5 ms·

TLDR: High temperatures across France result in warmer surface water bodies, which in turn makes reactors difficult to run at maximum rates, due to reactor cool

TLDR: High temperatures across France result in warmer surface water bodies, which in turn makes reactors difficult to run at maximum rates, due to reactor cooling issues. https://qz.com/1348969/europes-heatwave-is-forcing-nuclear-power-plants-to-shut-down/ https://qz.com/1348969/europes-heatwave-is-forcing-nuclear-p... A longer-term problem is that nuclear reactor maintenance costs increase as reactors age, and this leads to more frequent outages for repair work. Eventually complete rebuilds are needed which are extremely expensive.

barbarbar 4y ago
But at least they work all the time. Whereas solar/wind work... occasionally. And then when they work they generate too much for the grid. The EU energy situation is really in flaming death spiral. With too nany bets on solar/wind power which doesn't really work.
- desindol 4y ago
  You are saying wind and sun don’t work? O_o
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    Probably intended that there is not full warranty of output. But for other more traditional sources is the same - and this very submission is about the matter. Traditional energy plants in the North of Italy, suffering droughts, are currently emitting reduced power because less water flow decreases output.
  - JimiofEden 4y ago
    It's less that they don't work and more that they don't work optimally in the affected areas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD0sq5GN7xc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD0sq5GN7xc Zeihan is a bit US-centric overall, but his energy talks are sound (or I'm too biased to realize they're just confirming my own views.)
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      > (or I'm too biased to realize they're just confirming my own views.) If you genuinely care, this is the real answer. Lignite is a poor fuel for many reasons, but that handwavey part about solar and lignite being worse than lignite and it's all a big scam that the silly greens are too stupid to notice is just totally wrong. As is the bit about green collapse he predicts when it is discovered to "not work" in Europe. It's a very weird argument, since he's admitting it works (sort of) in California and Texas but still has a weirdly negative tone about it and Greens. Basically, it's just yet another fallback position for people who have been consistently wrong about energy policy for decades and still feel able to poke fun at Greens for being unrealistic, because their audience is so misinformed. California imports 90% of its natural gas from other states. If that was somehow threatened to be cut off, California would struggle too. It would tell us nothing about renewables, and tell us everything about how your neighbours being dicks to you can be a hassle. Which is actually a selling point for renewables and helps drive Chinese interest, since they don't won't to rely on others for fuel.
    - SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
      Seems like good points made in the video, I’ll watch a few more before I sub.
- _0w8t 4y ago
  The article is precisely about nuclear reactors not working all the time.
  - barbarbar 4y ago
    The reactors are mainly down for maintenance. Whereas wind/sun is very unstable like - you know - the weather.
- ta988 4y ago
  They obviously don't work all the time, look at their uptime it is not glorious. But sure they work at night solar and they work with no wind etc... That's why we need a mixed energy panel with heat storage like Finland is starting and energy storage (inertial or gravitational seem to be the best bets these days)
- varjag 4y ago
  Offshore wind (the main segment for large/powerful wind turbines) generates just fine throughout, including the peak consumption periods. The failures of EU (or should we say German, as the rest of the Union mainly subsidizes its power bills now) energy policy are mainly self inflicted damage of tying to hydrocarbon supply from terror states.
  - barbarbar 4y ago
    Yes - sometimes there is a lot of wind and then it is... fine. But actually not since then they generate too much power which can not be used (in the country) and then it is sold cheap. The main problem is it can't be stored for later use.
    - varjag 4y ago
      It's not that much of a problem. Wind in the sea is quite predictable (and in certain areas near constant) and turbines can be geared down.
      - Zanfa 4y ago
        It is a big problem, low wind periods can last for days, just this Feb-March, UK wind generation stayed under 20% capacity (mostly between 5-10% I believe) for more than 11 days straight [0]. [0] https://reports.electricinsights.co.uk/q1-2021/when-the-wind-goes-gas-fills-in-the-gap/ https://reports.electricinsights.co.uk/q1-2021/when-the-wind...
