5 ms·

> So you want to create a completely new industry. From the ground. With all existing experts having retired. This is an article about Europe. Do you really be

> So you want to create a completely new industry. From the ground. With all existing experts having retired. This is an article about Europe. Do you really believe France alone is operating 57 nuclear reactors, and producing 70% of its energy via fission, without the industry, the knowledge, and with no experts left? Is chatgpt running everything?

DarkNova6 10mo ago
If you are so smug about this, answer me: 1: How man reactors were built in the 1970s and are nearing end-of-life? 2: How many reactors has Europe built since 2005? 3: What's the overrun time of reactors in Europe, compared to China? The only reasonable conclusion to draw is that the industry has existed. It was world class, but the institutional knowledge to bring it back to this quality does not exist and would need to be rebuilt for the new generation of reactors. And we are not even talking Generation 4 here.
- nine_k 10mo ago
  France in particular connected a new nuclear power station to the grid as late as 2024 [1]. But the previous reactor was put online in 1999 or so. Three more were built in EU since 2000: one in Finland (Swedish/Finnish design) and two in Slovakia (Soviet/Russian design). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
  - laurencerowe 10mo ago
    The Finnish reactor is the same French EPR design used at Flamanville and Hinkley Point C. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)
- sailingparrot 10mo ago
  Yes, very few new NPP have been built in Europe recently. Quite a few have been built by Europe however. The french company Framatome alone, with 18k employees, is actively building 2 EPR reactors in the UK (+ preliminary studies for 8 more), one reactor has been finished last year in France and recently multiple were built or being built in China, India, Russia (although I guess that might be canceled). Its also already operating the 57 french reactors as well as operating reactors in South Africa, China, Korea, Belgium, Finland. Sure, the industry will need to grow, but claiming it basically has to start from 0 is ludicrous.
- sigmar 10mo ago
  These questions are inane. No, "all existing experts" did not retire. not making new plants was a decision made by politicians. Europe has never stopped working on creating new and better nuclear reactor designs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
  - hvb2 10mo ago
    Iter is a research project that Europe is a part of, along with the rest of the world. That has nothing to do with building power plants, at least not anytime soon. We haven't built a reactor in a long time. So those EPRs being built are all way behind schedule and thus costing substantially more. You can design whatever you want. Building one is a whole different story. That's not an opinion that's just what happened at the first 2 EPRs and Hinckley point isn't going great either
    - sigmar 10mo ago
      >We haven't built a reactor in a long time. France finished Flamanville 3 in 2024. Finland finished Olkiluoto 3 in 2022. Are those not recent enough? both were EPR designs
      - hvb2 10mo ago
        Have you looked when they started construction and what their projected end date was? Yes there are new ones but both of those are perfect examples of the lack of knowledge [1]. I'll quote: > Many of the organisations chosen to work on the different parts of the plant did not have any experience in nuclear, and little understanding of the safety requirements. We'll get there. But yes, we're rebuilding a lot of lost knowledge and paying for the teething issues. 1: https://www.carbonbrief.org/new-nuclear-finlands-cautionary-tale-for-the-uk/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/new-nuclear-finlands-cautionary-...
      - t_tsonev 10mo ago
        Those are not really great construction examples, are they? Both projects took 15+ years to complete with huge cost overruns. And for those two "successful" projects, you can find 2 or 3 that failed.
- pyrale 10mo ago
  > 1: How man reactors were built in the 1970s and are nearing end-of-life? > The only reasonable conclusion to draw is that the industry has existed. It was world class, but the institutional knowledge to bring it back to this quality does not exist and would need to be rebuilt for the new generation of reactors. And we are not even talking Generation 4 here. The only reasonable conclusion from your logic is that it would have felt like an even worse idea to build nuclear reactors in the 1970's. Yet, using today's hindsight, it was a great idea. Airbus would have been a terrible idea: no one had built commercial airliners before, and only the US had the know-how. Today, we know otherwise. etc.
  - ViewTrick1002 10mo ago
    > The only reasonable conclusion from your logic is that it would have felt like an even worse idea to build nuclear reactors in the 1970's. Yet, using today's hindsight, it was a great idea. If the competition was renewables and storage rather than plants running on imported oil during the oil crisis it would have been. 75% of all new capacity in TWh (I.e. adjusting for capacity factor.) globally are renewables and storage. There’s no need to swim against the river.
    - mpweiher 10mo ago
      Intermittent renewables have capacity factors in the 10-20% range. So divide by 5. 34 nations have committed to tripling nuclear capacity, including the US, China, France, the UK and many others. And they are acting on this as well. The tide is nuclear, no need to swim against it. And no, countries also doing renewables in no way negates this.
      - ViewTrick1002 10mo ago
        It is quite telling that you are spamming this entire submission with extremely strong opinions about how amazing nuclear power is, ignoring any contrary facts. Taking any mention of renewables close to a personal insult. Then turning around and not understanding that ”TWh” is already adjusted for capacity factor. In my eyes it is hard to take you seriously when you don’t comprehend even basic physical properties of our grid and energy systems. Let alone economics, timelines, opportunity cost etc.
