefer long term futures contracts, on which they reliably deliver. They delivered on their 2021 commitments a bit earlier, hence they closed off the valves Basically, the gas supplies were low during summer, but the spot prices were significantly above long term average, so energy companies delayed their purchases, hoping the price will come back down soon. It didn't, reserves dried up, and everybody was forced to buy at the same time
  - epistasis 5y ago
    However we do it, it looks like nuclear won't be it, because we can't build nuclear. Some of the more likely routes, with clearer cheaper cost curves than advanced nuclear or SMRs: 1) advanced geothermal (using drilling tech developed within the last decade, not the older ones) 2) flow batteries 3) chemical storage of electricity, whether as ammonia, hydrogen, methanol, or whatever tech path becomes cheapest. 4) for cold climates: district/neighborhood heating with massive seasonal storage All of these are being developed, and experiencing falling prices on the tech. In contrast, building the same nuclear reactor design gets more expensive successive time it is built. This is true even of France's builds in 70s. If we are betting on future tech, nuclear is not in the cards. It would have been great it nuclear had put coal out of business in the 1980s, rather than having a ton of build delays in the 1970s that jacked up nuclear's price. But it's ship has sailed, until nuclear can build. If France completes a single reactor by their planned 2035 date, I will be seriously impressed. However, 1GW in 13 years is not a climate solution.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
    We fire up coal/gas/biomass plants. Nature doesn't care about the ideological purity of the electricity grid - all that matters is total cumulative emissions People treat this question with religious mindset, as if burning fossil fuels is a sin that must be banished. In reality, there's nothing wrong with powering countries ~80% of the time with renewables + storage, and ~20% of the time with fossils - that's still a decently decarbonized grid
    - makomk 5y ago
      Most developed countries have net zero goals that are not consistent with continuing to pump out 20% of current electricity-related CO2 production forevermore. Also, keeping those coal and gas plants operational isn't exactly cheap either, though it is probably still cheaper than storage.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - phicoh 5y ago
    We have plenty of storage options. We can produce various chemicals, hydrogen, methane, ammonia. Production scales, storage scales. But, it is very expensive. At the same time new nuclear reactors are also very expensive. So we just don't know. Countries like France should build nuclear reactors and see if they can get the price down. Countries that are opposed to nuclear, like Germany, should investigate storage solutions and see if they can get the price of that down.
  - chha 5y ago
    That depends on how you want to store the energy. There have been some talk in Norway about using excess energy to pump water from ground level to fill up existing lakes as a form of energy storage. There seems to be quite a few power plants based on hydro power other places in Europe as well, so it could be a feasible strategy there as well [1, page 5] [1] - https://wwfeu.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/hydropower_pressure_on_european_rivers_the_story_in_numbers_web.pdf https://wwfeu.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/hydropower_press...
    - lagadu 5y ago
      In Portugal and Spain we have pumping stations doing exactly that. I couldn't find a link in English but maybe you'll find this useful: https://www.iberdrola.com/sustentabilidade/central-hidreletrica-bombeamento https://www.iberdrola.com/sustentabilidade/central-hidreletr...
      - chha 5y ago
        Nice! It turns out we have a few (12) pumping stations here as well, but there is little information on how often they've been used. The high electricity prices we've seen lately have reactualized this, with spikes of around $1 USD/kWh. Current water levels are at approx 47% capacity [1], compared to around 64% same time last year. Unless we get a wet spring and summer it could get exciting come next year... [1] - https://www.nve.no/energi/analyser-og-statistikk/magasinstatistikk/ https://www.nve.no/energi/analyser-og-statistikk/magasinstat...
        lagadu 5y ago
        Same, we're also facing issues with water level this year, to the point that several of the dams were ordered to stop producing electricity in order to save the water.
  - mrep 5y ago
    Yes you can. Methane is already stored and used for electrical grids on a massive scale and you can make methane with electricity [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas
- simion314 5y ago
  >Meanwhile, we are deploying GW of solar, wind, and storage on time, on budget, ar ever decreasing costs. That is the easier part, show me the battery deployments please , the ones that can backup the country/state for a week.
  - sendben2 5y ago
    Yes. This. Storage is still expensive. Also France is already a world leader in nuclear grid energy. They already have a long history of building and maintaining nuclear plants.
    - hardlianotion 5y ago
