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Over half those in the EU are deployed in France too. For the US to match France’s 80% electricity generated by nuclear energy, we’ll need to deploy about 300 a

Over half those in the EU are deployed in France too. For the US to match France’s 80% electricity generated by nuclear energy, we’ll need to deploy about 300 additional equivalent reactors. I my opinion, this a good thing: 1. The per unit reactor costs will plummet if we build 300 identical units 2. France enjoys the lowest per capita CO2 emissions for electrical generation than any nation in the world. America should match them.

weaksauce 4y ago
what is france doing with all the waste? it's a country a little bit larger than california is with a bit more population... i suppose we could find a way to store all that waste in california somewhere since it is a big state with large swaths of land that are uninhabited. my dream is to have the main reactors give a lot of the power and then have smaller reactors that use those waste products to turn them into shorter half-lived materials. if i recall correctly liquid salt thorium was something that was trying to do that and it also had the feature that it failed safe instead of a meltdown.
- therealdrag0 4y ago
  Waste doesn’t take up much space does it?
  - survirtual 4y ago
    It does not. The problem is, we can see and measure it. If anything went wrong, it’d be clear who messed up, so it requires actual time and effort to do it right. That’s yucky. People like it more when the waste is invisible and airborne, for the wind and their children to deal with instead of them. This provides a better level of blame dispersion. As they say, out of sight out of mind.
- tokai 4y ago
  They recycle it. Then store the unrecyclable remains in three different facilities. https://international.andra.fr/operational-facilities https://international.andra.fr/operational-facilities
- Zopieux 4y ago
  99% of nuc waste is low to medium life, low to medium radioactivity and is mostly recyclable. Russia does most of the recycling. The total amount (from the beginning of France's nuclear energy production 50+y ago) of highly radioactive, non-reusable waste fits in a cube not bigger than the Eiffel tower, and the goal is to bury that in geological storage, but dumb politics are opposing this (for dumb reasons that were debunked a thousand times).
- _ache_ 4y ago
  France is 40% larger than Califonia in area and population. Made it the biggest country of the EU (in size, not population).
afterburner 4y ago
All those reactors might have been great in the 80s, but with cheap solar and wind available, it makes no sense to sink that kind of money into a more expensive solution. France is also in the middle of experiencing a huge amount of maintenance costs due to many of their reactors coming up to critical age milestones. But it's often hidden under the massive layers of obfuscation due to being masked under the total French energy budget.
- nyokodo 4y ago
  > but with cheap solar and wind available, it makes no sense to sink that kind of money into a more expensive solution. Partially true. In geographies like New England that aren’t very sunny or windy nuclear makes more economic sense, and in all geographies as a hedge against long bouts of unusual weather.
  - Turskarama 4y ago
    Nuclear is a terrible technology to use as a hedge against inclement weather for power generation. The cost is all upfront, so you really want to be running it at 100% basically all the time for it to be at its most cost effective. Only running it when renewables aren't generating is incredibly costly, we'd be better off just overbuilding renewables + storage and having plenty of redundancy in the grid.
    - Zopieux 4y ago
      True, but you just won't find the necessary storage capacity to run solely on renewables — you'd need a miracle battery breakthrough or a miraculously convenient landscape close to population centers to build tons of reversible water reservoirs. You need your baseload to come from a steady, highly available, weather independent source. Nuclear is basically this only carbon free solution ticking the boxes.
      - Turskarama 4y ago
        That depends on where you live, and 80% of the worlds population lives in places where overbuilding enough storage _with current technology_ is still cheaper than nuclear. For that last 20%, building more grid connections towards the equator is again still cheaper than nuclear.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
> For the US to match France’s 80% electricity generated by nuclear energy 57% and trending rather sharply downward. You're also thinking of Uruguay for that CO2 thing, or maybe Sweden.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

weaksauce 4y ago

what is france doing with all the waste? it's a country a little bit larger than california is with a bit more population... i suppose we could find a way to store all that waste in california somewhere since it is a big state with large swaths of land that are uninhabited. my dream is to have the main reactors give a lot of the power and then have smaller reactors that use those waste products to turn them into shorter half-lived materials. if i recall correctly liquid salt thorium was something that was trying to do that and it also had the feature that it failed safe instead of a meltdown.

therealdrag0 4y ago
Waste doesn’t take up much space does it?
- survirtual 4y ago
  It does not. The problem is, we can see and measure it. If anything went wrong, it’d be clear who messed up, so it requires actual time and effort to do it right. That’s yucky. People like it more when the waste is invisible and airborne, for the wind and their children to deal with instead of them. This provides a better level of blame dispersion. As they say, out of sight out of mind.
tokai 4y ago
They recycle it. Then store the unrecyclable remains in three different facilities. https://international.andra.fr/operational-facilities https://international.andra.fr/operational-facilities
Zopieux 4y ago
99% of nuc waste is low to medium life, low to medium radioactivity and is mostly recyclable. Russia does most of the recycling. The total amount (from the beginning of France's nuclear energy production 50+y ago) of highly radioactive, non-reusable waste fits in a cube not bigger than the Eiffel tower, and the goal is to bury that in geological storage, but dumb politics are opposing this (for dumb reasons that were debunked a thousand times).
_ache_ 4y ago
France is 40% larger than Califonia in area and population. Made it the biggest country of the EU (in size, not population).

afterburner 4y ago

All those reactors might have been great in the 80s, but with cheap solar and wind available, it makes no sense to sink that kind of money into a more expensive solution. France is also in the middle of experiencing a huge amount of maintenance costs due to many of their reactors coming up to critical age milestones. But it's often hidden under the massive layers of obfuscation due to being masked under the total French energy budget.

nyokodo 4y ago
> but with cheap solar and wind available, it makes no sense to sink that kind of money into a more expensive solution. Partially true. In geographies like New England that aren’t very sunny or windy nuclear makes more economic sense, and in all geographies as a hedge against long bouts of unusual weather.
- Turskarama 4y ago
  Nuclear is a terrible technology to use as a hedge against inclement weather for power generation. The cost is all upfront, so you really want to be running it at 100% basically all the time for it to be at its most cost effective. Only running it when renewables aren't generating is incredibly costly, we'd be better off just overbuilding renewables + storage and having plenty of redundancy in the grid.
  - Zopieux 4y ago
    True, but you just won't find the necessary storage capacity to run solely on renewables — you'd need a miracle battery breakthrough or a miraculously convenient landscape close to population centers to build tons of reversible water reservoirs. You need your baseload to come from a steady, highly available, weather independent source. Nuclear is basically this only carbon free solution ticking the boxes.
    - Turskarama 4y ago
      That depends on where you live, and 80% of the worlds population lives in places where overbuilding enough storage _with current technology_ is still cheaper than nuclear. For that last 20%, building more grid connections towards the equator is again still cheaper than nuclear.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

> For the US to match France’s 80% electricity generated by nuclear energy 57% and trending rather sharply downward. You're also thinking of Uruguay for that CO2 thing, or maybe Sweden.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]