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.
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.
The problem with solar is going to be scaling it to meet power demands. Never mind the fact that solar companies are cutting down trees to make way for solar fields.
Nuclear energy and hopefully nuclear fusion will be the future
It’s too late to start new nuclear projects. The quickest Gen 3 reactor build in the US was 14 years. So starting now, you’re looking to finish near 2040. And for those 14 years of construction, you’re pumping huge amounts of CO2. Over its lifetime it will emit less CO2 than many other forms of power, but that’s too slow. We need to be reducing emissions now, not reducing emissions in the 2050s and beyond.
It's literally never too late to start them. It's too late for them, alone, to reverse the damage to the climate change but make no mistake that until we're dead and buried it's not too late to make more. The KW/h per measurement of CO2 that nuclear plants produce is incomprehensible. It surpasses even renewable energy, that causes pollution from the broken panels and other e-waste. Fission has always been the answer and it needs to be pushed through no matter how fucking late it is so they can then be repurposed into fusion based when we make that advancement.
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.
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.
Besides, it's not a technical limitation on nuclear power, it's an ecological measure.
The hole in production was due to a corrosion problem detected in several reactors, which occurred at the same time as maintenance work in other reactors that were behind schedule because of COVID. This would have had no impact if nuclear power had not been left virtually abandoned for 30 years because of the anti-nuclear movement.
It's the classic story: anti-nukes shoot nuclear power in the foot, then claim that nuclear power doesn't work, despite reality.
You're quoting 2022 because that year >30% of the reactrors were taken offline for maintenance. The French government is also shutting down nuclear reactors due to lack of funding & outdated technology.
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.
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.
What do you mean by cheapest energy? 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).
„The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per megawatt hour (MWh), the WNISR said, while onshore wind power comes in at $29–$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189.“
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower-idUSKBN1W909J
Are you pretending that renewable are not subsidised? Renewable are young yet, how will the prices do in 10 years when they will start to be maintained and replaced? What about the energy you need to complement renewable? Is it considered in their price or not? Do you consider the price of renewable when they're cheap because of overproduction?
https://4thgeneration.energy/the-true-costs-of-nuclear-and-renewables/
You're like "did you consider factors a, b, c, d?" and then link to an article that explicitly ignores all of those factors and compares only the amortized cost of the construction of the plants, omitting all other operating costs.
We omit the higher operational costs for the nuclear power plant as they are an economic benefit as well. These costs are recycled back into the economy through wages and taxes.
On top of that, this argument is a classic economic fallacy. It's a little bit like saying "breaking windows is an economic benefit because people will pay glass makers to fix them and so money flows back into the economy." It completely ignores opportunity costs.
I haven't seen any levelized cost of electricity study that makes nuclear competitive with wind and solar power. Now I'm not against nuclear power in principle, and as the renewable share goes up grid operators might be willing to pay a premium to subsidize reliable nuclear base load generators.
However the economic proposition I just cannot see. The long lifetime is actually working against nuclear plants here as potential investors assume much greater risk, combined with enormous up-front construction costs. Who wants to invest billions of dollars to bet on electricity prices 60 years into the future? Lots of things can happen in that time.
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.
The fetishism for nuclear was just imported 1:1 from Reddit
Or you know, it just makes sense and wasn't imported from anywhere? Some of us actually prefer real data and science instead of sensationalism and fear mongering.
It's just so apparent that the pro nuclear brigade is not preferring all real data, just the one it fits. I am not against nuclear per se, I just find it hilarious how at reddit and here as well, people are just SO pro nuclear that nothing else should even be considered. Which made me think if all that is just a very persistent astroturfing campaign
Yup, just like Vegans, environmentalists come up with an answer they like and find some shakie science to back it up.
cheap
It's literally the most expensive power of any of the major options.
"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.
Yesterday the price of electricity was -1.16 c/kwh here despite having all those expensive reactors.
(Unironically) good neighbor indeed. If I was Belgium, I want that sweet nuclear energy.
Just that france has nuclear power plants that are often not well maintained. We had issues with one close to the german boarder as well
Minimizing the NIMBY effect by corner placing the reactor plant.
Sim City strats FTW!
I, too, like to place my garbage dump on the border so my neighbor can enjoy the aroma.
we like to share :)
if anything this is a win for belgium since they get all that sweet local electricity production without paying for the nuclear plant.
Not sure if you are joking, but the customer is paying for the plant. And you can be damn sure you’re paying premium prices for imported energy.
nonetheless they benefit from having local production as that reduces the need for electricity from further away, which reduces the amount of transmission losses.
This effect is significant enough that even just rooftop solar in sweden means you're owed a rebate from the energy company, as you're saving them money.
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
Isn't this being a good neighbour?
I'm betting they are sharing the power with Belgium. So if thats the case they are being a great neighbor.
France is one of the only net electricity exporters who don't use fossil fuels to make that electricity. Unfortunately lack of funding has seriously degraded their nuclear infrastructure and it is now at risk of collapsing, leaving the country and their export partners with severe power shortages.
As always, the issue isn't with nuclear power as a technology, but with mismanagement.
Better than buying oil from Saudis and Russians
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"
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