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> Controversial opinion: by scaremongering about nuclear power—which the west could have started adopting in the 1970s like France did—the naked tree huggers di
by wirrbel 4y ago
> Controversial opinion: by scaremongering about nuclear power—which the west could have started adopting in the 1970s like France did—the naked tree huggers did as much to set back climate change mitigation efforts as the oil lobby.
You would have thought that France would have supplied the European continent with electricity now that Russia cut its gas supply, but it turns out that France received electricity from Germany even during this time.
It turns out that even new builds of nuclear power plants take years to be completed. Getting safety right is a challenge, the more we know about engineering and material science for nuclear plants, the more we know about challenges in building them, the more we need to do to avoid these risks, the harder it is to build a safe power plant.
- robertlagrant 4y agoYou wouldn't have thought that unless you thought France had capacity to power Germany just lying around.
- mikojan 4y agoApparently Germany had capacity to power France just lying around.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y agoLiterally lying around in a pile of beautiful black lumps of coal.
- wirrbel 4y agoand also beautiful brown lignite
- ptilt 4y agoWhat you don’t know is that in the 2010’s the left wing had a agreement with the Green Party to stop all nuclear by 2050. That’s why we stop financing and maintaining a lot of nuclear plants. It turned out it was a bad idea..
- shortcake27 4y agoWhile I don’t know anything about that agreement, I assume it would have had been a push for renewables. By 2050 it will be easily possible to power the world using renewables. Ending nuclear at that point doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me.
- goatlover 4y agoHow do you know it will be possible by 2050 to go full renewable?
- shortcake27 4y agoBy using elementary grade extrapolation. Right now in 2023 there are multiple countries generating over 90% of electricity from renewables.
- Krssst 4y agoWhich ones? Are we talking 90%, an the entire year, without creative accounting? Disregarding electric dams because, while wonderful, those depend heavily on the country geography and I assume a lot of countries cannot build enough of them. (but we should build as much as we can of those, just don't expect 50% hydroelectricity everywhere)
- shortcake27 4y ago> Which ones? Norway 98% since 2016. Costa Rica 98% since 2015. Scotland 97% in 2020. Uruguay 98% in 2021. New Zealand pushing close to 90%. > Are we talking 90%, an the entire year, without creative accounting? I don’t know what this means. If a country reports that X amount of energy came from a particular source in a particular year, that means the entire year. And if you believe these countries are lying and doing “creative accounting”, then the burden of proof lies with you to prove it, not for me to disprove it.
- 4y ago
- ohgodplsno 4y agoFrance was strongarmed by Germany and by shitty election related deals to elect Hollande into massive nuclear power closures and reductions, coupled with presidents unable to see more than 5 years ahead means that nuclear plants both do not get renewed and also get closed for absolutely no reason. See Fessenheim. The issue with construction isn't that it's hard to build a safe power plant, it's that there's been no will from anyone, or active harm from incompetent shitheads.
- Krasnol 4y agoHollande wanted to diversify France because it's not and they had to pay for this stupidity and still do to this day. Fessenheim is the perfect reason for why Hollande wanted to close some of those plants: old, accident ridden, one of those which have to be closed down in summer due to possible overheating of nearby rivers and to top that off: it's in a region which may have earthquakes for which it is not prepared... > The issue with construction isn't that it's hard to build a safe power plant, it's that there's been no will from anyone, or active harm from incompetent shitheads. Weird because there are plenty western countries which do have popular support for nuclear energy but still struggle with construction times and costs in astronomical ways.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ohgodplsno 4y agoFessenheim was amongst the top performing nuclear plants, and had no issues being given a 10 year renewal because of how safe it was before it was closed for political reasons. The EELV/Die Grunde kool-aid is not a good thing to drink considering how anti science they are. And as always, the same awful arguments about "don't overheat the rivers", when the limits set by the safety regulations are way under anything that could damage the environment. You could triple the output heat in the river and it would change absolutely nothing. Hollande did not want to diversify our energy production. It was a purely political play to get EELV's support and used Fessenheim as a sacrificial chip. Glad to see the German energiewende led to such diversification that you're running half your country on coal right now btw. https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y agoOur national energy company EDF has been the largest energy exporter in Europe for ages, in 2019 it was the largest in the world. In addition to that it's made us the cleanest country in the continent for close to 40 years (along with hydro-rich countries). The notion that 2022 is a smoking gun for nuclear is ridiculous. All it reflects is the past 12 years of successive liberal governments writing laws and reforms to gut our nuclear fleet and EDF in favour of private companies.
- wirrbel 4y agothat is if La Hague isn't leaking nuclear waste
- natmaka 4y agoEven if it doesn't leak... France seeks strategy as nuclear waste site risks saturation point. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/france-seeks-strategy-nuclear-waste-site-risks-saturation-point-2023-02-03/ https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/france-seeks-st... Moreover the long-term deposit site (dubbed 'Cigéo') isn't ready.
- Krssst 4y agoCovid maintenance postponed + corrosion issues led to this bad timing; otherwise looks like it worked pretty well for decades. France closed a working-order nuclear plant for political reasons just two years before, so we're not making exactly the brightest decisions here either.