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> Meanwhile France is nearly 100% fossil free energy every single day of the year. I think this is endemic of your comment, every "fact" is fallacy or false. F

> Meanwhile France is nearly 100% fossil free energy every single day of the year. I think this is endemic of your comment, every "fact" is fallacy or false. France is not near 100% fossils fuel free, nuclear is not that great at getting to 100% and would require massive amounts of storage, just like renewables. Here's France's actual mix: > The electricity sector in France is dominated by its nuclear power, which accounted for 71.7% of total production in 2018, while renewables and fossil fuels accounted for 21.3% and 7.1%, respectively[1] (compare to 72.3% nuclear, 17.8% renewables and 8.6% fossil fuels in 2016). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France

4death4 3y ago
Fossil fuels are only 8.6%. I would call that "nearly 100% fossil fuel free."
- singingfish 3y ago
  91.4%
vlovich123 3y ago
Ok so 90% fossil free production year round every single day with a typical renewable contribution of ~20% that we observe anywhere with substantial renewable deployments. Who’s the one quibbling over facts? Storage is not needed for nuclear. Not sure where you’re getting that idea from. France is reliably the only developed country where most of the energy is produced without any fossil fuels and renewables are a relatively small part of that story.
- EmmaEngineer 3y ago
  Do they have nuclear cars in France? It looks like nuclear is actually only 31% of France's energy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-source-and-country?country=%7EFRA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    I mean you get how nonsensical that argument is right? We don’t have solar cars either. Cars do not generate power. We’re talking about generation not consumption. We need electric cars for consumers and that’s orthogonal to how we generate electricity. The reason is that electric cars can take their energy needs equally well from energy generated by a coal plant, a nuclear power plant or solar. That’s why electrification is absolutely needed for climate change. It’s got massive difficulties obviously because it’s a huge load on the power grid (today’s grids wouldn’t be able to handle if everyone started driving electric). And electrification should also be used as a feedback mechanism where charging cars are used as distributed batteries to help solve the storage problem for renewables and that unfortunately isn’t happening on any real level. I think we probably also need hydrogen fuel cells for fleet cars / trucking because they can eat the logistical and safety costs of storing hydrogen (hydrogen fuel cell consumer cars are a pipe dream IMO because you simply can’t have refilling stations scattered around everywhere - it’s massive explosion risk in population dense areas with untrained people dealing with it). But if we’re talking about grid energy production, nuclear is the only real path for solving climate change. It sucks but that’s the reality.
    - EmmaEngineer 3y ago
      I think you missed the point: without storage nuclear only gets to 70% of the grid, and 31% of the total energy demand. With enough storage to displace oil and gas demand, nuclear has no advantage. It's a pity that France never spent the money to migrate the non-grid portion of their economy to electricity, but that was probably a simple matter of the economics of nuclear never really panning out.
      - vlovich123 3y ago
        You get how automotive energy storage and grid scale energy storage are totally different right? Like a huge portion of oil consumption is automotive and shipping and that has 0 demands on the grid. Yes, we need storage solutions for portable energy and solar fails on that mark too (that’s why EVs are battery backed and don’t bother putting on solar panels to regenerate those batteries). So when we electrify automotive, energy requirement needs for cars are going to skyrocket. Solar can thankfully probably accommodate a huge part of that because we can time shift charging to happen during the day but that also means that a good chunk of solar energy construction is being dedicated to charging storage capacity we built and put into cars and not offsetting our already substantial and ever growing non-automotive grid energy needs. I don’t know why you claim nuclear has no advantage if we’re talking about a country whose grid manages to achieve that only 10% of grid production is coming from fossil fuels. That’s a lot smaller storage problem to solve than the 60-80% that renewables has to solve (not to mention it needs to actually build that capacity which is going to take a long time because all the evidence is that that % mix by renewables grows very slowly over long periods of time).
