Europe has shot off many feet. Look at how they have demonised nuclear power in some areas. Had they not done this, they would not now be at Russia's mercy(Varies across member states).
Similar to gene changed food - unwise denialism.
Currently Germany is exporting lots and lots of energy to France because the French nuclear plants are in large part not working (repairs, corrosion damage, lack of water for cooling). Given that nuclear is demonstrably not working well for France what makes you so certain things would work better in other countries?
Nuclear is working in France. People taking a very current issue and blowing it out of proportion.
Nuclear has provide CO2 free clean energy to people in France for 40 years. While Germany blew incredibly dirty stuff into the air in addition to CO2. And France has more often been exporting clean nuclear power rather then exporting coal power like Germany.
And CO2 saved in 1980 is far more important then CO2 saved now. The world should be thankful for French nuclear. And French citizens should be thankful that the worst pollution from coal is coal ash that wind is bringing over from Germany.
Now lets get to the current issues. The issues with French nuclear is the same reason for many issues with nuclear in other places. Nuclear has been under political attack, and laws past in the last couple years are responsible for some of the issues they have now. The deferred maintenance because the trend at the time was that these reactors are legacy, and renewables would take over. They wanted to reduce the energy share of nuclear for the same dumb reasons.
The water issue is actually a problem, but temporary one. Also, France had amazing next generation reactors, like Superphoenix, that were killed by the Left and Greens in the past. Had they spend the last 20 years build those reactors rather then trying to kill nuclear and build the same old PWRs, they would be in a amazing position now.
And nuclear is working just fine in a number of European countries. In fact, most countries with very clean grids have a large nuclear component.
I don't find the argument "richer countries can emit more CO2" to be helpful. The richer the country the more money is available to act responsible.
Even in your GDP adjusted data France is 37% lower than Germany (0.14/0.09). In a global comparison both countries are doing fine, but not good enough: https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/ .
The point isnt that rich countries can emit more CO2, the point is that we want poor countries to become much richer, but not emit immense amounts of CO2.
Some people claim this isn't possible. For them only carbon pollution is a true measure of societal wealth. They really like to emphasise that if poor people emitted CO2 like America, then the planet would die, and if America emitted less CO2 then they'd be as poor as some starving refugee in Somalia, hinting darkly that maybe we should kill those poor people, or at least keep them poor, to maintain our standard of living.
But the stats show you can be richer and emit less GHG, often those two things help each other.
Some people claim it's all just trickery because the rich countries buy stuff made in the developing countries, but there's stats that show this is also declining similarly. Various nations are proving that it is possible and the whole world has signed up to work together on it, so it might just be okay.
Germany and France are both doing okay, and the retirement of nuclear in Germany, which gets talked about so much, is not visible at all. When they had more nuclear, they had more CO2 per GDP.
Note nuclear is low carbon power, I'm not saying that it's not, but there's a million other lefty-green things that Germany (and France and even the UK and US) are doing to solve the problem and we should acknowledge that reality rather than say "if you don't use nuclear you don't even believe there's a problem".
And I am totally for these "million other lefty-green things". Solar and wind is comparatively cheap to install and comparatively low effect on nature. The resulting energy is also cheap (if used locally). We have many (poor) villages here in Germany owning their own wind turbines and benefiting from selling this energy, greatly improving the financial situation for the local population. It's like farming but with wind turbines.
In the long run Germany will be better of. We just have to get through this painful transition.
France sadly stopped improving and stopped building at the pace they did before and had to fall back on gas.
The Left in France has been fighting nuclear for 30 years and made progress in that when nuclear was really down after 2011.
Germany on the other hand could have easily overtaken France had they mass produced nuclear. Germany as an engineering nation would have been good at this. And unlike with solar, they would be huge in the global world market as well.
Nuclear is "not working well" for us because ideologues have been systematically undermining our nuclear industry for decades now, and it'll take a few more decades to heal the damage done by said ideologues, with the hope no one ever listen to their propaganda ever again.
Starve the beast, kick it when it's down, and blame it for not saving the day.
According to publicly-available info, nuclear was doing quite well for France (80% of load) in 2021. Whatever problems they might be having at this very moment, what makes you think this is intrinsic to nuclear power or EDF in particular?
Also, the electricity that the germans are exporting very likely might come from coal plants burning filthy north rhine lignite. Great way to own the nuke ppl.
Also, the electricity that the germans are exporting very likely might come from coal plants burning filthy north rhine lignite. Great way to own the nuke ppl.
Don't forget they spin up coal plants for peak demand and then just cut them out of the grid to avoid counting their still-running emissions.
> Given that nuclear is demonstrably not working well for France what makes you so certain things would work better in other countries?
French reactors are largely offline for overdue maintenance [1]. This bunched up because scheduled maintenance was delayed. A larger European fleet of reactors would be more resilient.
Yeah. Do not delay maintenance because then it bites you in the rear. Also, it’s still better to do it in the summer: next winter will be terrible enough and we’ll need every generator we can get.