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Portugal and Spain lived within their means energy wise, and have enormous renewables and hydro storage capabilities (and while they both burn some fossil gas; they have plans to rapidly finish moving to renewables by the end of the decade; Portugal burns no coal, Spain is phasing it out). France and Germany are in their own special hell because they prioritized politics (nuclear and coal, respectively) over energy security. Swing by https://app.electricitymap.org https://app.electricitymap.org for the detailed capacity and generation info. Edit: I wrote a reply to a deleted comment, so enumerating the comment and reply here. > France and Germany are also industrial powerhouses. They require a lot more power and a lot more natural gas specifically for chemical precursors to produce stuff like fertilizer and silicone. Until suitable alternatives are found, there will always be a minimum amount of fossil gas required for industrial processes. But, BUT, that doesn’t mean you can’t lean into renewables, storage, and transmission to offset as much fossil generation as possible (prioritizing fossil gas for industry, and staying within your fossil gas infrastructure and LNG import constraints).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - barbarbar 4y ago
    I have recently studied that exact link which gives an extremely good insight.
  - AshamedCaptain 4y ago
    It is even worse than that. For all the talk about my current country (France) being a nuclear power house, we have actually been buying electricity from Spain and practically every other neighboring country for about 2 decades by now. which is highly ridiculous because during my stay in Spain around the 2000s I was definitely paying significantly more for electricity than I _ever_ have in France. Someone would really need to explain that to me...
- croes 4y ago
  Nuclear isn't flexible either, sudden high demands or the opposite are also bad for the nets
- adrianN 4y ago
  It's not hard to build storage, it's just a bit expensive. The European grid is still quite far from the amount of renewable deployment where storage starts to make financial sense, which is why right now we don't have very much of it.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Generating too much for the grid isn't an actual problem. Modern renewables can shut themselves off quickly. Most serious national plans involve overprovisioning. You've never seen anyone credible worry about how we'll cope with that terrible excess of cheap power because it's not a problem, merely an opportunity. You've probably mostly been reading complaints of the operators of non-renewable plants that can't do this and are annoyed they're being asked to do it when renewables are plentiful as it costs then money to do so, even on top of the lost electricity.
  - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
    > Generating too much for the grid isn't an actual problem Yeah, tell that to people who's devices and houses you have burnt down because voltage in the outlet was not 230V but 300V.
melling 4y ago
I think a better TLDR is: Europe relied on fossil fuels that it can no longer obtain. Blame clean energy nuclear power which the world refused to adopt over the past 30 years. This was a classic “Pay now or pay later”. Congratulations, it’s 4 decades later and we made the wrong choice and waited for solar, wind, and those batteries. https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI
- skrause 4y ago
  Almost all of the EU's uranium also has to be imported from non-EU sources, just like fossil fuels. So it's not really better if you want actual energy independence.
  - steeve 4y ago
    France's Uranium strategic reserves are 3 years. The main supplier is Canada. France has Uranium mines, but they were closed since it was cheaper to import. They still do exist, though.
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    Mostly because it's not financially interesting, in the same way that the US did not pump oil on its own territory for the longest time because it wasn't worth it. There are 200 uranium mines in France.
    - melling 4y ago
      Yes, I agree. Coal was much cheaper. Back to my “pay now, pay later” point.
  - melling 4y ago
    My main point was we could have avoided half a century of massive coal usage. 40% of global power is still from coal. It appears that we still need to resort to coal instead of renewables: https://globalnews.ca/news/8993093/german-europe-coal-energy-climate-change/ https://globalnews.ca/news/8993093/german-europe-coal-energy...
  - 4y ago
makomk 4y ago
Supposedly a bunch of routine maintenance was also deferred during the pandemic and has now come due, meaning that more plants are down for maintenance at the same time than normally.
- shmel 4y ago