      The nuclear grid in France is ageing, as is the expertise needed to construct and maintain. The decision seems to come at a critical time to maintain France's nuclear capability.
  - pydry 5y ago
    China has about 40 GW of pumped water storage. A week of no solar power or wind is unheard of. A week of no wind is very very rare.
    - MrPatan 5y ago
      And a week of less solar and wind than usage?
    - simion314 5y ago
      We would need to build much , much more storage, and I hope you know water dams are not easy to build(a lot of humans and wild life needs to be moved), if you don't already have them probably is impossible to create them. >A week of no solar power or wind is unheard of. A week of no wind is very very rare. You don need no solar or no wind, you need a few weeks of super low solar and wind, like say in winter, solar efficiency is much lower in winter.
      - 5y ago
- yason 5y ago
  The cost of nuclear goes down if we build more of smaller standardized reactors rather than a huge, advanced plants every few decades where everything is new and untested each time, warranting long periods of validation and certification, and where the people building it have changed after each built power plant.
  - sirk390 5y ago
    I doubt that there are numbers to prove that. SMR might just be a buzzword. From the page below there don't seem too many operating or under construction (5 operating, and 4 under construction). https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/small-nuclear-power-reactors.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...
  - dgellow 5y ago
    From what I understand small modular reactors are not ready for production. Macro announced government money to help their research. The goal is to a have a prototype end of 2020s.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    france has a bunch of standardized reactors: doesn't mean they don't suffer from engineering issue, that they don't leak hot water or radiation every now and then, or that we even know how to tear them apart when they reach end of life. You should probably do some reading about the many scandals of the nuclear industry in France, from colonial exploitation for uranium to jailing/crippling/assassinating anti-nuclear protesters, with a bunch of nuclear scandals and accidents in between.
- atlantas 5y ago
  Then we need to remove the 15 year delay. It's not a law of the universe that it needs to be that slow.
  - fulafel 5y ago
    It's a relatively new development that solar and wind are so cost effective, even though nuclear had a decades long head start and enormously more taxpayer subsidies over decades and decades. Maybe it's not a law of the universe, but there is a lot of experience showing it's slow, risky and expensive.
immmmmm 5y ago
For living in a neighboring country, speaking their language and following their policy quite a bit, i can tell you that, no, they are nowhere near serious. Just as an example, the best performing company this year is Total with 15B and which is happily feeding the government with petrodollars and the other people with lies about "Net Zero " etc. "Énergie Nucléaire" as they call it is a thing there because De Gaulle wanted a bomb after WW2, so they pushed the industry (which is btw in pretty bad shape). There is exactly ONE person in France who is pro nuclear and say accurate things about climate and it's Jancovici. All the rest of the crowd is like in most countries corrupt by petrodollars or other polluting industry, and is saying crap about climate. and the rare times they are not saying crap they are lying about their intentions. No, France is nowhere near serious about climate, like most countries they bet on a +5 degree futur. I think i have read enough papers to tell you that 5 degrees will be very very hot and a very very sad point in human history.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  Do you have a link to their models w.r.t +5 degrees? seems like an extraordinary number
  - immmmmm 5y ago
    You are correct, the 5 degree might be a bit high in this context. It's quite possible however in SSP5-8.5 and even SSP4-7.0 from IPCC's predictions for 2100 ([0] for instance). A more conservative 2-3 degrees might be more accurate for climate pledges [1]. This is based on quite a few assumptions tho and varies between authors. 2300 projections can go up to 12 degrees in IPCC AR5 WG1, Figure 12.5 [2] (for the old RCP8.5 scenario). [0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13143-021-00225-6 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13143-021-00225-6 [1] https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/ https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/ [2] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/long-term-climate-change-projections-commitments-and-irreversibility/ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/long-term-climate-change-...
    - inter_netuser 5y ago
hutrdvnj 5y ago
> Anyone going on about the climate and refuses to put nuclear energy at the forefront of the conversation is unserious and is only interested in virtual signaling in my opinion. I think it is unserious to call every other solution other than nuclear energy unserious in a climate discussion. Germany, for instance, has very serious discussions on climate neutrality without nuclear energy.