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  Storage is required for a mainly nuclear grid to be anywhere near cost effective. That 10 percent of fossil, plus the controllable hydro in France is working in tandem with the nuclear to match demand. Remove that gas and hydro and a nuclear grid needs storage just as a mainly solar and wind grid does. Yes in theory, if price is no object, both can just overbuild so much you avoid needing storage but that would be stupid.
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    Sure, but we’re still talking about 10% of fossil fuel needs. So we’re comparing ~60-80% fossil fuels vs 10%. That’s a major accomplishment difference. Also I hope you’d agree that the storage needed to replace 10% of fossil fuels is much less than the storage needed to replace 60-80% right? Also, not sure if you’re aware, but most modern reactors don’t need storage. They can vary load generation dynamically and so don’t actually need storage. France’s reactors are all very old as they’ve been infected with the same disease of failing to take on large public works projects in a timely and cost efficient manner. It’s not as fuel efficient, but that matters very little for a nuclear plant in the grand scheme of things.
    - audunw 3y ago
      > It’s not as fuel efficient, but that matters very little for a nuclear plant in the grand scheme of things. What matters is that the upfront capital costs of nuclear are so insanely high that any hour you’re not producing 100% you’re losing money you can’t afford to lose. I’m not convinced that load following nuclear makes economic sense compared to next generation energy storage solution. Say Ambri’s molten metal batteries. Nuclear had better pray that these energy storage solutions never become economically competitive, because if they do then solar/wind+storage will beat nuclear in almost every application. And if that’s the case, nuclear just won’t have the economies of scale necessary to be competitive at all. Nuclear energy also has to pray that advanced geothermal doesn’t catch on, as it competes directly with nuclear, but has the benefit of being able to take direct advantage of skilled labour from the oil and gas industry that’s soon becoming increasingly redundant.
- derriz 3y ago
  Nuclear is nowhere near as reliable as you are claiming. In 2022, more than half the French reactor fleet had to be taken offline at some stage or another - output over the year was 65% of the previous year. In August of that year, nuclear was delivering 40% of what would have been expected and the country ended up being the largest importer of electricity in Europe for the year. There's been a recovery this year but that recovery has faltered last month with about a 15% unexpected fall in output. Whenever France is hit by a heatwave, nuclear output drops significantly - the water of the rivers used for cooling/condensing becomes too warm to operate plants at full capacity safely. And even with effective monopoly advantage, nuclear generation is a money pit - French government had to bail out EDF at the start of this year - taking on 65B euro of debt.
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    Yes, we've let global warming be so much of a problem that existing nuclear power plant designs are now struggling to get cool enough to operate. But heat engines aren't the only way to convert fissile energy into electricty. We should 100% be researching direct capture so that the ability to generate electricty is not bounded by our ability to cool the reactor. And yet even with all that, most of the electricity generated still remains fossil free. > nuclear generation is a money pit - French government had to bail out EDF at the start of this year - taking on 65B euro of debt. Power generation is a money pit period. California has to constantly bail out PG&E here too because of all the lawsuits about fires & I see this happen frequently all over the world. Pretending like large scale power generation isn't a substantial government problem and the free market can solve it by itself AFAICT is a complete pipe dream. Hell in California there's a massive fight now because California is having to alter the rules to support grid solar installations by making roof top solar less attractive & this is a common problem facing all grid operators. And honestly, 65B euro is a pittance to have such a major reduction in fossil fuels for the year. Think about it this way - would you add a $300B line item to the US budget to bail out nuclear if it meant that only 10% of grid energy would be generated by fossil fuels? Like that seems like a laughably small number. France has 56 nuclear reactors and the US has 96 spread across 60 plants despite being 5x the size. In France, fossil fuels have seen 0 growth in terms of TWh produced since the 80s & in fact a small dip. Nowhere else in the world is that true including Germany which invested in renewables early & by a lot.