  It is depressing that deliveroo drivers as well as wine shops were considered "essential" during lockdowns while maintenance of nuclear plants wasn't.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    The issue with most construction (and something complex like reactor maintenance) is that by its nature it is close-quarters, team-based work. A situation that you would want to minimize during an epidemic.
mxvzr 4y ago
France has 56 reactors, of which 29 are currently shutdown. My understanding is that they are closed for maintenance rather than due to the on-going heatwave. It has been described as the perfect storm: some reactors have reached the 10yr mark (so extensive maintenance is to be done on these), lockdowns have slowed the progress of regular maintenance (possibly introducing a backlog?), and finally corrosion was found in secondary cooling systems used during emergencies leading to further (12) shutdowns.
- rjzzleep 4y ago
  This is basically what happens when the entirety of western governments is run by lawyers, teachers, and BA consultants. There is a massive lack of critical infrastructure engineers that should be welcome in government or at least close advisors of the government but no longer are. Note that for all the terrible parts about China they have a lot of engineers in their government, leading to a lot of critical investments in infrastructure.
  - lesuorac 4y ago
    Yeah all those people with their degrees in constitutional law should be banned from congress! /s To make a claim that lawyers can't be useful at all at running a country really requires a citation at least... Large associations of people are going to have a lot of different skills so to say that there aren't ~500,000 competent teachers / lawyers / consultants in a population of ~3 billion (claim is about the entire west) seems a bit of a stretch. There are at least some engineers in China that aren't competent [1] so _just_ because somebody is an engineer doesn't mean you'll have a good outcome. [1]: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/05/1096810346/survivor-found-almost-6-days-after-china-building-collapse https://www.npr.org/2022/05/05/1096810346/survivor-found-alm...
    - roenxi 4y ago
      How much of an influence does constitutional law really have on the government? There is a minor-moderate crisis in US politics at the moment about whether the constitution protects abortion based on a tortured reading of the text, so it doesn't seem like the physical documents are an important factor. I respect all the positions in that debate, but if that is a serious point of contention then there is a real question as to why a constitutional scholar would have any advantage at all in Congress. For anyone. Not saying they'd necessarily be bad, but a good cross section of community members would be better than a good cross section of the legal fraternity.
acidburnNSA 4y ago
> which in turn makes reactors difficult to run at maximum rates, due to reactor cooling issues. It's due to administrative fish protection issues. Cooling a 375°C reactor with 40°C water (or even 60°C) is not a big problem. Keeping water temperatures below fish protection discharge limits set decades ago is harder. In heatwaves, the authorities relax the fish laws. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Heatwave-forces-temporary-change-to-water-discharg https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Heatwave-forces-... As other commenters say, the big issue right now has to do with outages for checking a corrosion issue.
- _ph_ 4y ago
  And of course to buy new fish after the heatwave.
  - acidburnNSA 4y ago
    Fish have become more accustomed to higher temperatures as well through the years so that kind of rule should be continuously re-evaluated and adjusted in a changing climate, as appropriate.
    - _ph_ 4y ago
      Thats not how biology works. With sweet water, oxygen supply is the killer at high temperatures, and as soon as more than a few fishes die, a cascade reaction is triggered. Yes over centuries, more resilient species might emerge, but short term, life in a body of water can just collectively die. There are very frequent events in the summer, where small lakes completely die, if the point of no return is crossed.
- Fiahil 4y ago
  didn't that only apply to open circuit cooling, rather than the closed circuit cooling that you would expect in most reactors ? > The precise situation depends on the reactor. But in general terms, water is either returned directly, which is known as an open circuit, which can lead to general downstream river temperatures increasing several degrees, or the water is returned after cooling in air-cooling towers, known as a closed circuit, which typically leads to lower rises of downstream river temperatures, of a few tenths of a degree.
cm2187 4y ago
I just hope it won’t affect essential activities like bitcoin mining.