- shawabawa3 5y ago
  Germany has been burning more and more coal since shutting down their nuclear plants in favour of renewables What a great green strategy that was
  - phicoh 5y ago
    That's wrong. Germany was significantly reduced the amount of electricity from coal over the last decades. Renewables have picked up both the reduction in coal and the reduction in nuclear power.
    - shawabawa3 5y ago
      Sorry I misremembered the statistic. They've been reducing coal usage slightly over the last 20 years, but burn 50% more natural gas. overall energy generation from fossil fuels is up over the last 20 years (since their first nuclear plant was shut down)
      - phicoh 5y ago
        According to https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=-1&stacking=stacked_absolute&interval=year&legendItems=0011111111011110 https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE... total amount of fossil fuel use for electricity went down.
        shawabawa3 5y ago
        I was looking at capacity not generation So capacity of fossil fuels went up, but I suppose natural gas shuts down while renewable generation is high so it doesn't use its capacity all the time - my bad
Archelaos 5y ago
> Anyone going on about the climate and refuses to put nuclear energy at the forefront of the conversation is unserious and is only interested in virtual signaling in my opinion. In my eyes, this is a very indecent way to express ones own position. The discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear energy is not conducted lightly. Nuclear energy has a long list of casualties and severe environmental damage. Nevertheless, I do not imply a priori that anyone who argues in favor of nuclear energy is frivolous; and I expect the same respect in reverse.
adrianN 5y ago
Six new nuclear power plants are most likely not even enough to replace those that will be shut down due to old age in the next decade or two. It's not anywhere near enough to reach climate targets.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
How is "people who don't do solution X for climate change are unserious" different from climate change denial exactly? You're claiming entire governments are proposing and committing to expensive and sweeping actions, but because they've not done X (for possibly several different reasons) you are openly accusing them of not wanting to solve the problem. Why wouldn't they want to solve it? We are spending that money to avoid paying more later aren't we? It is a real problem, right? You think that, and you think they think that, correct? Because if you didn't this would just be climate change denial. Why can't you just say, "I think X is an important part of solving the problem of climate change". Why does the conversation have to revolve around attacking other people who are trying to solve a problem you appear (on the surface) to agree is a problem? Oh, just noticed the scare quotes around "climate emergency" in your comment so I guess you don't think its a real problem, you just really want them to use nuclear to solve the problem you don't think exists, which seems odd, but at the same time not unexpected.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > Why wouldn't they want to solve it? Because they're rich as fuck and will never have to care about finding clean water to drink? Because they're profiting directly from destroying our planet, being part of the capitalist establishment? Because the hundred of millions of climate refugees will mostly be from poorer countries, and France will only have to relocate a few coastal cities and deal with more hurricanes? Because they're hopeful their descendants will go pollute Mars thanks to assholes like Bezos/Musk after they're done fucking up Earth? I'm not defending nuclear energy, far from it. But pretending governments around the planet (except for a few smaller ones) care at all about planet change when all they've done since the 70's (the time we've know this is the most massive/pressing issue for humanity as a whole) is giving away money to the people who destroyed the planet in the first place (green new deal kind of stuff)... that's political denial if you'd like to call it that ;) We need degrowth immediately. Heavily criminalize planned obsolescence. Outlaw industrial farming. Tax concrete industry 1000% and legalize eco-housing (illegal in France due to housing regulations). Reduce energy/resource waste on all levels and all fronts. That's the only way you can fight climate change. Keeping the same capitalist recipe that produced the disaster and hoping for a different outcome is either naive or manipulative.
tinus_hn 5y ago
This is not about climate, it’s about geopolitics and Russian gas.
tim333 5y ago
Serious I'd think would involve a global solution that actually makes a difference. I haven't seen much of that yet. A lot of talk and local restrictions that don't do much while CO2 emissions go up and up.
natmaka 5y ago
> country is serious about the impending "climate emergency". France gridpower-related emissions are low, however there was no progress for quite a while: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/court-rules-france-failed-respect-climate-change-goal-75653967 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/court-rules-france...

