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Not that it's really hidden, but this article is biased toward pro nuclear point of few and carefully not mention when we (France) had to import electricity fro

• afiori 1y ago
  Is that a problem with nuclear or with building almost no new ones in the last 25 years?
• dan-robertson 1y ago
  Wouldn’t the outcome be similar to if France had used a lot of Gas generation instead of having those temporarily-shut down reactors?
  • forty 1y ago
    A cheaper alternative could have been solar for example. I don't mind keeping our nuclear capacity (it's certainly better than coal) while we switch to renewable and find good (eco friendly) and cheap storage but I don't really see it as a good target for producing the majority of our energy given the downsides. On this, another funny story that pro nuclear also don't mention: this summer when it was very hot (and electricity demand for AC was high) they had to shut down several reactors because the cooling river would have been over heated too much. People criticize renewable for not being available all the time (which is indeed a problem without storage) but here thankfully solar saved the day by being available when it was needed. Last thing that people tend to forget when they criticize ecologists views on nuclear: part of many ecologist program is to make it so that we use less energy. Heating and cooling poorly insulated housing is wasteful and stupid. Having everyone having their own transportation mean rather than having collective and energy efficient transportation system or having housing too far from commodities such that people can't walk or bike to them is also wasteful. And AI... Bref, let's fix that then maybe we won't need that much nuclear power in the end.
    • afiori 1y ago
      If environmentalists had adopted nuclear as one of the renewables we would be burning a tiny fraction of the gas and coal we burn today.
      • forty 1y ago
        Haha as if anyone cared about what environmentasist think. Gaz or nuclear are choosen for reasons that have nothing to do with environment (like whatever fuel is convenient to get for the given country and is pushed by the local financial interests). If environmentalists were listened a bit, we would be using a fraction of the energy we use, regardless of how it's produced. The only clean energy is the one we don't use / produce.
      • ViewTrick1002 1y ago
        This is revisionist history. We invested massively in nuclear power in recent decades? Vogtle, Virgil C. Summer, Hinkley Point C, Olkiluoto, Flamanville were the west ensuring nuclear investment while at the same time investing in the nascent renewable sector. In total something like a ~$100-200B investment in nuclear technology. The nuclear investment evidently did not pan out. How much more should we have spent? Should we just push through no matter the cost even though we have cheaper alternatives?
      • fulafel 1y ago
        If we had invested all that public funding into renewables instead of nuclear since the 40s we would have had plentiful renewables decades earlier. Nuclear misadventures had a very high opportunity cost.
• spwa4 1y ago
  Why not just replace the CEO of the electricity company with someone who has less political connections, and accept that the primary function of EDF is not accounting, but making electricity work, and pick someone who is either an engineer or just has a little bit more experience with planning instead? France has cheap electricity because of the nuclear buildout, in other words: because engineers saved 50% on the price, not because an MBA saved 0.1% on the price. It's not like it took much planning to avoid that outcome, it just wasn't done. But I'm sure this saved EDF 5 bucks and the costs were carried by everyone else.
  • forty 1y ago
    Yes, that's one of the issue with nuclear, it appears cheap because the cost are/will be carried by someone else. After all why take into account the waste management in many years or the price of dismantling old reactors into account when we have electricity now and we won't have to handle all that ourselves ^^
    • spwa4 1y ago
      The issue in this case was management not properly planning (ie. don't repair all your plants at the same time), and doesn't have anything to do with nuclear versus any other source of power. If you disconnect all your generators at the same time, it will go down, no matter the technology.
      • forty 1y ago
        Some of them were stopped for planned maintainance but some of them were stopped because they noticed some issues (corrosion I think?), so I'm not sure it was really a choice.
        • spwa4 1y ago
          It was a choice delaying maintenance to save a few bucks every time for years, dozens of times by now. Then they got into critical trouble in a number of places at the same time. Wait, sorry. I say "they got into trouble", which is true, they caused the trouble. But not financially, of course, WE got into trouble there. Given that the CEO is an accountant I'd bet my firstborn this was not lost on him. But all of France is paying for their systematically wrong decisions over a long period (which still leaves the power pretty cheap tbh).