Macron says France will build new nuclear energy reactors | Hacker News Reader

Macron says France will build new nuclear energy reactors

reuters.com

784 pointsjulosflb637 comments

The Chinese have committed to building over 150 new nuclear reactors. The British government will subsidize Rolls Royce. Japan will reactivate over 30 nuclear reactors.

It seems this is the biggest energy story of the year. The comeback of nuclear energy.

https://smallcaps.com.au/china-supercharge-uranium-race-150-...

The HN discussion on the China story:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29151741

Japan reactivating nuclear reactors:

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210501/p2a/00m/0op/00...

UK. Rolls-Royce gets funding to develop mini nuclear reactors:

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59212983

It's not a comeback until you push the first kwh to the grid for the price you said you'd build the new generator for. Japan turning back on mothballed reactors is a Big Deal (and a quick win for avoiding CO2 emissions), but getting new reactors built in less than a decade or for less than billons of dollars is where the proof lies. Talk and promises are cheap, action has a cost and can't be faked.

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-... (Lazard’s latest annual Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis (LCOE 15.0) shows the continued cost-competitiveness of certain renewable energy technologies on a subsidized basis and the marginal cost of coal, nuclear and combined cycle gas generation.)

Comparing the cost of a non-intermittent energy source with an intermittent energy source excluding the cost of storage is comparing apples to oranges. Solar and wind are cheap, until you saturate the energy market during peak production hours. Then it gets exorbitantly expensive. The only viable storage solution at the moment is hydroelectric, which is geographically limited. Global lithium ion battery output for a whole year doesn't even add up to 1 hour's worth of the USA's electricity consumption.

When probed on how to address intermittency, many wind and solar advocates propose things like hydrogen storage, giant flywheels, compressed air, or other solutions that are currently in the prototyping stage and have yet to actually be deployed to a grid and demonstrate viability.

This is the chief advantage of nuclear power: it works and we have over half a century of production experience with it. Betting on one of those storage solutions panning out is betting on a big unknown.

The simplest energy storage solution is your hot water heater. Turning on everyone's hot water heater when there is surplus electricity, and turning them off when there's a deficit, is a very low cost solution.

The next level is using residential HVAC systems the same way. Comfortable temperatures are a range, so heating/cooling can push the temps to one end of the range, and when there is less electricity available, they can drift to the other end.

The charger for your electric car is another very practical sink for cheap electricity.

This is accomplished by having a spot price for electricity, and then people buying thermostats that query the spot price and turn HVAC, hot water heater, car battery chargers, etc., on and off.

This can be extended EVEN FURTHER by heating/cooling a pile of rocks to later use to heat/cool the house.

A battery consisting of a pile of rocks can't be expensive.

The idea is to not only adjust supply to the demand, but to shape the demand to the supply.

I am utterly astonished that this is never, ever discussed when talking about solutions to fluctuating supply. Having fixed electricity rates 24/7 is simply madness in today's electricity generation situation.

The problem with your great ideas, and "great ideas"generally is the lack of proven numbers.

As the poster above you pointed out the capacity of LI batteries is tiny. Yet you tout car batteries as though that were a new idea and a meaningful solution. And you ignore the fact that if you use car batteries as storage for the grid, that detracts from their use to, you know, run cars.

You also ignore the losses from your solutions. What is the round trip loss from heating up rocks and getting the energy back? It is huge. And you artfully forgot to mention all the equipment needed to get the energy back out in usable form such as electricity.

All the books and studies talk about load shaping, contrary to your "astonishment" that no-one is considering this "brilliant idea". The problems with load shaping are many. If you shut a factory down to spare the grid, then it is not producing. So all else being equal, you need more factories for the same production. Building and maintaining those extra factories takes labor, management, and energy.

Getting people to turn off air conditioning means that they are less comfortable, or perhaps unable to sleep, or unable to work. The South of the US more or less became viable economically due to air conditioning.

This is not unique to you, but I am really fed up with people spouting half-assed ideas and thinking that they constitute a solution.

As they said in the dot.com era - ideas are cheap.

This doesn't really work in a lot of places in the world, because the base things are already too expensive. Most of the world does not have HVAC at home. They don't generate heat with electricity either. Car battery chargers only matter if you own an electric car, own a house and have a charger at home. None of this is relevant to most people in the world. It might be in a couple of decades, but not yet. And this includes France.

Smart appliances are a good idea in principle but rolling them out will take a long time. Water heaters last 10+ years. I don't think there are even any widely available on the market today which will automatically increase the temperature at mid day in anticipation of an electricity shortage later. And it's a safety hazard in homes with small children; hot water temperature should never be hot enough to cause burns when someone turns on the faucet.