epistasis 5y ago

They will be serious if they actually build it, unlike Flamanville. While you call non-nuclear options "virtue signaling," the attempts at building it in France and the US have been virtue signaling. We don't have the industrial capacity to build nuclear. Meanwhile, we are deploying GW of solar, wind, and storage on time, on budget, ar ever decreasing costs. Locking in the high costs of nuclear, for the 60 year lifetime of a nuclear reactor, after a 15 year delay for building, is not a serious solution for climate change.

visarga 5y ago
Once a few years, we get a few weeks without much wind and solar. What do we do then? Solar and wind can't store enough energy to last for weeks.
- innermate 5y ago
  Batteries can store enough energy to last for a few weeks.
  - azinman2 5y ago
    Industrial-scale batteries are far from a solved problem, and require a lot of excess energy production to fill them that doesn't already get depleted at night. A far more realistic solution is to be able to flex with things like gas plants that don't need to be always running and can function on demand.
    - epistasis 5y ago
      We are going to have massive amounts of excess energy production as renewables gain higher penetration on grids. The rea problem will be transmission capacity, or alternatively phrased, making sure storage is close enough to the generation. California usually curtails large amounts of renewable energy in the spring, but even their smallish installs of 1-2GWh of storage recently has massively reduced that wasted energy. And they aren't even at super high penetration yet for renewables. We will probably keep lots of backup gas turbines for a decade or two, but by the time significant nuclear could come online, other tech will probably have solved it. And unfortunately in the US, our nuclear fleet is really close to retirement, and we are going to be losing a ton of nuclear generation capacity soon, with no way to rebuild it. We need other solutions fast.
    - AtlasBarfed 5y ago
      Sodium Ion is supposed to commercialize this year if you can believe CATL, with high temp range, good safety, good charge cycles, all supposed to be better than LFP at ?half? the cost (we'll see when it hits the market). I think sodium ion batteries will be the game changer in utility storage, like good-density (200 Wh/kg) LFP will for mass EV/PHEV electrification (sodium ion will help there too in hybrid batteries). If we get sodium ion grid storage, another 50% drop in wind/solar utility LCOE, and residential solar gets on par with natural gas LCOE, and good-density LFP batteries deliver 100 mile PHEVs and 250-300 mile EVs in 10 years, then we might actually have a cslim hance of handling global warming It isn't a solved problem, but there is already industrial scale deployments happening, and what that means is there is a massive market to chase and the ball is rolling fast. It's not like fusion where we are waiting on tech hurdles before the economics are even tackled. Gas plants will have to do for flexing, much better than coal. It's not like politically they'll all get shutdown (I mean, they should or get a two year warning, but that won't happen). I think residential solar should be vastly more subsidized. That way the solar that does get made doesn't have as much transmission losses through the grid, it gets used directly, but maybe I'm wrong about that. I would also like a good synthetic fuels strategy that isn't a creep marketing conspiracy to keep fossil fuels business running (hydrogen "green/blue/gray" color BS falls into this category), that could handle aviation, long haul shipping, and home heating at at least carbon neutrality.
- BurningPenguin 5y ago
  I'd say it's very unlikely that there will be no wind or sun all over Europe. There is constant exchange of excess energy between the countries anyway. Regardless of that, there are other options too. Like water or geothermal depending on the country. Sometimes there even will be too much energy. I can imagine this being used to make some hydrogen for later use.
  - polskibus 5y ago
    Lack of enough wind and sun is basically what happened in EU end of last year and caused energy and gas prices to sky rocket. It is not as rare as you think, moreover it happens over large areas at the same time which exacerbates stress on the grid.
    - misja111 5y ago
      This is nonsense. The crazy gas prices had two main causes: insufficient gas buffers during the uptick of the economy after Corona, and Russia closing part of its huge gas supply to Europe.
      - polskibus 5y ago
        Some businesses have a choice whether to use gas or electricity for example for heating. High prices of one caused them to switch too. I agree that effects on gas demand were secondary relative to energy, nevertheless my point stands that it is not unusual, and also we can’t count on gas when wind and solar farms are quiet.
      - thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
        > insufficient gas buffers during the uptick of the economy after Corona this is true > Russia closing part of its huge gas supply to Europe this isn't, afaik. Russia doesn't sell on spot market, they prefer long term futures contracts, on which they reliably deliver. They delivered on their 2021 commitments a bit earlier, hence they closed off the valves Basically, the gas supplies were low during summer, but the spot prices were significantly above long term average, so energy companies delayed their purchases, hoping the price will come back down soon. It didn't, reserves dried up, and everybody was forced to buy at the same time
- epistasis 5y ago
  However we do it, it looks like nuclear won't be it, because we can't build nuclear. Some of the more likely routes, with clearer cheaper cost curves than advanced nuclear or SMRs: 1) advanced geothermal (using drilling tech developed within the last decade, not the older ones) 2) flow batteries 3) chemical storage of electricity, whether as ammonia, hydrogen, methanol, or whatever tech path becomes cheapest. 4) for cold climates: district/neighborhood heating with massive seasonal storage All of these are being developed, and experiencing falling prices on the tech. In contrast, building the same nuclear reactor design gets more expensive successive time it is built. This is true even of France's builds in 70s. If we are betting on future tech, nuclear is not in the cards. It would have been great it nuclear had put coal out of business in the 1980s, rather than having a ton of build delays in the 1970s that jacked up nuclear's price. But it's ship has sailed, until nuclear can build. If France completes a single reactor by their planned 2035 date, I will be seriously impressed. However, 1GW in 13 years is not a climate solution.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