- tokai 10mo ago
  >If you are so smug about this, answer me Is this satire?
- godelski 10mo ago
  > If you are so smug about this, answer me: Please adhere to the HN guidelines and refrain from this kind of language. We can discuss this more civilly. But I'll answer what I can, assuming your are genuine. > 1: How man reactors were built in the 1970s and are nearing end-of-life? 10 reactors, 3 plants. (57 are currently operational) I think this is a more American-centric comment than you realized... France had a bigger rollout in the 80's and a few from the 90's so there's another decade (*making this time key!*) before a slow decline. Also remember that France is a lot smaller than America so needs less power. Not to mention, France exports a lot of electricity[0]. I want you to look pretty closely at that graph again. It says they exported 81.8TW this year. What's France's nuclear capacity? 380TW[1]. France exports about 15% of its total energy, more than all its hydro (it's next biggest source). You may be interested to see where that electricity goes....[2] France can lose those reactors and be fine, Europe is a different story... > 2: How many reactors has Europe built since 2005? 4, In Russia. But France built 2 reactors in 2002. > 3: What's the overrun time of reactors in Europe, compared to China? I don't have an answer to this but > the institutional knowledge to bring it back to this quality does not exist I can tell you that both France and the US are the biggest supporters of international aid in China's rollout. So the institutional knowledge exists and still progressing, albeit slower than before. Besides, I'm not sure this fear even makes sense. What, China could "start from scratch" but "France" (or anywhere else) couldn't? What would make China so unique that such things couldn't be replicated elsewhere? This is a fallacy in logic making the assumption that once skills atrophy that they can never be restored or restore more slowly. If anything we tend to see skills restore far quicker from atrophy than from scratch! So why paint a picture of "give up"? Isn't that just making a self-fulfilling prophecy? [0] https://analysesetdonnees.rte-france.com/en/exchanges/imports-exports https://analysesetdonnees.rte-france.com/en/exchanges/import... [1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil... [2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/72h/hourly https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/72h/hourly
  - mikestorrent 10mo ago
    End of the day, it's just a big boiler; we invented it from scratch once, and it should be significantly easier to do it over again even if we do lose some knowledge. That said, the time to accelerate the industry really is now, before the situation gets any worse.
- ZeroGravitas 10mo ago
  Another possible conclusion is that it's only possible to build them in societies where they can be secretly subsidized and the EU has passed out of this phase. There's an awkward middle phase where they lie about how long and how much they will cost because the transparency will kill them before they start if real figures are used. But you only get a few chances to pull that trick.
locallost 10mo ago
If you had followed the crisis from 2022 when a quarter of the reactors were out of service, you wouldn't ask that question. They had to fly in welders from the US because they were not able to fix the problem... Also, every new nuclear project done by the French in this century has been a complete disaster. Flamanville, Olkiluoto and now Hinkley Point C.
nosianu 10mo ago
I don't know how reliant France is, but they do seem to rely quite a bit on Rosatom (https://www.lemonde.fr/en/energies/article/2023/03/12/french-nuclear-industry-maintains-links-with-russian-giant-rosatom_6019019_98.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/energies/article/2023/03/12/french...). They also rely on imports of uranium - e.g. from Niger, which recently had quite the fallout with France. It does not look to me at even a casual glance that French nuclear tech could fully work on its own. Similar for the UK. It is not just about the experts, the supply chain too. Although, of course how much that matters in comparison is the question, since pretty much everything nowadays depends on some faraway place.
- dadoum 10mo ago
  Uranium is very power dense. If there is a supply chain disruption, it is problematic but France keeps around at least 5 years worth of nuclear production, which gives it some time to react and adapt. Also, Uranium is not very rare nor expensive, so reliance on one producer is not that worrying I think. Enrichment facilities are rarer, but there is also one in France, so I can see French nuclear tech work on its own.
  - mikestorrent 10mo ago
    Canada is a significant producer of uranium and we have a fine relationship with the French, I don't think this is a serious concern at all
- StopDisinfo910 10mo ago
  France isn't reliant on Rosatom at all for Uranium. Russia is one possible part of the supply chain mostly used for retreatment. Most of the French uranium is produced by Orano which is quite close to being a public company (95% owned by France). It comes from Canada, Kazakhstan and Niger. Greenpeace is not a reliable source when it comes to anything having to do with the nuclear industry by the way.
  - nosianu 10mo ago
    Unfortunately, German AND Paywall, but: https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2025-12/atomkraft-frankreich-abhaengigkeit-russland-atomindustrie/komplettansicht https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2025-12/atomkraft-frankreich-... > France's dangerous nuclear friendship with Russia > France promises to support Ukraine. But its nuclear energy supply is closely linked to Russia. Former energy bosses earn a lot of money with Rosatom.