Most homes don't have enough free space for a big pile of rocks to increase thermal mass. My home has pretty good insulation but on hot days we're going to be miserable without AC in the evening regardless of how much we chilled the house down earlier.

> I am utterly astonished that this is never, ever discussed when talking about solutions to fluctuating supply. Having fixed electricity rates 24/7 is simply madness in today's electricity generation situation.

In many areas wholesale markets work on a spot price basis (although players in the market can of course hedge against low/high prices), but consumers have been very reluctant to go with spot price contracts.

This will probably not be helped by the experience of those consumers in Texas who got $10000 electricity bills during last winter's storm, as the prices skyrocketed.

My water heater is not a storage device for electricy. It lacks the means to recover energy from it, and I want hot water in the morning, every morning, not at random times during the year when there is a surplus of power.

Also, in any cold climate, 'surplus of energy' is generally associated with the presence of sunlight, i.e. at times when heating the house is typically not a great priority. You want that heating on when it is coldest, which typically coincides with the lowest renewable energy production as well.

Charging and decharging your car sounds great, but it means your battery is deteriorating while you aren't even driving.

Good points. Denmark has a lot HVAC district heating with storage for load balancing planned in it's energy strategy 2050 (as I remember when I read it few years back).

Example of a proof of concept for electricity to heat and reverse via rock heating is the Siemens Gamesas Hamburg plant: https://www.siemensgamesa.com/explore/innovations/energy-sto...

Additionally, I would add that there electricity for generation of hydrogen or synth fuels for airline or seafaring industries:

https://www.offshorewind.biz/2021/05/17/construction-starts-...

https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/major-green-hydrogen-facilit...

Yeah, lots of things sound like perfectly great ideas until you actually run the numbers and find out they're hopelessly inadequate.

And electric cars actually tend to get charged at night, while people sleep, when solar isn't generating.

> The simplest energy storage solution is your hot water heater. Turning on everyone's hot water heater when there is surplus electricity, and turning them off when there's a deficit, is a very low cost solution.

This is available in the UK, using a thing called the Economy 7 tariff on electricity [1]. You have two sets of circuits on this plan. One set is the normal set that provides electricity 24/7, so you get expensive electricity when the rate is high and cheap electricity when the rate is low. The other only provides electricity when the rate is lower, such as at night (the 7 in "Economy 7" refers to 7 hours of cheap electricity at night).

There are water heaters designed specifically to work with this [2]. They have a main heating element that does most of the work, which you connect to a circuit that only provides power when the rate is low. These tanks also have a boost heating element that is on a 24/7 circuit meant to just provide any extra heating you need for hot water use during the day.

They also have tariffs that provide a fixed rate 24/7, which should be cheaper than Economy 7 during the day but more expensive at night, so whether Economy 7 saves you money depends on how much of your electricity use is at night.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_7

[2] https://www.cse.org.uk/advice/advice-and-support/economy-7

>I am utterly astonished that this is never, ever discussed when talking about solutions to fluctuating supply.

I'm not surprised to be honest. On a forum like this, you'll get a bunch of very smart people talking about something they don't know a lot about, but authoritatively. (Just look at the incredibly snarky and dismissive responses you've received)

It's certainly talked about in industry and work is going into implementing it.

I work in the electricity-tech industry but I've given up on trying to talk about things like demand response as I'm always shouted down

You highlight the biggest problem: humans simply must change/adjust/whatever you want to call it, if humanity is to survive. The only technological out is fusion power. Without that, humans must learn to do with less (of everything). Everything else is empty rhetoric and time wasted.

> A battery consisting of a pile of rocks can't be expensive.

> The idea is to not only adjust supply to the demand, but to shape the demand to the supply.

It might not be the same everywhere but in France and Belgium at least, it is very common to have two rates: peak and off-peak. A signal is sent by the provider to your electrical meter (basically 220V when off-peak, 0V when peak) that can pilot a switch that turns the hot water heater on only during off-peak hours.

Some electric heaters also work on that principle, they are filled with bricks and heat up during off-peak hours then release the stored heat later, when it is needed. That's your "battery consisting of a pile of rock". However, I have lived with those things and it doesn't work at all because storing heat in anything else than water just doesn't work well. Basically at the end of the day, when you come back from work and need the heat that was stored during the night, it's already gone (and totally wasted as the house was empty). The most modern designs don't work much better. I think these only still exist because the idea seems good enough to convince people to buy them, but it's not actually technically feasible.