  We fire up coal/gas/biomass plants. Nature doesn't care about the ideological purity of the electricity grid - all that matters is total cumulative emissions People treat this question with religious mindset, as if burning fossil fuels is a sin that must be banished. In reality, there's nothing wrong with powering countries ~80% of the time with renewables + storage, and ~20% of the time with fossils - that's still a decently decarbonized grid
  - makomk 5y ago
    Most developed countries have net zero goals that are not consistent with continuing to pump out 20% of current electricity-related CO2 production forevermore. Also, keeping those coal and gas plants operational isn't exactly cheap either, though it is probably still cheaper than storage.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- phicoh 5y ago
  We have plenty of storage options. We can produce various chemicals, hydrogen, methane, ammonia. Production scales, storage scales. But, it is very expensive. At the same time new nuclear reactors are also very expensive. So we just don't know. Countries like France should build nuclear reactors and see if they can get the price down. Countries that are opposed to nuclear, like Germany, should investigate storage solutions and see if they can get the price of that down.
- chha 5y ago
  That depends on how you want to store the energy. There have been some talk in Norway about using excess energy to pump water from ground level to fill up existing lakes as a form of energy storage. There seems to be quite a few power plants based on hydro power other places in Europe as well, so it could be a feasible strategy there as well [1, page 5] [1] - https://wwfeu.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/hydropower_pressure_on_european_rivers_the_story_in_numbers_web.pdf https://wwfeu.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/hydropower_press...
  - lagadu 5y ago
    In Portugal and Spain we have pumping stations doing exactly that. I couldn't find a link in English but maybe you'll find this useful: https://www.iberdrola.com/sustentabilidade/central-hidreletrica-bombeamento https://www.iberdrola.com/sustentabilidade/central-hidreletr...
    - chha 5y ago
      Nice! It turns out we have a few (12) pumping stations here as well, but there is little information on how often they've been used. The high electricity prices we've seen lately have reactualized this, with spikes of around $1 USD/kWh. Current water levels are at approx 47% capacity [1], compared to around 64% same time last year. Unless we get a wet spring and summer it could get exciting come next year... [1] - https://www.nve.no/energi/analyser-og-statistikk/magasinstatistikk/ https://www.nve.no/energi/analyser-og-statistikk/magasinstat...
      - lagadu 5y ago
        Same, we're also facing issues with water level this year, to the point that several of the dams were ordered to stop producing electricity in order to save the water.
- mrep 5y ago
  Yes you can. Methane is already stored and used for electrical grids on a massive scale and you can make methane with electricity [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas
simion314 5y ago
>Meanwhile, we are deploying GW of solar, wind, and storage on time, on budget, ar ever decreasing costs. That is the easier part, show me the battery deployments please , the ones that can backup the country/state for a week.
- sendben2 5y ago
  Yes. This. Storage is still expensive. Also France is already a world leader in nuclear grid energy. They already have a long history of building and maintaining nuclear plants.
  - hardlianotion 5y ago
    The nuclear grid in France is ageing, as is the expertise needed to construct and maintain. The decision seems to come at a critical time to maintain France's nuclear capability.
- pydry 5y ago
  China has about 40 GW of pumped water storage. A week of no solar power or wind is unheard of. A week of no wind is very very rare.
  - MrPatan 5y ago
    And a week of less solar and wind than usage?
  - simion314 5y ago
    We would need to build much , much more storage, and I hope you know water dams are not easy to build(a lot of humans and wild life needs to be moved), if you don't already have them probably is impossible to create them. >A week of no solar power or wind is unheard of. A week of no wind is very very rare. You don need no solar or no wind, you need a few weeks of super low solar and wind, like say in winter, solar efficiency is much lower in winter.
    - 5y ago
yason 5y ago
The cost of nuclear goes down if we build more of smaller standardized reactors rather than a huge, advanced plants every few decades where everything is new and untested each time, warranting long periods of validation and certification, and where the people building it have changed after each built power plant.
- sirk390 5y ago
  I doubt that there are numbers to prove that. SMR might just be a buzzword. From the page below there don't seem too many operating or under construction (5 operating, and 4 under construction). https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/small-nuclear-power-reactors.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...
- dgellow 5y ago
  From what I understand small modular reactors are not ready for production. Macro announced government money to help their research. The goal is to a have a prototype end of 2020s.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  france has a bunch of standardized reactors: doesn't mean they don't suffer from engineering issue, that they don't leak hot water or radiation every now and then, or that we even know how to tear them apart when they reach end of life. You should probably do some reading about the many scandals of the nuclear industry in France, from colonial exploitation for uranium to jailing/crippling/assassinating anti-nuclear protesters, with a bunch of nuclear scandals and accidents in between.
atlantas 5y ago
Then we need to remove the 15 year delay. It's not a law of the universe that it needs to be that slow.
- fulafel 5y ago
  It's a relatively new development that solar and wind are so cost effective, even though nuclear had a decades long head start and enormously more taxpayer subsidies over decades and decades. Maybe it's not a law of the universe, but there is a lot of experience showing it's slow, risky and expensive.