First, you are cherry picking: you should look at the yearly load factor, not a random day and time of the year when it supports your argument. And you will find that nuclear has the highest load factor of all, 80-90%, while solar/PV will never be above 30-40% (because of physics, you can not change that).
Second, and since I just demonstrated that on a yearly timeframe nuclear works very well, the right question to ask is: why are there so many nuclear plants offline right now? The answer is quite simple, and is due to one of the advantage of nuclear: you can choose when to switch it on or off, for ex to perform maintenance. So, when is the best time to perform maintenance? Answer: just before the peak load, which happens in winter (Mondays around 8 AM in January, to be more precise), so you switch nuclear off in autumn, ie now. It's actually a good news that the load factor of nuclear is so low right now, it means that nuclear will be ready and will work well in a couple of months when we will need it the most.
> Currently Germany is exporting lots and lots of energy
Again, cherry picking, show me the yearly stat. But actually the only comment I will make here is about the criteria you are using: is exporting a lot of energy a good thing? I would say it depends. High variability is bad, it makes the grid unstable. I would rather have low and steady import/export rather than big swings. Exercise for the reader: what allows you to have steady production of electricity (nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, ...)?
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We need more nuclear. Simply because that's the only low carbon, controllable option that currently exists (hydro needs mountains, fossils are high carbon, solar/wind are intermittent)
Even in France there has been strong political opposition to support nuclear plants, their renovations and new development, so the situation in France is not indicative of a well run program. In particular no new development in a while meant that a lot of local expertise has gone away
Wow this is depressing. France had the worlds greatest fleet of standardized nuclear reactors. They mastered Nuclear Power... I'm assuming energy companies spent vast amounts of money to propagandize the French public to only support wind and solar (like in the US) but maybe that's not the case?
The Germans were unwise many years ago = now they pay the Russian piper - as we are seeing.
The anti nuclear people were probably funded by Russia?? as they specialise at strategic plans of this type under Putin's helm = anything to weaken us = good.
Wind/solar makes steady gains and will get even better as the use of newer junction geometries get better and approach the S-Q barriers.
Reading about the Superphoenix reactor makes me furious. They could have 10 of those babies running by now. But no, was killed by the Left and then not revived. And what are they planning to build now, more PWRs. Fucking incredibly how the world can just not move on to next generation nuclear.
It's fun to imagine an alternate history where the left were more pro-nuclear power.
Like if they'd just built the best power stations rather than the ones that had military crossover.
I mean, if the fossil fuel powered right wing can demonise Elon Musk and Tesla as subsidy junkies, and wind turbines can be accused of giving you ear cancer, can you just imagine what they'd say about nuclear?
What, you think we should building nuclear power like the commies and the French and worse the Democrats? Are you one of those vegetarians? We've got cheap fracked American gas and clean coal, why would we waste taxes on nuclear? Climate change? But CO2 is good, it's plant food for God sake. If anything we want it warmer, so we can get more gas in the artic circle, drill baby drill. Nuclear doesn't have a high enough ERoEI to sustain civilization, you're trying to intentionally destroy capitalism.
> It's fun to imagine an alternate history where the left were more pro-nuclear power.
The thing is, nuclear is not incompatible with “the left”. After all, nuclear programmes make sense only with a lot of public investment and control, and work best in nationalised producers, in which case it provides cheap electricity for the people and revenues for the state. Both the socialists and the communists are in general pro-nuclear.
It’s horse trading to keep the greens in the “gauche plurielle” coalition that closed Superphénix. It’s the same kind of compromises that lead to the arbitrary policy that “we should not have more than 50% of nuclear electricity” and the closing of Fessenheim. Even now, the leftist alliance NUPES cannot really discuss this because the demagogues and greens are against but the other half is pro.
Nuclear inherently should be something the left love.
However the problem is that nuclear power is strongly associated with the cold war and nuclear weapons. It was seen as a way to subsidize nuclear weapons. That never was really true at all.
Also the early environmental movement had a strong 'naturalist' wing (and still does) and nuclear is seen as 'unnatural'. This strongly influenced leftists politics in general.
I would love to learn more about Superphenix and its design, history and the politcs around it but I wasn't able to find much. My French despite 12 years of getting forced to learn it, still sucks.
From a Swiss perspective, its crazy to think a Swiss green politician went and shot the reactor with an RPG.
> I would love to learn more about Superphenix and its design, history and the politcs around it but I wasn't able to find much
Most of my knowledge comes from private discussions with people involved with the project or with the government at the time or from French sources, unfortunately. The best I can find is the English Wikipedia page, which seems decently accurate although short on technical details (a lot of them remain more or less industrial secrets to this day: there hasn’t been a bigger breeder reactor before or since).
In the long run, sodium-cooled reactors are a dead end because of the risks associated with a sodium loop (which is terrifying). But a fast reactor would have been invaluable as a test environment for advanced materials and composites, and improved fuels.
> From a Swiss perspective, its crazy to think a Swiss green politician went and shot the reactor with an RPG.
Indeed. So much for neutrality! To be fair, that should seem crazy to anybody from any country.