Anyway, everything you say is already possible in western Europe, and already done (except for HVAC, but that's mostly because HVAC in private homes isn't very common in the first place). What could be improved is to have more dynamic off-peak hours, but that's not a technical problem, everything would already work as is.

To some degree, a power saving feature for hot water cyclinders in NZ has been used since at least my grandparents time.

https://www.eeca.govt.nz/assets/EECA-Resources/Research-pape...

Where I live the vast majority of heat is produced by natural gas or propane. This includes water boilers, water heaters, clothes dryers, cooking ranges and ovens.

> The idea is to not only adjust supply to the demand, but to shape the demand to the supply.

This is completely backwards. Demand is highly price inelastic and inversely correlated with the supply of renewables. People usually eat at night. They heat their homes overnight. None of these things will change based on energy prices.

What you're proposing is a tax on the poor, and no practical benefit to boot.

> The charger for your electric car is another very practical sink for cheap electricity.

I don't have an electric car. I do not know anybody with an electric car. And wouldn't the surplus show up specifically when those cars aren't at the home?

> A battery consisting of a pile of rocks can't be expensive.

No, but the labor cost of hooking up your pile of rocks battery will be impractical for almost everyone.

> The next level is using residential HVAC systems the same way.

Again, I don't know anybody with an HVAC system. Everything here in the UK is based on natural gas and would cost an unbelievable amount of money to replace with electric.

I work at a company that does DERMS projects in this space (peak shaving, load balancing, power factor optimization, voltage support, etc, etc).

It's not that no one talks about this stuff, it's just that it's as with all things in the utility space projects take time and a lot of the work being done is still exploratory.

No one I work with seems to think this stuff is a magic bullet either, just part of the solution (of which nuclear is another important part).

I should also note that these DERMS projects are very software reliant and I think all of us here on HN know quite well that reliability can be an issue in the software space...

Trouble is, it's nowhere near enough. Cases you mentioned (charging personal cars, heating/cooling down houses) are relatively small. Let's be generous and say it's 20% of overall energy consumption. For comparison, last summer average energy production of UK's offshore wind stayed under 10% of its capacity for a month. How do you even make a dent in this massive sea of missing energy with those small and temporary reductions?

The thing is, the industry of your country doesn't turn off many factories, even during night. They suck juice.

Also, for shops, mall, offices, there is a prolongued pic during the day, and you can't offset that.

Also, your solution assume:

- a lot of smart connected systems (for the heating, the washing machines, etc)

- massive EV parks

- rétrofit buildings to fit those big rocks, heat them, and get heat from them

This is not trivial and would add to the cost to sell renewable energies, which are already not easy to market.

That has a significant risk, what if you hit the end of your range whilst the deficit is still getting worse? Deficits are not following nice predictable normal curves.

I've lived somewhere with storage heaters. They are horrible, practically indistinguishable from no heating at all. A large enough thermal mass would require a complete rebuild.

I live in an area where hot water heating is common. Hot water heaters have secondary loops through the main oil-fired boiler and these could easily be made electric.

A missing link is indeed a cinder block energy storage pile that could be set to preheat water going into the hot water boiler, or to cycle through water going into heating.

>>"The simplest energy storage solution is your hot water heater. Turning on everyone's hot water heater when there is surplus electricity,"

I already do this manually. I unplug it before taking a shower and plug it again at night. Of course, doing it automatically is the only way is going to be done at scale.

A mix of sources (e.g. a few solar and wind plants in different locations) overcomes much of the intermittency and storage issues. It usually requires upgrades to the grid and beyond that just some careful management of the (less regular) intermittency issues (whether storage or alternative sources on demand).

One plant should not be judged on its intermittency alone. Its just not how the system works at a connected-grid scale.

One partial solution to the renewables problem is to massively over-build. If they continue to drop in price, that will be feasible. Solar can be built up to the point where it will reliably produce sufficient daytime power even on very cloudy days for instance. Obviously it doesn't produce at night, but usage is also lower at night (in the future variable pricing to keep that the case as more electric cars come online). Likewise wind turbines can reliably produce power day and night if they're a bit geographically distributed and in sufficient numbers. This also means that often there will be more power available than needed. Some turbines can simply be stopped (braked) during those periods, but we may indeed find many loads can be time-shifted, reducing the baseline amount that needs to be reliably produced.

Long way of saying I agree with you; to make a reasonable comparison, you need to include an over-building factor to account for the variable nature of renewables. I'm not sure what that factor is (obviously it depends on a lot of variables), but I know it's been studied.