immmmmm 5y ago

For living in a neighboring country, speaking their language and following their policy quite a bit, i can tell you that, no, they are nowhere near serious. Just as an example, the best performing company this year is Total with 15B and which is happily feeding the government with petrodollars and the other people with lies about "Net Zero " etc. "Énergie Nucléaire" as they call it is a thing there because De Gaulle wanted a bomb after WW2, so they pushed the industry (which is btw in pretty bad shape). There is exactly ONE person in France who is pro nuclear and say accurate things about climate and it's Jancovici. All the rest of the crowd is like in most countries corrupt by petrodollars or other polluting industry, and is saying crap about climate. and the rare times they are not saying crap they are lying about their intentions. No, France is nowhere near serious about climate, like most countries they bet on a +5 degree futur. I think i have read enough papers to tell you that 5 degrees will be very very hot and a very very sad point in human history.

inter_netuser 5y ago
Do you have a link to their models w.r.t +5 degrees? seems like an extraordinary number
- immmmmm 5y ago
  You are correct, the 5 degree might be a bit high in this context. It's quite possible however in SSP5-8.5 and even SSP4-7.0 from IPCC's predictions for 2100 ([0] for instance). A more conservative 2-3 degrees might be more accurate for climate pledges [1]. This is based on quite a few assumptions tho and varies between authors. 2300 projections can go up to 12 degrees in IPCC AR5 WG1, Figure 12.5 [2] (for the old RCP8.5 scenario). [0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13143-021-00225-6 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13143-021-00225-6 [1] https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/ https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/ [2] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/long-term-climate-change-projections-commitments-and-irreversibility/ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/long-term-climate-change-...
  - inter_netuser 5y ago

hutrdvnj 5y ago

> Anyone going on about the climate and refuses to put nuclear energy at the forefront of the conversation is unserious and is only interested in virtual signaling in my opinion. I think it is unserious to call every other solution other than nuclear energy unserious in a climate discussion. Germany, for instance, has very serious discussions on climate neutrality without nuclear energy.