DarkNova6 10mo ago

If you are so smug about this, answer me: 1: How man reactors were built in the 1970s and are nearing end-of-life? 2: How many reactors has Europe built since 2005? 3: What's the overrun time of reactors in Europe, compared to China? The only reasonable conclusion to draw is that the industry has existed. It was world class, but the institutional knowledge to bring it back to this quality does not exist and would need to be rebuilt for the new generation of reactors. And we are not even talking Generation 4 here.

nine_k 10mo ago
France in particular connected a new nuclear power station to the grid as late as 2024 [1]. But the previous reactor was put online in 1999 or so. Three more were built in EU since 2000: one in Finland (Swedish/Finnish design) and two in Slovakia (Soviet/Russian design). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
- laurencerowe 10mo ago
  The Finnish reactor is the same French EPR design used at Flamanville and Hinkley Point C. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)
sailingparrot 10mo ago
Yes, very few new NPP have been built in Europe recently. Quite a few have been built by Europe however. The french company Framatome alone, with 18k employees, is actively building 2 EPR reactors in the UK (+ preliminary studies for 8 more), one reactor has been finished last year in France and recently multiple were built or being built in China, India, Russia (although I guess that might be canceled). Its also already operating the 57 french reactors as well as operating reactors in South Africa, China, Korea, Belgium, Finland. Sure, the industry will need to grow, but claiming it basically has to start from 0 is ludicrous.
sigmar 10mo ago
These questions are inane. No, "all existing experts" did not retire. not making new plants was a decision made by politicians. Europe has never stopped working on creating new and better nuclear reactor designs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
- hvb2 10mo ago
  Iter is a research project that Europe is a part of, along with the rest of the world. That has nothing to do with building power plants, at least not anytime soon. We haven't built a reactor in a long time. So those EPRs being built are all way behind schedule and thus costing substantially more. You can design whatever you want. Building one is a whole different story. That's not an opinion that's just what happened at the first 2 EPRs and Hinckley point isn't going great either
  - sigmar 10mo ago
    >We haven't built a reactor in a long time. France finished Flamanville 3 in 2024. Finland finished Olkiluoto 3 in 2022. Are those not recent enough? both were EPR designs
    - hvb2 10mo ago
      Have you looked when they started construction and what their projected end date was? Yes there are new ones but both of those are perfect examples of the lack of knowledge [1]. I'll quote: > Many of the organisations chosen to work on the different parts of the plant did not have any experience in nuclear, and little understanding of the safety requirements. We'll get there. But yes, we're rebuilding a lot of lost knowledge and paying for the teething issues. 1: https://www.carbonbrief.org/new-nuclear-finlands-cautionary-tale-for-the-uk/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/new-nuclear-finlands-cautionary-...
    - t_tsonev 10mo ago
      Those are not really great construction examples, are they? Both projects took 15+ years to complete with huge cost overruns. And for those two "successful" projects, you can find 2 or 3 that failed.
pyrale 10mo ago
> 1: How man reactors were built in the 1970s and are nearing end-of-life? > The only reasonable conclusion to draw is that the industry has existed. It was world class, but the institutional knowledge to bring it back to this quality does not exist and would need to be rebuilt for the new generation of reactors. And we are not even talking Generation 4 here. The only reasonable conclusion from your logic is that it would have felt like an even worse idea to build nuclear reactors in the 1970's. Yet, using today's hindsight, it was a great idea. Airbus would have been a terrible idea: no one had built commercial airliners before, and only the US had the know-how. Today, we know otherwise. etc.
- ViewTrick1002 10mo ago
  > The only reasonable conclusion from your logic is that it would have felt like an even worse idea to build nuclear reactors in the 1970's. Yet, using today's hindsight, it was a great idea. If the competition was renewables and storage rather than plants running on imported oil during the oil crisis it would have been. 75% of all new capacity in TWh (I.e. adjusting for capacity factor.) globally are renewables and storage. There’s no need to swim against the river.
  - mpweiher 10mo ago
    Intermittent renewables have capacity factors in the 10-20% range. So divide by 5. 34 nations have committed to tripling nuclear capacity, including the US, China, France, the UK and many others. And they are acting on this as well. The tide is nuclear, no need to swim against it. And no, countries also doing renewables in no way negates this.
    - ViewTrick1002 10mo ago
      It is quite telling that you are spamming this entire submission with extremely strong opinions about how amazing nuclear power is, ignoring any contrary facts. Taking any mention of renewables close to a personal insult. Then turning around and not understanding that ”TWh” is already adjusted for capacity factor. In my eyes it is hard to take you seriously when you don’t comprehend even basic physical properties of our grid and energy systems. Let alone economics, timelines, opportunity cost etc.
tokai 10mo ago
>If you are so smug about this, answer me Is this satire?
godelski 10mo ago
> If you are so smug about this, answer me: Please adhere to the HN guidelines and refrain from this kind of language. We can discuss this more civilly. But I'll answer what I can, assuming your are genuine. > 1: How man reactors were built in the 1970s and are nearing end-of-life? 10 reactors, 3 plants. (57 are currently operational) I think this is a more American-centric comment than you realized... France had a bigger rollout in the 80's and a few from the 90's so there's another decade (*making this time key!*) before a slow decline. Also remember that France is a lot smaller than America so needs less power. Not to mention, France exports a lot of electricity[0]. I want you to look pretty closely at that graph again. It says they exported 81.8TW this year. What's France's nuclear capacity? 380TW[1]. France exports about 15% of its total energy, more than all its hydro (it's next biggest source). You may be interested to see where that electricity goes....[2] France can lose those reactors and be fine, Europe is a different story... > 2: How many reactors has Europe built since 2005? 4, In Russia. But France built 2 reactors in 2002. > 3: What's the overrun time of reactors in Europe, compared to China? I don't have an answer to this but > the institutional knowledge to bring it back to this quality does not exist I can tell you that both France and the US are the biggest supporters of international aid in China's rollout. So the institutional knowledge exists and still progressing, albeit slower than before. Besides, I'm not sure this fear even makes sense. What, China could "start from scratch" but "France" (or anywhere else) couldn't? What would make China so unique that such things couldn't be replicated elsewhere? This is a fallacy in logic making the assumption that once skills atrophy that they can never be restored or restore more slowly. If anything we tend to see skills restore far quicker from atrophy than from scratch! So why paint a picture of "give up"? Isn't that just making a self-fulfilling prophecy? [0] https://analysesetdonnees.rte-france.com/en/exchanges/imports-exports https://analysesetdonnees.rte-france.com/en/exchanges/import... [1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil... [2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/72h/hourly https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/FR/72h/hourly
- mikestorrent 10mo ago
  End of the day, it's just a big boiler; we invented it from scratch once, and it should be significantly easier to do it over again even if we do lose some knowledge. That said, the time to accelerate the industry really is now, before the situation gets any worse.
ZeroGravitas 10mo ago
Another possible conclusion is that it's only possible to build them in societies where they can be secretly subsidized and the EU has passed out of this phase. There's an awkward middle phase where they lie about how long and how much they will cost because the transparency will kill them before they start if real figures are used. But you only get a few chances to pull that trick.