> intermittency

What's the uptime for fission plants? I recall that our "local" nuclear power plant (Trojan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Nuclear_Power_Plant ) being down more often than it was up. Maybe it's because it was an old design or something, but it went online in 1975 which doesn't seem that old. It operated from 1975 to 1992.

>When probed on how to address intermittency, many wind and solar advocates propose things like hydrogen storage, giant flywheels, compressed air, or other solutions that are currently in the prototyping stage and have yet to actually be deployed to a grid and demonstrate viability.

Cryogenic energy storage ("liquid air") plants have been deployed - a 15 MWh (5 MW peak) grid-scale demonstration plant has been operating in Greater Manchester near where I live since 2018, and there's a permanent 250 MWh (50 MW peak) plant under construction on the opposite side of the city region.

Granted that peak energy usage in the UK today was around 42 GW, so it's a small fraction (OTOO a tenth of a percent at peak) of what's needed, but... it's coming.

I fully agree with you, though, that nuclear is needed. Renewables + storage can't be the complete answer. I'm a wind, solar and nuclear advocate.

Flyeheels are not in prototyping stage but they only store modest amounts of energy.

https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/news/uk_to_host_europes_l...

Comparing the cost of an energy source that has consistently failed to meet budget and construction timeline targets to those that have is what is actually comparing apples to oranges

I think one interesting solution is to store energy in "gravity", just pull something really heavy up and then when you need energy, let it fall and go through generator. https://gravitricity.com/

LCOE for CPVCSP + molten salt storage systems are already cheaper than nuclear according to lazards (and increasingly more so with every new plant online), but probably not acceptable for anywhere above the latitude of northern Germany.

The EU would need about 10k Cerro Dominador's (which would cover about 1% of the surface area of the EU) to supply its energy needs at worst case (using ~1kwh/m2/day seen during dec/jan).

Same for nuclear, you must take in consideration the nuclear plant destruction, which is pricey, and almost never factored in.

In fact, for some weird reasons, I see cost reports in France factoring in wiring for wind energy, but not for nuclear.

Also nuclear assume good relationship with nations providing the fuel, which is costly: see Mali war for my country.

Getting your hands on objective calculations to compare cost for all energy types it something I seem to never be able to do.

Would you also consider the costs of next 10,000 years of safe storage of nuclear waste?

If we don't have a viable and economically well understood solution for nuclear waste handling , any cost calculations for nuclear is a waste of time .

Renewables and storage are already cheaper than nuclear. Base load is a dead concept.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/07/01/new-sola...

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/06/28/los-angeles-seeks-rec...

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.365.6449.108

https://e360.yale.edu/features/in-boost-for-renewables-grid-...

https://www.nrdc.org/experts/kevin-steinberger/debunking-thr...

The pricing is quite difficult to measure consistently. For instance, the cost of coal generation is usually priced around $0.10/kWh, but it kills 25-33 people per TWh. At the rate the NRC uses, the statistical value of $9M per life, that would add $0.27/kWh, totaling almost $0.37/kWh.

At that price nuclear is already dramatically cheaper than coal - about half as expensive based on the analysis you linked.

The thing is, it's not clear which externalities are priced into renewables. For instance, is the cost of cleaning up this disaster where rare earth metals are mined/refined priced into wind power? [1] Burying the turbine blades forever? [2] How about the cost of the global scale e-waste problem yielded by covering the earth in solar panels which last 30 years? [3] How about power storage - all that lithium?

I'm fine with nuclear, I'm fine with wind, I'm fine with solar. There's no such thing as "green" just shades of black.

Whatever gets us off carbon fuels - yesterday. I strongly doubt the pricing is what's reflected in those charts - they tend to underprice the externalities of everything non-Nuclear. Even if they don't though, I don't really care, at this point decarbonizing is worth paying double for power. I'm not sure how good a deal we're getting is going to matter when we live on Waterworld.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb...

[3] https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die...

From the blade article:

> It pointed to an Electric Power Research Institute study that estimates all blade waste through 2050 would equal roughly .015% of all the municipal solid waste going to landfills in 2015 alone.

While it'd be better to do something useful with them it's not a problem to put them in a landfill.

Wind turbine blades and solar panels are almost entirely recyclable, current state. I don’t have a source as to current and target responsible rare earth mining practices. Lithium can be evaporated from brine ponds responsibly, and energy density insensitive chemistries can produce cells without cobalt (conflict minerals).

I’m not against nuclear for geographies that need district heat or don’t get enough sun or wind for reasonable renewable generation, but I do take issue that it gets put forth as a silver bullet that we’re going to scale up in a reasonable amount of time when all signs point to that being objectively false. I’m violently allergic to platitudes and snake oil.