shawabawa3 5y ago
Germany has been burning more and more coal since shutting down their nuclear plants in favour of renewables What a great green strategy that was
- phicoh 5y ago
  That's wrong. Germany was significantly reduced the amount of electricity from coal over the last decades. Renewables have picked up both the reduction in coal and the reduction in nuclear power.
  - shawabawa3 5y ago
    Sorry I misremembered the statistic. They've been reducing coal usage slightly over the last 20 years, but burn 50% more natural gas. overall energy generation from fossil fuels is up over the last 20 years (since their first nuclear plant was shut down)
    - phicoh 5y ago
      According to https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&year=-1&stacking=stacked_absolute&interval=year&legendItems=0011111111011110 https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE... total amount of fossil fuel use for electricity went down.
      - shawabawa3 5y ago
        I was looking at capacity not generation So capacity of fossil fuels went up, but I suppose natural gas shuts down while renewable generation is high so it doesn't use its capacity all the time - my bad

Archelaos 5y ago

> Anyone going on about the climate and refuses to put nuclear energy at the forefront of the conversation is unserious and is only interested in virtual signaling in my opinion. In my eyes, this is a very indecent way to express ones own position. The discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear energy is not conducted lightly. Nuclear energy has a long list of casualties and severe environmental damage. Nevertheless, I do not imply a priori that anyone who argues in favor of nuclear energy is frivolous; and I expect the same respect in reverse.

adrianN 5y ago

Six new nuclear power plants are most likely not even enough to replace those that will be shut down due to old age in the next decade or two. It's not anywhere near enough to reach climate targets.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

How is "people who don't do solution X for climate change are unserious" different from climate change denial exactly? You're claiming entire governments are proposing and committing to expensive and sweeping actions, but because they've not done X (for possibly several different reasons) you are openly accusing them of not wanting to solve the problem. Why wouldn't they want to solve it? We are spending that money to avoid paying more later aren't we? It is a real problem, right? You think that, and you think they think that, correct? Because if you didn't this would just be climate change denial. Why can't you just say, "I think X is an important part of solving the problem of climate change". Why does the conversation have to revolve around attacking other people who are trying to solve a problem you appear (on the surface) to agree is a problem? Oh, just noticed the scare quotes around "climate emergency" in your comment so I guess you don't think its a real problem, you just really want them to use nuclear to solve the problem you don't think exists, which seems odd, but at the same time not unexpected.

southerntofu 5y ago
> Why wouldn't they want to solve it? Because they're rich as fuck and will never have to care about finding clean water to drink? Because they're profiting directly from destroying our planet, being part of the capitalist establishment? Because the hundred of millions of climate refugees will mostly be from poorer countries, and France will only have to relocate a few coastal cities and deal with more hurricanes? Because they're hopeful their descendants will go pollute Mars thanks to assholes like Bezos/Musk after they're done fucking up Earth? I'm not defending nuclear energy, far from it. But pretending governments around the planet (except for a few smaller ones) care at all about planet change when all they've done since the 70's (the time we've know this is the most massive/pressing issue for humanity as a whole) is giving away money to the people who destroyed the planet in the first place (green new deal kind of stuff)... that's political denial if you'd like to call it that ;) We need degrowth immediately. Heavily criminalize planned obsolescence. Outlaw industrial farming. Tax concrete industry 1000% and legalize eco-housing (illegal in France due to housing regulations). Reduce energy/resource waste on all levels and all fronts. That's the only way you can fight climate change. Keeping the same capitalist recipe that produced the disaster and hoping for a different outcome is either naive or manipulative.

tinus_hn 5y ago

This is not about climate, it’s about geopolitics and Russian gas.

tim333 5y ago

Serious I'd think would involve a global solution that actually makes a difference. I haven't seen much of that yet. A lot of talk and local restrictions that don't do much while CO2 emissions go up and up.

natmaka 5y ago

> country is serious about the impending "climate emergency". France gridpower-related emissions are low, however there was no progress for quite a while: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/court-rules-france-failed-respect-climate-change-goal-75653967 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/court-rules-france...