barbarbar 4y ago

But at least they work all the time. Whereas solar/wind work... occasionally. And then when they work they generate too much for the grid. The EU energy situation is really in flaming death spiral. With too nany bets on solar/wind power which doesn't really work.

desindol 4y ago
You are saying wind and sun don’t work? O_o
- mdp2021 4y ago
  Probably intended that there is not full warranty of output. But for other more traditional sources is the same - and this very submission is about the matter. Traditional energy plants in the North of Italy, suffering droughts, are currently emitting reduced power because less water flow decreases output.
- JimiofEden 4y ago
  It's less that they don't work and more that they don't work optimally in the affected areas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD0sq5GN7xc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD0sq5GN7xc Zeihan is a bit US-centric overall, but his energy talks are sound (or I'm too biased to realize they're just confirming my own views.)
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    > (or I'm too biased to realize they're just confirming my own views.) If you genuinely care, this is the real answer. Lignite is a poor fuel for many reasons, but that handwavey part about solar and lignite being worse than lignite and it's all a big scam that the silly greens are too stupid to notice is just totally wrong. As is the bit about green collapse he predicts when it is discovered to "not work" in Europe. It's a very weird argument, since he's admitting it works (sort of) in California and Texas but still has a weirdly negative tone about it and Greens. Basically, it's just yet another fallback position for people who have been consistently wrong about energy policy for decades and still feel able to poke fun at Greens for being unrealistic, because their audience is so misinformed. California imports 90% of its natural gas from other states. If that was somehow threatened to be cut off, California would struggle too. It would tell us nothing about renewables, and tell us everything about how your neighbours being dicks to you can be a hassle. Which is actually a selling point for renewables and helps drive Chinese interest, since they don't won't to rely on others for fuel.
  - SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
    Seems like good points made in the video, I’ll watch a few more before I sub.
_0w8t 4y ago
The article is precisely about nuclear reactors not working all the time.
- barbarbar 4y ago
  The reactors are mainly down for maintenance. Whereas wind/sun is very unstable like - you know - the weather.
ta988 4y ago
They obviously don't work all the time, look at their uptime it is not glorious. But sure they work at night solar and they work with no wind etc... That's why we need a mixed energy panel with heat storage like Finland is starting and energy storage (inertial or gravitational seem to be the best bets these days)
varjag 4y ago
Offshore wind (the main segment for large/powerful wind turbines) generates just fine throughout, including the peak consumption periods. The failures of EU (or should we say German, as the rest of the Union mainly subsidizes its power bills now) energy policy are mainly self inflicted damage of tying to hydrocarbon supply from terror states.
- barbarbar 4y ago
  Yes - sometimes there is a lot of wind and then it is... fine. But actually not since then they generate too much power which can not be used (in the country) and then it is sold cheap. The main problem is it can't be stored for later use.
  - varjag 4y ago
    It's not that much of a problem. Wind in the sea is quite predictable (and in certain areas near constant) and turbines can be geared down.
    - Zanfa 4y ago
      It is a big problem, low wind periods can last for days, just this Feb-March, UK wind generation stayed under 20% capacity (mostly between 5-10% I believe) for more than 11 days straight [0]. [0] https://reports.electricinsights.co.uk/q1-2021/when-the-wind-goes-gas-fills-in-the-gap/ https://reports.electricinsights.co.uk/q1-2021/when-the-wind...
toomuchtodo 4y ago
Portugal and Spain lived within their means energy wise, and have enormous renewables and hydro storage capabilities (and while they both burn some fossil gas; they have plans to rapidly finish moving to renewables by the end of the decade; Portugal burns no coal, Spain is phasing it out). France and Germany are in their own special hell because they prioritized politics (nuclear and coal, respectively) over energy security. Swing by https://app.electricitymap.org https://app.electricitymap.org for the detailed capacity and generation info. Edit: I wrote a reply to a deleted comment, so enumerating the comment and reply here. > France and Germany are also industrial powerhouses. They require a lot more power and a lot more natural gas specifically for chemical precursors to produce stuff like fertilizer and silicone. Until suitable alternatives are found, there will always be a minimum amount of fossil gas required for industrial processes. But, BUT, that doesn’t mean you can’t lean into renewables, storage, and transmission to offset as much fossil generation as possible (prioritizing fossil gas for industry, and staying within your fossil gas infrastructure and LNG import constraints).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- barbarbar 4y ago
  I have recently studied that exact link which gives an extremely good insight.
- AshamedCaptain 4y ago
  It is even worse than that. For all the talk about my current country (France) being a nuclear power house, we have actually been buying electricity from Spain and practically every other neighboring country for about 2 decades by now. which is highly ridiculous because during my stay in Spain around the 2000s I was definitely paying significantly more for electricity than I _ever_ have in France. Someone would really need to explain that to me...
croes 4y ago
Nuclear isn't flexible either, sudden high demands or the opposite are also bad for the nets
adrianN 4y ago
It's not hard to build storage, it's just a bit expensive. The European grid is still quite far from the amount of renewable deployment where storage starts to make financial sense, which is why right now we don't have very much of it.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Generating too much for the grid isn't an actual problem. Modern renewables can shut themselves off quickly. Most serious national plans involve overprovisioning. You've never seen anyone credible worry about how we'll cope with that terrible excess of cheap power because it's not a problem, merely an opportunity. You've probably mostly been reading complaints of the operators of non-renewable plants that can't do this and are annoyed they're being asked to do it when renewables are plentiful as it costs then money to do so, even on top of the lost electricity.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  > Generating too much for the grid isn't an actual problem Yeah, tell that to people who's devices and houses you have burnt down because voltage in the outlet was not 230V but 300V.

melling 4y ago

I think a better TLDR is: Europe relied on fossil fuels that it can no longer obtain. Blame clean energy nuclear power which the world refused to adopt over the past 30 years. This was a classic “Pay now or pay later”. Congratulations, it’s 4 decades later and we made the wrong choice and waited for solar, wind, and those batteries. https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI

skrause 4y ago
Almost all of the EU's uranium also has to be imported from non-EU sources, just like fossil fuels. So it's not really better if you want actual energy independence.
- steeve 4y ago
  France's Uranium strategic reserves are 3 years. The main supplier is Canada. France has Uranium mines, but they were closed since it was cheaper to import. They still do exist, though.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  Mostly because it's not financially interesting, in the same way that the US did not pump oil on its own territory for the longest time because it wasn't worth it. There are 200 uranium mines in France.
  - melling 4y ago
    Yes, I agree. Coal was much cheaper. Back to my “pay now, pay later” point.
- melling 4y ago
  My main point was we could have avoided half a century of massive coal usage. 40% of global power is still from coal. It appears that we still need to resort to coal instead of renewables: https://globalnews.ca/news/8993093/german-europe-coal-energy-climate-change/ https://globalnews.ca/news/8993093/german-europe-coal-energy...
- 4y ago

makomk 4y ago

Supposedly a bunch of routine maintenance was also deferred during the pandemic and has now come due, meaning that more plants are down for maintenance at the same time than normally.

