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I read the whole thread. At one point he goes on and on how France is shaky because their nuclear plants are offline caused by corrosion issues etc. On the very

I read the whole thread. At one point he goes on and on how France is shaky because their nuclear plants are offline caused by corrosion issues etc. On the very next tweet he blasts Germany for prematurely shutting down "the most reliable energy source nuclear". Well if they're reliable, why is France in this world of hurt right now? I agree about one thing, and that it really is a perfect storm of issues, and that the winter will be very rough. I hope it brings a needed change in a lot of ways. The part about renewables requiring trillions in investment to replace nuclear I didn't get at all - they're the cheapest possible solution. New nuclear that is needed would be even worse. If he thinks they're expensive, don't know what else is there. My guess is that renewables will continue to be a huge winner, especially in this crisis. Even Macron came out a couple days ago and said France needs to build more renewable capacity and ease regulations and remove road blocks. That was a huge shock for me.

izacus 4y ago
> Well if they're reliable, why is France in this world of hurt right now? This an exceedingly intellectually lazy argument which shows that you're either horribly biased (and never engaged with the reading material properly) or didn't even spend a minute thinking through what you're asking. It's somewhere on the level of "well, why is there snow in New York if global warming is happening HUUUUH?!". (Not to mention that the French nukes are in process of being started already.)
- zh3 4y ago
  Erm, EDF. I'm in favour of nuclear, but EDF/Hinckley Point are how not to do it (I think the only residential consumers they have left have failed to do any sort of shopping around/don't care about the cost - very possibly different for business/vested interests).
  - pjerem 4y ago
    That’s not the whole story. EDF is a very competent company which have everything needed to provide cheap electricity to the whole country while making money. The point is (and I think it’s a scandal) that EDF is forced, by law, to resell its nuclear electricity to its competitors at an under the market price. EDF is also required to offer an electricity plan with a law fixed price. Which is a good thing because historically, it allowed end users not to suffer from market price fluctuations. Now what is happening is that all those fake competitors that did resell EDF electricity cheaper than EDF offerings, took their margin for more than a decade and are now asking their customer to unsubscribe and to go back to the EDF fixed-by-law offer.
    - zh3 4y ago
      Eh, EDF charges more money directly than other suppliers (as a direct residential consumer, it was only a couple of years back I discovered how much more expensive they are). Plus as for making money, they are heavilty debt-laden and need the Frech government to bail them out[0]. * [0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/19/france-to-pay-nearly-10bn-to-fully-nationalise-edf https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/19/france-to-p...
- mijoharas 4y ago
  I don't think that's fair. If almost 40% of french nuclear is offline right now[0][1] then I think it's reasonable to ask questions about reliability. Could you explain how the position is lazy? (Note: I'm in favour of nuclear power) [0] https://twitter.com/BurggrabenH/status/1567971418255532035 https://twitter.com/BurggrabenH/status/1567971418255532035 [1] Our forecast is for 59% utilisation or 315TWh based on EDF's guidance.
  - mijoharas 4y ago
    If you're arguing that the French nuclear run by EDF is unreliable, while the German nuclear power was reliable I'll grant that, but that wasn't what I took from your comment. (It's possible I misinterpreted)
  - izacus 4y ago
    For starters: to compare reliability (which is a statistic), you need to first look at more than a single anecdotal time sample. This is like... highschool level stuff. (Which is also the reason why I have very little will to refute your points, because they seem to be done from either dishonesty or ignorance. Anyone on HN is old enough to understand why anecdotal single sample evidence is not a way to refute statistical phenomena). That is to say - even if EDF massively, critically fscked up this time, it has little effect to the reliability of nuclear power as a whole. Just like a single exploding windmill in Denmark doesn't change much about reliability of wind power.