Yeah, sodium is an somewhat unfortunate branch of the technology. It was sort of picked by many nations as a next set, put it had a number of drawbacks. Still, I would have preferred more of those to more PWRs.
I would like to know how cooling intensive it was compare to PWR. And what operating temperature.
Also, some of the Sodium reactor technology and materials is now used by companies like Moltex Energy.
Molten Salt reactors are the likely future in my opinion, but not sure yet what form.
> It was sort of picked by many nations as a next set, put it had a number of drawbacks.
It made a lot of sense. Sodium is an amazing coolant. It was also a relatively easy to implement design for a breeder reactor, with all the related advantages (much better way of using uranium fuel with no enrichment step, burning of plutonium and high-activity "waste", etc).
> I would like to know how cooling intensive it was compare to PWR. And what operating temperature.
Cooling should be overall similar to a PWR operating at the same power. The temperature in the core is higher than in PWRs (around 500 to 600°C instead of 300°C), but they have 3 cooling loops instead of 2. I can't remember the temperature in the most external loops off the top of my head but I don't expect them to be very different in both designs. They use similar steam turbines, so they should have similar operating regimes, but I could be wrong.
> Also, some of the Sodium reactor technology and materials is now used by companies like Moltex Energy.
Yes, the materials are quite different from PWRs because of the different neutron fluxes and spectra, but some of this knowledge can be applied to other fast reactor designs like the fast MSRs. Some of the corrosion mechanisms (which are a large hurdle to clear for MSRs still) also have some similarities.
> Molten Salt reactors are the likely future in my opinion, but not sure yet what form.
That is where the wind is blowing. It's difficult to say more at the moment, because there are very different designs (fast or thermal, uranium, thorium, or MOX, large or small and modular, etc), but there is a lot of activity around MSRs.
Low river levels + very warm water levels have forced selective shutdowns in France - a reliance on water that the drought sent away. River water is often a 'once through' system, compared to cooling towers which can be water conserving closed systems that tale more space or tiered evaporators. I expect that France is using the shutdowns for maintenance of various corrosion points. It is cheaper to use cheap pipe and replace it when it corrodes versus stainless steel or other alloys. I think France has been very well served by it's nuclear power plants as it leads the world in that arena. As for doctrinaire opposition of nuclear = I have none, build it well, maintain it well, and it will serve you well. I would like France to be in the lead for implementing a thorium cycle. Thorium has been neglected due to the difficulty of making nuclear weapons as off-products of the reactors - as we have seen Uranium was driven to the head of the nuke queue by the relative ease of making fissionable material that suited bombs.
I feel you have stuck an inappropriate 'pin' in France on this. Had all Europe/world followed France, we would be miles ahead in global warming reduction! Even more so with Thorium! Works proceeds on Thorium - it's day will come.
This shows exports/imports from today. Yes Germany is exporting to France, but importing similar amounts from the Netherlands so seems like a wash.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
Nuclear is not working in France right now because France uses lot less electricity in summer than in winter (they have a lot of electric heating and not a lot of air conditioning), so they are doing all the maintenance and refueling in summer.
I am pretty tired of this particular misinformation.
Well there is no difference in practice, as the reactors are closed anyway. But they are not closed because the physics don’t work, or because they are functionally unable to work in the current situation (the “nuclear cannot work when it’s hot” line you see in some newspapers). Nobody has done a serious assessment when the limits were decided, more based on guesswork than anything else.
The reactors are at ~300°C. It does not matter one bit if the input water is at 40°C or 20°C. As for the output, if temperatures keep increasing it just means they will have to build pools to let the water cool down some more before going back to the river or recycled through the external cooling loops. If the water level is the problem, the quantities involved are negligible compared to the throughput of a large river or what we spray on maize fields.
What do you mean "not working well"? At this point, right now, French NPPs are producing 24000MW of power (57% of all french output). Yes, it's down from the usual ~70% due to maintenance issues, but calling this "not working" is outright dishonest.
It's this type of exaggerated misinformation from German greens that brought their country into this mess.
The linked article is pretty matter of fact and I am quite disappointed that replies in this thread go off on weird tangents about "misinformation from the German greens" or "owning the nuke people". You might very well be correct in your argument, but the level of discussion is much lower than I would expect from HN.
The ever present German greens which apparently have the country of Germany in an iron grip even though they have less than 15% of the vote. Let's not get started on the French greens, whose representation on the assemblies is marginal at best, but apparently are the reason France does not have "tens of Superphenix reactors" by now (the large cost overruns and literal swiss terrorist attacks notwithstanding).
"greens" (no capital letter) in my post does not imply just green party, but a group of germans that always comes out of the woodwork blastnig dishonest arguments about why we need to get rid of our critically needed power source.
While it's not just Germans that are always coming out of the woodwork (Austrians are even more extreme), the anti-nuclear movement was always extremely loud in Germany.
Germany: gas for heating and industry, nuckear for electricity. Primary energy =|= secondary energy. If the pro-nuclear crowd could just get the basics right, it would make so much more sense to engage in reasonable discussions.
