
France shuts oldest reactors, but nuclear power still reigns - mzs
http://u.afp.com/3Up6
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jstsch
Here in NL the tide is slowly turning in favor of adding more nuclear to the
mix. It's getting increasingly clear that wind and solar alone are not going
to cut it, after the low hanging fruit has been picked. There's simply no
space for the required overcapacity if we want to be self sufficient.

Currently, we're getting so much of our base load from coal, it's
embarrassing. We'll probably have a mix of wind, rooftop solar, natural gas
and nuclear in the future. Dumping excess energy as hydrogen -> methane in our
huge natural gas grid.

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travisoneill1
> Macron infuriated environmental activists by abandoning a 2015 target to
> reduce nuclear in France's energy mix to just half by 2025.

I'm very much in favor of preserving the environment, but I hate environmental
activists.

~~~
missosoup
Bill gates hit the nail on the head when he said that modern climate mis-
activism has become a bigger threat to humanity than climate change denial.

~~~
soramimo
Do you have a source handy? Would be curious about the context of this.

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wazoox
This is completely stupid. This small power plant produced as much power in
2019 than 3400 2MW windmills, needing much more land, space and material than
the nuclear power plant.

See
[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1199938890142044160.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1199938890142044160.html)

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K0SM0S
I very much doubt that early proponent of fission-powered electricity in
France or anywhere else had CO₂ concerns in mind, but countries who made that
choice certainly ensured a much less dramatic energetic transition circa
_now_.

That's my problem with anti-nuclear people: the problems of nuclear waste are
largely anecdotal for now, it would only become a real concern centuries down
the road (and even that's debatable), while CO₂ is rising and that's an
immediate, pressing concern.

So building a few nuclear reactors now to curb CO₂ emissions is _definitely_
the way to go if we intend to keep on increasing energy levels (thus not F up
the economy too much to combat climate change); whereas favoring windmill and
solar _too fast too soon_ is just bad use of our short-term budgets (both in
time and money): we'd better for instance invest massively in electric
infrastructure to replace all trucks (eventually all vehicules, but again,
urgency and magnitude set the order).

I mean, isn't it idealistic and dangerous to say 'no' to nuclear now when our
immediate concern is CO₂, greenhouse effect? I'd rather see 2100 with as
little temperature increase as possible with a little bit more nuclear waste
(that would be of no effect to anyone), than the opposite (because the former
paints a non-catastrophic picture, whereas the latter is potentially
apocalyptic for some regions and major cities of the globe).

In this specific case however (France, Fessenheim and the other), these were
too old reactors and needed shutdown, it was unsafe to keep them going. The
last thing we need in this world right now is France failing at nuclear
safety.

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marsokod
Actually, this power plant was old, but that was not even a proper argument to
close this one. The safety assessments made on it classified it as safe, and
representative of the average safety of the other nuclear plants in France.
The decision is purely political, and the age is just used as a political
symbol, nothing else. Otherwise, France would need to phase out the vast
majority of its nuclear power within the next five years, and it would screw
up the country.

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seanalltogether
Meanwhile Ireland is desperately working to get an interconnector between
itself and France because it needs France to act as the "battery backup" for
all the wind energy Ireland wants to produce in the future. The last time the
interconnector between Ireland and UK was broken, Ireland had to shut down a
bunch of wind mills until it was brought back up. France and the surrounding
countries need those nuclear reactors available in order to experiment with
more "green" energy

[https://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-
resources/eu-...](https://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-resources/eu-
to-contribute-530m-to-1bn-irish-french-power-line-1.4037649)

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droithomme
France has done an incredible job of managing nuclear. Over 75% of their
electricity comes from nuclear, and they've never had a single serious
incident. What about French culture avoids the problems we've had in the US,
Japan and Russia regarding nuclear plant management?

~~~
manicdee
Probably a willingness to do the right thing for the nation when it’s not the
most profitable for the company or the self?