    - mijoharas 4y ago
      Ok, this is ridiculous, given your position, I'm not going to spend long on this but: > Just like a single exploding windmill in Denmark doesn't change much about reliability of wind power First off, you realise France has 56 nuclear power stations? I'm wondering where you're getting "single sample" and "single windmill" from If, over a year, 40% of windmills in Denmark weren't producing power, it would make a hell of a lot of sense to question the reliability of Danish windmills. I don't know why you pulled out the straw man of saying the person was questioning all of nuclear power, but they had a very reasonable fact-based question. I'd be very happy to listen to any data or explanations you could bring, but frankly you don't seem to be discussing things in good faith right now.
- locallost 4y ago
  They're in the process of being started for months now. It's even mentioned in the tweets that EdF has a poor track record of keeping their word. How much I would know if I would only read the material properly. Reliability is a word and it has a meaning. With that in mind nothing beats renewables because the tech just works and they're so decentralized that a glitch of huge proportions would be needed to make them not work as designed. On the other hand a huge power plant can go out unexpectedly and take a massive part of the grid offline just as unexpectedly. That's unreliable and it's in fact what has happened this year.
  - izacus 4y ago
    >They're in the process of being started for months now Of course they are, that's how they work. 6 of them came online in last two weeks. But that's not what you were honestly implying there, is it? > Reliability is a word and it has a meaning. With that in mind nothing beats renewables because the tech just works and they're so decentralized that a glitch of huge proportions would be needed to make them not work as designed. On the other hand a huge power plant can go out unexpectedly and take a massive part of the grid offline just as unexpectedly. That's unreliable and it's in fact what has happened this year. Whatever meaning "reliability" has (especially in practical terms of you getting your power), it's really not what you wrote in the other sentences. Especially it's not a word that means "ignoring drawbacks of whichever option I like."
    - locallost 4y ago
      I am not implying anything at all, I am stating it explicitly, as is the author on Twitter. Here's a quote: > To deliver 315TWh, EDF needs to bring back significant capacity, i.e. solve some of its corrosion issues. Can it? > We will see. EDF has a way to over-promise and under-deliver over the years. So this "major, not minor" - make no mistake. > 32/n The tweet also contains a list of 8 reactors that were supposed to be back earlier but got "delayed". So we can pretend that there's no problem or danger of further delays, but that's just wishful thinking. The market certainly doesn't buy it, the futures prices for France were 2x any other country in Europe for early next year last time I checked. Reliability is in fact a word that has nothing to do with drawbacks of something else. The only thing that matters is, is it delivering on what it said it would do. The issue is you're interpreting what I said based on your assumptions. The word you are maybe thinking of for renewables output is not reliability, but predictability. But even here you'd be wrong since their output can be predicted pretty accurately based on weather forecasts. So they are both reliable and predictable. Nuclear is neither as it was made quite clear this year (and clear in other ways in decades before). You could call renewables variable, since their output, well, varies. But it does so in a predictable and reliable way.
- krageon 4y ago
  The reading material is essentially an entire twitter thread saying "nuclear is the beginning and the end of the answer and everyone who is against it is not thinking right. Anti-nuclear sentiment is rampant and the problem". I found it profoundly uninteresting so if you feel I should have gotten something else from it, perhaps you can enlighten me with what that was.