shmel 4y ago
It is depressing that deliveroo drivers as well as wine shops were considered "essential" during lockdowns while maintenance of nuclear plants wasn't.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  The issue with most construction (and something complex like reactor maintenance) is that by its nature it is close-quarters, team-based work. A situation that you would want to minimize during an epidemic.

mxvzr 4y ago

France has 56 reactors, of which 29 are currently shutdown. My understanding is that they are closed for maintenance rather than due to the on-going heatwave. It has been described as the perfect storm: some reactors have reached the 10yr mark (so extensive maintenance is to be done on these), lockdowns have slowed the progress of regular maintenance (possibly introducing a backlog?), and finally corrosion was found in secondary cooling systems used during emergencies leading to further (12) shutdowns.

rjzzleep 4y ago
This is basically what happens when the entirety of western governments is run by lawyers, teachers, and BA consultants. There is a massive lack of critical infrastructure engineers that should be welcome in government or at least close advisors of the government but no longer are. Note that for all the terrible parts about China they have a lot of engineers in their government, leading to a lot of critical investments in infrastructure.
- lesuorac 4y ago
  Yeah all those people with their degrees in constitutional law should be banned from congress! /s To make a claim that lawyers can't be useful at all at running a country really requires a citation at least... Large associations of people are going to have a lot of different skills so to say that there aren't ~500,000 competent teachers / lawyers / consultants in a population of ~3 billion (claim is about the entire west) seems a bit of a stretch. There are at least some engineers in China that aren't competent [1] so _just_ because somebody is an engineer doesn't mean you'll have a good outcome. [1]: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/05/1096810346/survivor-found-almost-6-days-after-china-building-collapse https://www.npr.org/2022/05/05/1096810346/survivor-found-alm...
  - roenxi 4y ago
    How much of an influence does constitutional law really have on the government? There is a minor-moderate crisis in US politics at the moment about whether the constitution protects abortion based on a tortured reading of the text, so it doesn't seem like the physical documents are an important factor. I respect all the positions in that debate, but if that is a serious point of contention then there is a real question as to why a constitutional scholar would have any advantage at all in Congress. For anyone. Not saying they'd necessarily be bad, but a good cross section of community members would be better than a good cross section of the legal fraternity.

acidburnNSA 4y ago

> which in turn makes reactors difficult to run at maximum rates, due to reactor cooling issues. It's due to administrative fish protection issues. Cooling a 375°C reactor with 40°C water (or even 60°C) is not a big problem. Keeping water temperatures below fish protection discharge limits set decades ago is harder. In heatwaves, the authorities relax the fish laws. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Heatwave-forces-temporary-change-to-water-discharg https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Heatwave-forces-... As other commenters say, the big issue right now has to do with outages for checking a corrosion issue.

_ph_ 4y ago
And of course to buy new fish after the heatwave.
- acidburnNSA 4y ago
  Fish have become more accustomed to higher temperatures as well through the years so that kind of rule should be continuously re-evaluated and adjusted in a changing climate, as appropriate.
  - _ph_ 4y ago
    Thats not how biology works. With sweet water, oxygen supply is the killer at high temperatures, and as soon as more than a few fishes die, a cascade reaction is triggered. Yes over centuries, more resilient species might emerge, but short term, life in a body of water can just collectively die. There are very frequent events in the summer, where small lakes completely die, if the point of no return is crossed.
Fiahil 4y ago
didn't that only apply to open circuit cooling, rather than the closed circuit cooling that you would expect in most reactors ? > The precise situation depends on the reactor. But in general terms, water is either returned directly, which is known as an open circuit, which can lead to general downstream river temperatures increasing several degrees, or the water is returned after cooling in air-cooling towers, known as a closed circuit, which typically leads to lower rises of downstream river temperatures, of a few tenths of a degree.

cm2187 4y ago

I just hope it won’t affect essential activities like bitcoin mining.