Well yea, countries keep buying nuclear from France because it’s clean, cheap, and they don’t want to suffer the political backlash from the science lacking environmentalists which come forward when they talk about building nuclear on their own land
German green party
Nuclear plants:🤮
Carbon plants (that actually produce more radiation that nuclear plants): 🥰
They have spurred on the solar/wind movement successfully though, albeit whilst using coal as a crutch. Even so, without the greens, alternative energy might never have been a discussion in a country like Germany which is positively obsessed with gas and cars
Germany co2 emission for energy is 3 times that of France thanks to ecologists!
The problem is replacing nuclear with renewables does nothing to combat climate change. We need to be reducing fossil fuels. At the very least, they should have phased out coal before nuclear. While france was busy reducing its dependence on coal, Germany remains the largest producer of coal in Europe.
You’re certainly right that their handling of nuclear was inefficient for reducing carbon output.
I’m pretty pro nuclear, but I don’t think that really takes away from their success in pushing renewables forward, they were a very early adopter of solar thanks to their very generous subsidies and probably helped fuel its growth at a faster rate, so regardless of their unfortunate paranoia around nuclear, they do deserve some praise. Perfect is the enemy of good, and given the speed the world has responded to climate change, Germanys mixed and painful transition was certainly not the worst.
The nuclear ship had sailed long before the Green Party became part of the current government. While I also think that nuclear power is a much better alternative to coal power plants it’s simply not feasible to revert Germany’s decision when wind and solar is as cheap as it is now.
I’m not familiar with the German politics, but are you saying that Germany got rid of nuclear despite environmentalists?
These decisions are mainly rooted in the peace movement of the 80s (fueled by the nuclear missiles in Germany installed by the US) and the direct experience of Tschernobyl. Its supported by the majority in the public.
The current political decision was made by the more conversative government.
Thanks for the clarification!
Why would you oppose nuclear and renewable? Except if your an ecology fanatic that is.
See also: the “Atomkraft? Nein Danke” sticker that has a cartoon picture of the biggest nuclear reactor in the solar system on it. Irony: it’s good for the blood dearie.
Fusion is way better than fission
Agreed. There is a problem we have about where to put the fission waste but the actual generation process is cleaner than carbon.
cheap
It’s literally the most expensive power of any of the major options.
Yesterday the price of electricity was -1.16 c/kwh here despite having all those expensive reactors.
"In December 2020 IEA and OECD NEA published a joint Projected Costs of Generating Electricity study which looks at a very broad range of electricity generating technologies based on 243 power plants in 24 countries. The primary finding was that “low-carbon generation is overall becoming increasingly cost competitive” and “new nuclear power will remain the dispatchable low-carbon technology with the lowest expected costs in 2025”. The report calculated LCOE with assumed 7% discount rate and adjusted for systemic costs of generation.[79] "
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
The IEA is a bad joke that has been notoriously wrong in its projections for decades. Nobody in the industry takes them seriously.
How so? I am in the industry and everyone I work with take them seriously.
Edit:
Even if you refute predictions made by the IAE, nuclear is still not as expensive as other sources of electricity. For a more specific example, the University of Waterloo released this report analyzing the Ontario grid in 2017.
If you look at Table 1, you will find that nuclear costs between hydro and wind while gas and solar cost more. This is one example but it does illustrate that nuclear is not necessarily the most expensive. Things have improved for renewables since then but I believe they have for nuclear also.
deleted by creator
France has been importing more electricity than exporting in 2022 because their nuclear reactors can’t perform in the heat resulting from climate change. And this is more likely to happen again as each year becomes hotter.
I’m not sure where this fetishism for France‘s nuclear energy is coming from.
You’re quoting 2022 because that year >30% of the reactrors were taken offline for maintenance. Their also shutting down nuclear reactors.
This is not an inherant problem with nuclear, but because the French government hasn’t invested since the 70s.
If funding wasn’t cut (due to environmental activists), the output would be more than needed.
Nuclear is still our best bet for combatting climate change and reducing carbon emissions.
Im quoting 2022 because this was last year. As in, the most recent year.
I don’t disagree that we should have phased out coal instead of nuclear first. But what has happened has happened. I do disagree that we need a „nuclear renessaince“ now, because neither the economics nor the timelines work out at this point in time. Solar and wind is cheaper, faster to build, and more flexible as you can iterate on their designs MUCH more quickly than nuclear plants. That’s the main reason why solar panel efficiency is going through the roof.
Why cannibalize the investments in what obviously works?
You only solve one part of the problem: what do you use when there’s no sun and no wind? Coal? Gas?
As far as I can tell, there is no time with no sun AND no wind: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Energy_statistics_-_latest_trends_from_monthly_data
In fact, there are multiple studies claiming that you can very well supply base load with renewables, for instance this one:
https://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/MarkBaseloadFallacyANZSEE.pdf
One other problem with nuclear is that it has to run at a fixed output level, and can’t be scaled down if there is eg. lots of solar power being generated. In this case, you have to scale down renewables to make sure you can use the nuclear power, which makes it clash with the eventual goal to power everything with renewables.