autokad 4y ago
you have to ask yourself what 'reliable' means. Its my understanding that nuclear is called 'reliable' due to the availability of the fuel source as well as the constant electricity output it produces (its very stable / constant ). That speaks nothing to the 'reliability of keeping plants online' that you are referring to. even if the reliability referred to by the author was claiming they are easy to keep online, that doesn't except France from the need of keeping good maintenance of the plants. Now the 2nd part on your claim about renewables. most claims in output and gains in renewables include hydro electric (which is kind of weird since the super green crowd villainised hydro electric ), which is a great solution but unfortunately most of the best opportunities for hydro electric have already been exploited. wind and solar makes sense in certain situations, but in most it doesnt. renewables should be part of the planning as much as possible, but they are not in a position to help Europe in its current situation. Germany's decision to shut down nuclear power plants just after fukushima because it was the social media hip thing to do at the time, has been a disastrous decision.
- locallost 4y ago
  The decision to wind down nuclear was made almost 10 years before Fukushima and it was Merkel who initially postponed the decision. Once Fukushima happened they figured it wasn't such a hot idea to have decades old plants running. So it has nothing to do with hip.
AnonCoward42 4y ago
> The part about renewables requiring trillions in investment to replace nuclear I didn't get at all - they're the cheapest possible solution. The problem with renewable energies in Germany is that we do not have (or can't get?) enough water power plants. Solar energy doesn't really work at all, because energy is also needed at night and wind energy is also not very reliable. To compensate for this you need even more wind turbines. The assumption here seems to be that these are really better for the climate, but I don't see that either if you have to use that much resources to build these to compensate for miniscule amounts of basic electricity load. > My guess is that renewables will continue to be a huge winner, especially in this crisis. Winner of what? In Germany we have thousands of thousands of wind turbines and still we are sliding into an energy crisis. Sure, some days they probably could produce 100% of the electricity demand, but some days they barely produce any electricity. The idea was to compensate with gas power plants ...
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  The idea was to build offshore wind farms, but there was a lot of complaining about "subsidies" from the right so the government effectively blocked them. Imagine if offshore wind had been being built by Germany (and all the other EU nations that fell for the same BS) at full speed since 2012. We'd have a lot more cheaper power and a lot less Government subsidies.
arvonle 4y ago
Numerous French nuclear plants are past due date but their lifespans have been extended beyond their expected lifespans for what looks to me like political and economic reasons - instead of building new ones in time to handle the transition. I do not know what the intersection is with the set of reactors that had to be shut down. One must understand that EDF is under immense pressure as an underfunded public provider, as it is forced to comply with price regulations (out of its own pockets as the government owes it a lot of money that curiously fails to be paid back), provides electricity at a discount to other European countries - someone has to compensate for Germany's plant closures - and private providers - which do not produce anyhting, they buy power at a discount from EDF then resell it to French people at a markup et voilà. EDF is also bound by law to buy solar energy produced by homes for a higher price than they end up selling it later on. Basically my argument is that this might have less to do with the reliability of nuclear energy and more with how the EU, the govt and private parties rip EDF off while leaving it with no option as to what to do with its aging nuclear park.