4death4 3y ago

Fossil fuels are only 8.6%. I would call that "nearly 100% fossil fuel free."

singingfish 3y ago
91.4%

vlovich123 3y ago

Ok so 90% fossil free production year round every single day with a typical renewable contribution of ~20% that we observe anywhere with substantial renewable deployments. Who’s the one quibbling over facts? Storage is not needed for nuclear. Not sure where you’re getting that idea from. France is reliably the only developed country where most of the energy is produced without any fossil fuels and renewables are a relatively small part of that story.

EmmaEngineer 3y ago
Do they have nuclear cars in France? It looks like nuclear is actually only 31% of France's energy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-source-and-country?country=%7EFRA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...
- vlovich123 3y ago
  I mean you get how nonsensical that argument is right? We don’t have solar cars either. Cars do not generate power. We’re talking about generation not consumption. We need electric cars for consumers and that’s orthogonal to how we generate electricity. The reason is that electric cars can take their energy needs equally well from energy generated by a coal plant, a nuclear power plant or solar. That’s why electrification is absolutely needed for climate change. It’s got massive difficulties obviously because it’s a huge load on the power grid (today’s grids wouldn’t be able to handle if everyone started driving electric). And electrification should also be used as a feedback mechanism where charging cars are used as distributed batteries to help solve the storage problem for renewables and that unfortunately isn’t happening on any real level. I think we probably also need hydrogen fuel cells for fleet cars / trucking because they can eat the logistical and safety costs of storing hydrogen (hydrogen fuel cell consumer cars are a pipe dream IMO because you simply can’t have refilling stations scattered around everywhere - it’s massive explosion risk in population dense areas with untrained people dealing with it). But if we’re talking about grid energy production, nuclear is the only real path for solving climate change. It sucks but that’s the reality.
  - EmmaEngineer 3y ago
    I think you missed the point: without storage nuclear only gets to 70% of the grid, and 31% of the total energy demand. With enough storage to displace oil and gas demand, nuclear has no advantage. It's a pity that France never spent the money to migrate the non-grid portion of their economy to electricity, but that was probably a simple matter of the economics of nuclear never really panning out.
    - vlovich123 3y ago
      You get how automotive energy storage and grid scale energy storage are totally different right? Like a huge portion of oil consumption is automotive and shipping and that has 0 demands on the grid. Yes, we need storage solutions for portable energy and solar fails on that mark too (that’s why EVs are battery backed and don’t bother putting on solar panels to regenerate those batteries). So when we electrify automotive, energy requirement needs for cars are going to skyrocket. Solar can thankfully probably accommodate a huge part of that because we can time shift charging to happen during the day but that also means that a good chunk of solar energy construction is being dedicated to charging storage capacity we built and put into cars and not offsetting our already substantial and ever growing non-automotive grid energy needs. I don’t know why you claim nuclear has no advantage if we’re talking about a country whose grid manages to achieve that only 10% of grid production is coming from fossil fuels. That’s a lot smaller storage problem to solve than the 60-80% that renewables has to solve (not to mention it needs to actually build that capacity which is going to take a long time because all the evidence is that that % mix by renewables grows very slowly over long periods of time).
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
Storage is required for a mainly nuclear grid to be anywhere near cost effective. That 10 percent of fossil, plus the controllable hydro in France is working in tandem with the nuclear to match demand. Remove that gas and hydro and a nuclear grid needs storage just as a mainly solar and wind grid does. Yes in theory, if price is no object, both can just overbuild so much you avoid needing storage but that would be stupid.
- vlovich123 3y ago
  Sure, but we’re still talking about 10% of fossil fuel needs. So we’re comparing ~60-80% fossil fuels vs 10%. That’s a major accomplishment difference. Also I hope you’d agree that the storage needed to replace 10% of fossil fuels is much less than the storage needed to replace 60-80% right? Also, not sure if you’re aware, but most modern reactors don’t need storage. They can vary load generation dynamically and so don’t actually need storage. France’s reactors are all very old as they’ve been infected with the same disease of failing to take on large public works projects in a timely and cost efficient manner. It’s not as fuel efficient, but that matters very little for a nuclear plant in the grand scheme of things.
  - audunw 3y ago
    > It’s not as fuel efficient, but that matters very little for a nuclear plant in the grand scheme of things. What matters is that the upfront capital costs of nuclear are so insanely high that any hour you’re not producing 100% you’re losing money you can’t afford to lose. I’m not convinced that load following nuclear makes economic sense compared to next generation energy storage solution. Say Ambri’s molten metal batteries. Nuclear had better pray that these energy storage solutions never become economically competitive, because if they do then solar/wind+storage will beat nuclear in almost every application. And if that’s the case, nuclear just won’t have the economies of scale necessary to be competitive at all. Nuclear energy also has to pray that advanced geothermal doesn’t catch on, as it competes directly with nuclear, but has the benefit of being able to take direct advantage of skilled labour from the oil and gas industry that’s soon becoming increasingly redundant.
derriz 3y ago
Nuclear is nowhere near as reliable as you are claiming. In 2022, more than half the French reactor fleet had to be taken offline at some stage or another - output over the year was 65% of the previous year. In August of that year, nuclear was delivering 40% of what would have been expected and the country ended up being the largest importer of electricity in Europe for the year. There's been a recovery this year but that recovery has faltered last month with about a 15% unexpected fall in output. Whenever France is hit by a heatwave, nuclear output drops significantly - the water of the rivers used for cooling/condensing becomes too warm to operate plants at full capacity safely. And even with effective monopoly advantage, nuclear generation is a money pit - French government had to bail out EDF at the start of this year - taking on 65B euro of debt.
- vlovich123 3y ago
  Yes, we've let global warming be so much of a problem that existing nuclear power plant designs are now struggling to get cool enough to operate. But heat engines aren't the only way to convert fissile energy into electricty. We should 100% be researching direct capture so that the ability to generate electricty is not bounded by our ability to cool the reactor. And yet even with all that, most of the electricity generated still remains fossil free. > nuclear generation is a money pit - French government had to bail out EDF at the start of this year - taking on 65B euro of debt. Power generation is a money pit period. California has to constantly bail out PG&E here too because of all the lawsuits about fires & I see this happen frequently all over the world. Pretending like large scale power generation isn't a substantial government problem and the free market can solve it by itself AFAICT is a complete pipe dream. Hell in California there's a massive fight now because California is having to alter the rules to support grid solar installations by making roof top solar less attractive & this is a common problem facing all grid operators. And honestly, 65B euro is a pittance to have such a major reduction in fossil fuels for the year. Think about it this way - would you add a $300B line item to the US budget to bail out nuclear if it meant that only 10% of grid energy would be generated by fossil fuels? Like that seems like a laughably small number. France has 56 nuclear reactors and the US has 96 spread across 60 plants despite being 5x the size. In France, fossil fuels have seen 0 growth in terms of TWh produced since the 80s & in fact a small dip. Nowhere else in the world is that true including Germany which invested in renewables early & by a lot.