I don’t know who, in his sane mind, can claim there will never be periods of time with no sun and no wind at the same time. https://notrickszone.com/2022/12/07/plunging-towards-darkness-germany-sees-week-long-wind-sun-lull-as-energy-supply-dwindles/
You need a pilotable generator matching renewables. You can’t do without it. The only question is how much of it you need to plan. Existing approaches are storage: batteries, hydro where it’s possible (you pump the water up a dam to store back energy) and backup generators: coal, gas, and in some future plans, hydrogen.
None of these is a perfect solution (well, nothing is a perfect solution).
- Hydro: that’s the ideal, but obviously, you need a very large body of water, and heavy construction. But it ends up being a very clean energy with long lifetime.
- Batteries: lifetime considerably reduced, requires very large amount of precious minerals (today, car industry assume they’ll get ~100% of lithium extracted, aeronautic assumes they’ll get as much as they need without counting, and then you have the energy sector counting on very large quantities as well ; there won’t be enough we can extract for everyone, and lithium mines are all but clean).
- Backup generators: no need to comment on fossil fuel, but hydrogen has a big issue: it is very inefficient, ~30%. So if you need it 10% of the time, you need to plan 30% more capacity of renewable, and that’s assuming you can pilot it all the way from total shutdown to 100% capacity, probably very optimistic. You will need to have it running at some minimum levels, that’s even more renewables you need to keep it running.
It is not completely true that nuclear needs to run at fixed level. Depending on their design, some plants are pilotable and some are not. But I don’t think (I’ll be happily corrected if needed) any had the flexibility you need to be used with renewable (quick large variations).
So the ideal mix is, IMHO, a baseline provided by nuclear, and a mix of renewable and complements to produce the difference.
Bonus: there is a “method” promoted by some (ignorant) politics they call “proliferation” (“foisonnement”, not sure I’m translating that the best). This is utter BS…
The idea is there will always be sun or wind somewhere in a super-grid spreading through Europe. If you think about it for 1 minute, that means that small part of Europe where there is wind will power, for a more or less short time, a large portion of the whole Europe?? Not only is that totally insane from the capacity point of view, but it also completely neglects the grid’s stability and electricity transportation issue. It is very difficult to transport electricity over very large distances without disturbing the grid. Ask Germany, they spend massively on infrastructures right now without counting on proliferation. That would raise the requirements further…
Maybe it comes from France exporting the cheapest energy in Europe in the last 20 years. But yeah, 2022 means nuclear energy is worthless I guess.
How do you even define that? Nuclear is more expensive than renewables, if you factor in construction and maintenance cost. It only works because it has been massively subdisidized.
Or do you have some source that this energy is „cheaper“? Please be aware that France caps their electricity prices internally and subsidizes them with taxes (which is fine, but makes the prices incomparable to other countries).
Ok, so obviously, you’re not well aware of how the new European open market works, and why France ended up paying part of consumer’s bills.
France uses to have a state-owned company, EDF, producing and distributing electricity in France. EDF had a monopole. France had the cheapest electricity of Europe, and EDF was profitable. Sink that in, when you say nuclear is expensive:
EDF was delivering the cheapest electricity of Europe and was profitable.
A decision from the European Union was taken to force all members to switch to an open market. French government at the time was conservative, so they happily went along with it. Everyone “knows” that private sector always does better than whatever has “public” or “state” in its description.
But how would you introduce competition when virtually no one else produces any electricity? How to kickstart it? That’s where bright people went very very creative.
Production and distribution of electricity was split as separate activities. EDF spinned off the distribution part of its work. In parallel, a quota of nuclear production was allocated to new companies, “electricity suppliers”, so that they got something to sell at an affordable price.
That’s where it starts to be interesting: to guarantee a margin to electricity suppliers, so that they would make enough money to invest in production, the daily price of electricity on the market is set to the marginal cost of the most expensive power plant that’s turned on. Do you follow me? If today, 99% of electricity is coming from a nuclear power plant, but you need to start a coal power plant to provide the last 1%, all 100% of the electricity that day is billed at the cost of the coal power plant! I am not kidding, I am not making that shit up!
Why prices exploded since last year? Well, you’ve heard about gas prices, right? Every day a gas power plan is turned on with gas prices through the roof, 100% of the electricity that day is billed at the cost of the gas power plant. That’s why France started subsidizing the consumers bills, because most of them could not afford a x6, 7, 10 on their electricity bills.
But at least, we do have competition now, don’t we? Well… not on the production side…
No condition on investment was given to the electricity supplier. Read that again. Guess what happened. Electricity suppliers were buying most of their electricity at a cheap regulated cost from EDF and selling it with a big profit to consumers, all while producing nothing themselves. Why would they?? Money is trickling down to them for free!
Even better: as they were more competitive than EDF, thanks to having 0 maintenance and 0 investment to make, and cheap electricity to resell, their customers base grew. Then they found out that they were not getting enough cheap electricity, and they faced a dilemma: buy a larger share of electricity from other real producers, that would have increased their cost, or cap their customers base (or of course, invest in production, but who wants to do that, right?).