izacus 4y ago

> Well if they're reliable, why is France in this world of hurt right now? This an exceedingly intellectually lazy argument which shows that you're either horribly biased (and never engaged with the reading material properly) or didn't even spend a minute thinking through what you're asking. It's somewhere on the level of "well, why is there snow in New York if global warming is happening HUUUUH?!". (Not to mention that the French nukes are in process of being started already.)

zh3 4y ago
Erm, EDF. I'm in favour of nuclear, but EDF/Hinckley Point are how not to do it (I think the only residential consumers they have left have failed to do any sort of shopping around/don't care about the cost - very possibly different for business/vested interests).
- pjerem 4y ago
  That’s not the whole story. EDF is a very competent company which have everything needed to provide cheap electricity to the whole country while making money. The point is (and I think it’s a scandal) that EDF is forced, by law, to resell its nuclear electricity to its competitors at an under the market price. EDF is also required to offer an electricity plan with a law fixed price. Which is a good thing because historically, it allowed end users not to suffer from market price fluctuations. Now what is happening is that all those fake competitors that did resell EDF electricity cheaper than EDF offerings, took their margin for more than a decade and are now asking their customer to unsubscribe and to go back to the EDF fixed-by-law offer.
  - zh3 4y ago
    Eh, EDF charges more money directly than other suppliers (as a direct residential consumer, it was only a couple of years back I discovered how much more expensive they are). Plus as for making money, they are heavilty debt-laden and need the Frech government to bail them out[0]. * [0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/19/france-to-pay-nearly-10bn-to-fully-nationalise-edf https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/19/france-to-p...
mijoharas 4y ago
I don't think that's fair. If almost 40% of french nuclear is offline right now[0][1] then I think it's reasonable to ask questions about reliability. Could you explain how the position is lazy? (Note: I'm in favour of nuclear power) [0] https://twitter.com/BurggrabenH/status/1567971418255532035 https://twitter.com/BurggrabenH/status/1567971418255532035 [1] Our forecast is for 59% utilisation or 315TWh based on EDF's guidance.
- mijoharas 4y ago
  If you're arguing that the French nuclear run by EDF is unreliable, while the German nuclear power was reliable I'll grant that, but that wasn't what I took from your comment. (It's possible I misinterpreted)
- izacus 4y ago
  For starters: to compare reliability (which is a statistic), you need to first look at more than a single anecdotal time sample. This is like... highschool level stuff. (Which is also the reason why I have very little will to refute your points, because they seem to be done from either dishonesty or ignorance. Anyone on HN is old enough to understand why anecdotal single sample evidence is not a way to refute statistical phenomena). That is to say - even if EDF massively, critically fscked up this time, it has little effect to the reliability of nuclear power as a whole. Just like a single exploding windmill in Denmark doesn't change much about reliability of wind power.
  - mijoharas 4y ago
    Ok, this is ridiculous, given your position, I'm not going to spend long on this but: > Just like a single exploding windmill in Denmark doesn't change much about reliability of wind power First off, you realise France has 56 nuclear power stations? I'm wondering where you're getting "single sample" and "single windmill" from If, over a year, 40% of windmills in Denmark weren't producing power, it would make a hell of a lot of sense to question the reliability of Danish windmills. I don't know why you pulled out the straw man of saying the person was questioning all of nuclear power, but they had a very reasonable fact-based question. I'd be very happy to listen to any data or explanations you could bring, but frankly you don't seem to be discussing things in good faith right now.
locallost 4y ago
They're in the process of being started for months now. It's even mentioned in the tweets that EdF has a poor track record of keeping their word. How much I would know if I would only read the material properly. Reliability is a word and it has a meaning. With that in mind nothing beats renewables because the tech just works and they're so decentralized that a glitch of huge proportions would be needed to make them not work as designed. On the other hand a huge power plant can go out unexpectedly and take a massive part of the grid offline just as unexpectedly. That's unreliable and it's in fact what has happened this year.
- izacus 4y ago
  >They're in the process of being started for months now Of course they are, that's how they work. 6 of them came online in last two weeks. But that's not what you were honestly implying there, is it? > Reliability is a word and it has a meaning. With that in mind nothing beats renewables because the tech just works and they're so decentralized that a glitch of huge proportions would be needed to make them not work as designed. On the other hand a huge power plant can go out unexpectedly and take a massive part of the grid offline just as unexpectedly. That's unreliable and it's in fact what has happened this year. Whatever meaning "reliability" has (especially in practical terms of you getting your power), it's really not what you wrote in the other sentences. Especially it's not a word that means "ignoring drawbacks of whichever option I like."
  - locallost 4y ago
    I am not implying anything at all, I am stating it explicitly, as is the author on Twitter. Here's a quote: > To deliver 315TWh, EDF needs to bring back significant capacity, i.e. solve some of its corrosion issues. Can it? > We will see. EDF has a way to over-promise and under-deliver over the years. So this "major, not minor" - make no mistake. > 32/n The tweet also contains a list of 8 reactors that were supposed to be back earlier but got "delayed". So we can pretend that there's no problem or danger of further delays, but that's just wishful thinking. The market certainly doesn't buy it, the futures prices for France were 2x any other country in Europe for early next year last time I checked. Reliability is in fact a word that has nothing to do with drawbacks of something else. The only thing that matters is, is it delivering on what it said it would do. The issue is you're interpreting what I said based on your assumptions. The word you are maybe thinking of for renewables output is not reliability, but predictability. But even here you'd be wrong since their output can be predicted pretty accurately based on weather forecasts. So they are both reliable and predictable. Nuclear is neither as it was made quite clear this year (and clear in other ways in decades before). You could call renewables variable, since their output, well, varies. But it does so in a predictable and reliable way.
krageon 4y ago
The reading material is essentially an entire twitter thread saying "nuclear is the beginning and the end of the answer and everyone who is against it is not thinking right. Anti-nuclear sentiment is rampant and the problem". I found it profoundly uninteresting so if you feel I should have gotten something else from it, perhaps you can enlighten me with what that was.