locallost 10mo ago

If you had followed the crisis from 2022 when a quarter of the reactors were out of service, you wouldn't ask that question. They had to fly in welders from the US because they were not able to fix the problem... Also, every new nuclear project done by the French in this century has been a complete disaster. Flamanville, Olkiluoto and now Hinkley Point C.

nosianu 10mo ago

I don't know how reliant France is, but they do seem to rely quite a bit on Rosatom (https://www.lemonde.fr/en/energies/article/2023/03/12/french-nuclear-industry-maintains-links-with-russian-giant-rosatom_6019019_98.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/energies/article/2023/03/12/french...). They also rely on imports of uranium - e.g. from Niger, which recently had quite the fallout with France. It does not look to me at even a casual glance that French nuclear tech could fully work on its own. Similar for the UK. It is not just about the experts, the supply chain too. Although, of course how much that matters in comparison is the question, since pretty much everything nowadays depends on some faraway place.

dadoum 10mo ago
Uranium is very power dense. If there is a supply chain disruption, it is problematic but France keeps around at least 5 years worth of nuclear production, which gives it some time to react and adapt. Also, Uranium is not very rare nor expensive, so reliance on one producer is not that worrying I think. Enrichment facilities are rarer, but there is also one in France, so I can see French nuclear tech work on its own.
- mikestorrent 10mo ago
  Canada is a significant producer of uranium and we have a fine relationship with the French, I don't think this is a serious concern at all
StopDisinfo910 10mo ago
France isn't reliant on Rosatom at all for Uranium. Russia is one possible part of the supply chain mostly used for retreatment. Most of the French uranium is produced by Orano which is quite close to being a public company (95% owned by France). It comes from Canada, Kazakhstan and Niger. Greenpeace is not a reliable source when it comes to anything having to do with the nuclear industry by the way.
- nosianu 10mo ago
  Unfortunately, German AND Paywall, but: https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2025-12/atomkraft-frankreich-abhaengigkeit-russland-atomindustrie/komplettansicht https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2025-12/atomkraft-frankreich-... > France's dangerous nuclear friendship with Russia > France promises to support Ukraine. But its nuclear energy supply is closely linked to Russia. Former energy bosses earn a lot of money with Rosatom.