They did neither of these. They pleaded to the current government to get MORE cheap electricity from EDF. And the government did that: forced EDF to allocate more of its cheap nuclear electricity to them, increasing the quota. Needless to say that if EDF needed more electricity for their own customers, they were answered that they could buy the more expensive electricity from outside, or invest in more capacity. Makes sense, right? The exact opposite of what the system was supposed to do.
Now, the very best part: when gas price exploded, even the small fraction of electricity bought by the electricity suppliers impacted their cost. It was unacceptable to them. So they raised their rate to be above EDF, or even outright cancelled contracts with their customers, so that customers would go back to EDF (EDF cannot refuse contracts, and is not allowed to adjust its own rates). But… electricity suppliers do not have to give up on their quota from EDF… so…
EDF had to buy back the electricity EDF produces, to companies producing nothing, at the rate of the market, of course, not the rate at which EDF is forced to sell that electricity to these companies. So it’s even better now. EDF sells them electricity (which is a virtual sale, electricity still goes from EDF plants to households like it did before). These companies sell it back to EDF with a big margin. Dream business, isn’t it?
So France does not subsidize bills because nuclear is too expensive.
France literally subsidizes a scam scheme, in which most of the money going to parasitic companies producing nothing.
Any sources on any of that? That’s a lot of „you just know that“ information, and I do consider myself well informed. I am not from France though.
Anyway:
-
neither of those points addresses the costs of energy production I quoted above. Those are, to the best of my knowledge, approximately correct. It may very well have been that nuclear was competitive in the past, it isn’t anymore.
-
getting scammed by some middle man seems to be a fate that all modern democracies share, though who the middle man is varies country by country :-)
-
I consider the marginal cost thing to be one of the best acts from the EU. Maybe not in France, but overall it rewards the most efficient energy producer massively, which currently is solar. Those companies can use the excess money to reinvest.
Any sources on any of that? That’s a lot of „you just know that“ information, and I do consider myself well informed. I am not from France though.
Hmm… sources, yes. In something that’s not in French is a tad more difficult, but I found these:
https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/france-mandates-edf-sell-100-twh-power-under-arenh-scheme-2023.html https://www.reuters.com/article/france-electricity-regulator-idUSL8N1PR6H5
I found that one about EDF regaining customers, losing money in 2022. It includes an addendum: the quota it has to sell was set back to 100TWh. But sorry, you’ll have to use a translation service… https://www.leprogres.fr/economie/2022/10/27/pourquoi-edf-gagne-des-abonnes-mais-perd-des-milliards
neither of those points addresses the costs of energy production I quoted above. Those are, to the best of my knowledge, approximately correct. It may very well have been that nuclear was competitive in the past, it isn’t anymore.
I am all but convinced any of this will last. Pressure on solar panel has increased, it is deeply connected to the semiconductor’s industry. In the coming decades, it will raise questions on water usage, minerals, etc.
Wind farms occupy very large surfaces, and they already compete with other usage of the land. Dismantling them is problematic too: a large body of concrete is left behind in the ground.
getting scammed by some middle man seems to be a fate that all modern democracies share, though who the middle man is varies country by country :-)
Unfortunately, can’t but agree, though it’s infuriating every time.
I consider the marginal cost thing to be one of the best acts from the EU. Maybe not in France, but overall it rewards the most efficient energy producer massively, which currently is solar. Those companies can use the excess money to reinvest.
They don’t reinvest (in France, I mean). They just cash the money. Keeping EDF as a state-owned monopoly has been working great for France for decades. The same model works great in Québec. There was no need to change it. EDF being state-owned, you can require it to invest in whatever you want: give it target on renewables, etc. What we have here instead is parasitic companies. Crushing majority of the production investment still comes from EDF, and their investment capacity is fading as their finances are gutted in the name of an “open market” ideology.
-
Where did you get this info from? Not saying you’re wrong, I wanna read up more
The fetishism for nuclear was just imported 1:1 from Reddit
Lemmy was pro nuclear long before the Reddit migration
if anything this is a win for belgium since they get all that sweet local electricity production without paying for the nuclear plant.
And in case they accidentally pull a Fukushima, they can just secede that part of the country and say “it’s YOUR problem now, suckers”
Plot twist: they create another Bir Tawil
Classic french
Belgium actually wanted this plant built
In their defense there only so many big rivers, round there, and most do function as border
Also, assuming this is the same one that gets posted constantly, it was a joint project between the two countries
Better than buying oil from Saudis and Russians
deleted by creator
How many French nuclear plants have melted down?
They had a level 4
https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accident_nucléaire#Accidents_-_Niveau_4
Interestingly I don’t seem to see a level 4 on the English page for France:
It’s possible it’s about the explosion at a 30 years decommissioned plant. That’s the only “France” search result besides a French owned mine.
In 1969!
And 1980 iirc
For context, wind generally blows eastward across Europe
Rick: “Morty I’m gonna need you to put these seeds all the way up your ass”
