No. France aiming at 50% of nuclear electricity (down from 75%) is a purely political move, to please some people that fear nuclear more than they fear climate change.
This is a lie. French people are overly pro-nuclear.
It was and remains being about the costs. https://finance-commerce.com/2019/09/frances-nuclear-love-af...
Not only the costs of setting up new reactors but the costs of maintaining the old ones, maintaining waste and the ridiculously smaller costs of alternatives: https://reneweconomy.com.au/france-solar-auction-success-del...
It's dead. They don't even continue to throw money onto one of those seemingly "innovative" research programs anymore: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-nuclearpower-astri...
And it's not only France: https://energypost.eu/200-400-nuclear-reactors-to-be-decommi...
Have you seen that I've used the word "some" in my sentence ? This move was targeting a precise portion of the population.
> Not only the costs of setting up new reactors but the costs of maintaining the old ones, maintaining waste and the ridiculously smaller costs of alternatives: https://reneweconomy.com.au/france-solar-auction-success-del....
You obviously know that the costs you refer to through this article do not include storage. Nor do not talk about the lifecycle carbon emissions.
You don't make politics for "some" people. You make politics for the majority. Focusing on some minor group interest doesn't give you votes especially if their viewpoints contradict those of the majority. So what's your point there? It does not make any sense.
> You obviously know that the costs you refer to through this article do not include storage. Nor do not talk about the lifecycle carbon emissions.
Of course they do. This is the way decisions fall if you decide between several energy sources. You take everything in account and in the end you make a decision. The decision is: less nuclear.
And, it's generally accepted that carbon life cycle studies show nuclear has the least carbon footprint, including everything from uranium mining to waste disposal. Wind and (especially) solar has a larger footprint than nuclear, but wind can come close in some studies. The biggest reason for this is because the energy in nuclear fuel is so enormously concentrated that so little is required, that it offsets the carbon footprint from construction, waste management and everything else, while wind and solar power consume quite a bit of energy during construction (and mining for raw materials).
If anybody comes here with the argument that it's a political decision without bringing any proof, he can't expect that others will assume an exceptional case. Especially not in a topic like this where it's about serious money and a very clear opinion of the majority.
> And, it's generally accepted that carbon life cycle studies show nuclear has the least carbon footprint
Just as it is generally accepted that we've drowned too much money into this, that this money invested into renewables decades ago would have made coal unnecessary by now, that the technology is very dangerous, that the overdue reactors should have been gone by now, that we don't know what to do with the thousands of tons of radioactive waste, that all that artificial hype around nuclear even though there is nobody in the civilized western world who wants to pay for a reactor these days which may be there in a decade and eat up ridiculous amounts of money producing expansive power is purely an lobbyist effort by a industry which can't face the fact that their technology is dead.
So please...please...spare me the phrases you copied elsewhere. I've read them before you guys are repeating them on and on without thinking one step further into the reality out there and it even stopped being amusing. You make me sad.
You could argue that you could get the cost down if you make a huge push for nuclear. But the last time we did that it was a combined push for nuclear weapons and energy, which made it easier to get support and funding for education and research. Now the only major application is energy.
And though you could probably get the cost down to where it was before, the cost of renewables and storage is dropping very rapidly. It seems likely that renewables will reach a price point that nuclear could never catch up to, way before the cost of nuclear will be reasonable again. And since renewables will be so cheap, most countries will want at least 50% of energy to be renewable. And that will make covering the remaining 50% with nuclear more expensive, since you'd need more advanced and expensive load balancing power plants to support the renewables.
I also think that the fact that renewables give us an increasing amount of days with overproduction, i.e. extremely cheap electricity, might be a very good thing when we'll want to create more hydrogen and synthetic fuels.
Are you aware that the French ministry of environment justifies closing Fessenheim because nuclear emits too much greenhouse gases ?
And that some heads of EELV, the "green" french party, don't know what a life-cycle analysis is (or purposedly pretends not to know ) and asks for closing nuclear plants to be in line with the Paris 2015 climate deal ?
This helps figure out how rational the current moves against nuclear are.
Without nuclear, with what life-cycle kgCO2e/kWh result, and when ?
The question of CO2 emission before then, as fossil fuels are being phased out, is less important. During that process the better question is how much CO2 emission can be avoided per $ invested. By that metric, renewables will be much better than new nuclear.