autokad 4y ago

you have to ask yourself what 'reliable' means. Its my understanding that nuclear is called 'reliable' due to the availability of the fuel source as well as the constant electricity output it produces (its very stable / constant ). That speaks nothing to the 'reliability of keeping plants online' that you are referring to. even if the reliability referred to by the author was claiming they are easy to keep online, that doesn't except France from the need of keeping good maintenance of the plants. Now the 2nd part on your claim about renewables. most claims in output and gains in renewables include hydro electric (which is kind of weird since the super green crowd villainised hydro electric ), which is a great solution but unfortunately most of the best opportunities for hydro electric have already been exploited. wind and solar makes sense in certain situations, but in most it doesnt. renewables should be part of the planning as much as possible, but they are not in a position to help Europe in its current situation. Germany's decision to shut down nuclear power plants just after fukushima because it was the social media hip thing to do at the time, has been a disastrous decision.

locallost 4y ago
The decision to wind down nuclear was made almost 10 years before Fukushima and it was Merkel who initially postponed the decision. Once Fukushima happened they figured it wasn't such a hot idea to have decades old plants running. So it has nothing to do with hip.

AnonCoward42 4y ago

> The part about renewables requiring trillions in investment to replace nuclear I didn't get at all - they're the cheapest possible solution. The problem with renewable energies in Germany is that we do not have (or can't get?) enough water power plants. Solar energy doesn't really work at all, because energy is also needed at night and wind energy is also not very reliable. To compensate for this you need even more wind turbines. The assumption here seems to be that these are really better for the climate, but I don't see that either if you have to use that much resources to build these to compensate for miniscule amounts of basic electricity load. > My guess is that renewables will continue to be a huge winner, especially in this crisis. Winner of what? In Germany we have thousands of thousands of wind turbines and still we are sliding into an energy crisis. Sure, some days they probably could produce 100% of the electricity demand, but some days they barely produce any electricity. The idea was to compensate with gas power plants ...

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
The idea was to build offshore wind farms, but there was a lot of complaining about "subsidies" from the right so the government effectively blocked them. Imagine if offshore wind had been being built by Germany (and all the other EU nations that fell for the same BS) at full speed since 2012. We'd have a lot more cheaper power and a lot less Government subsidies.

arvonle 4y ago

Numerous French nuclear plants are past due date but their lifespans have been extended beyond their expected lifespans for what looks to me like political and economic reasons - instead of building new ones in time to handle the transition. I do not know what the intersection is with the set of reactors that had to be shut down. One must understand that EDF is under immense pressure as an underfunded public provider, as it is forced to comply with price regulations (out of its own pockets as the government owes it a lot of money that curiously fails to be paid back), provides electricity at a discount to other European countries - someone has to compensate for Germany's plant closures - and private providers - which do not produce anyhting, they buy power at a discount from EDF then resell it to French people at a markup et voilà. EDF is also bound by law to buy solar energy produced by homes for a higher price than they end up selling it later on. Basically my argument is that this might have less to do with the reliability of nuclear energy and more with how the EU, the govt and private parties rip EDF off while leaving it with no option as to what to do with its aging nuclear park.