> Wind turbine blades and solar panels are almost entirely recyclable, current state.

The article I linked (titled "Wind Turbine Blades Can’t Be Recycled, So They’re Piling Up in Landfills", haha) indicates that turbine blades are not recyclable. They are fiberglass, which is a mix of glass and plastic - it's long been known as one of the hardest things to recycle. They are currently buried - or burned. The latest scuttlebutt on that is Semens Gamesa has a recyclable prototype. [1] I suspect it will come, but is it priced in?

> "At the end of their working life, most blades are buried underground or burned." [1]

As for solar panels, I agree they could be recycled - up to some 90% based on some digging - but it's super expensive to do so, and I suspect it's also not priced in. 91% of the plastic you throw into the recycle bin makes its way to the landfill anyways. [2]

I don't think there is a silver bullet per se, which is why I want them all deployed ASAP.

My comment was more that I don't think the prices as reflected in your link represent the true cost of the electricity due to the varying degree to which externalities are priced in. Even if accurate, price (probably to your point) isn't really the be all and end all here. The switchover needs to happen, and in time, whatever that looks like. All this hand-wringing around nuclear taking forever to deploy a few decades ago is part of why we're here, now, without nuclear.

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90674645/this-giant-wind-turbine...

[2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/plastic-p...

China is building a whole lot of new reactors, and the ones that came online most recently took about 5-6 years from start of construction to finish, which is substantially less than a decade. Japan, prior to the shutdown, was able to build new nuclear plants in 4-5 years. It's certainly possible to construct new, modern nuclear plants smoothly and quickly, and countries capable of this are the ones that are doing most of the nuclear plant construction. You hear disproportionately about debacles like Flamanville Unit 3 in France (under construction since 2007, with heavy cost overruns), and they're indicative of some serious problems with France's ability to get reactors built, but worldwide they're the exception.

The USA hasn't done much better at delivering nuclear reactors on time or on budget in the last 3 decades: Vogtle, VC Summer, Bellefonte, for example. The only reactors to come online in that time is Watts Barr 1 and 2 and Comanche Peak 2 all of which started construction in the 1970s.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_C._Summer_Nuclear_Gener...

4 to 6 years is possible, but more of a best-case scenario.

If you look for example, the nuclear reactor built in France in the 70ies and 80ies took generally between 5 and 9 years to build, with the newer and greater capacity reactors taking significantly more time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...

Keep in mind that it was at the pick of Nuclear reactor construction. These are really large projects with tons of suppliers and contractors to coordinate. There is a lot of experience and institutional knowledge needed, but which has been unfortunately partially lost with the significant slowing down of new constructions in the late 80ies/90ies.

Also, this slowing down also had a significant effect on the supply chains, often leaving very few companies key components/sub-systems.

Flamanville 3 is definitely a poorly lead project and a big outlier, but, a country re-starting its nuclear construction, the first units would probably take ~10 years to come online.

> China

The EPR projects weren't such successes, they were overbudget and overschedule. Then an incident lead to a shutdown for examination.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Taishan_...

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/31/asia/taishan-nuclear-plan...

One of the things to watch out for when looking at renewable energy prices is that it can often reflect the value of that energy, rather than production cost.

The price being very low often reflects the fact that, at that time, this energy is basically worthless/useless. And in fact, prices have even gone negative, meaning "please stop feeding this useless energy into the grid".

So low renewable prices are not necessarily a good sign, and can in fact just be the economic indicator for the limited usefulness of renewable energy.

I don't think anyone expects a 100% build rate on these commitments, but like all funnels, a certain percentage of these projects that are having awareness raised now will eventually be built. Any progress here is better than nothing.

The cost consists of a number of factors: materials and labor, design issues, and legal challenges. A global effort to build up proper nuclear infrastructure means the design issues will be far less of an issue: just design one really good reactor, and build a few hundred. And governments can (and in the case of China, will) move to limit the possibility of legal challenges. That just leaves materials and labor, which are comparable to similarly-sized industrial structures: considerable, but certainly not insurmountable.

I suspect the Chinese are less susceptible to the problem in western nations where every random person/group can basically DoS the engineering program through the legal system.

That announcement of 150 reactors in China is no real change to the long term plans either. Still simply keeping the option barely open which is very sensible to do when you're such a huge economy, even if it comes from subsidies.

In 2019, China had a new target of 200 GWe of nuclear generating capacity by 2035, which is 7.7% out of predicted total electricity generating capacity of 2600 GWe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China

So with about 50 GWe from 50 reactors today adding another 150 gives you the same goal of about 200 GWe. Unless we're talking SMRs because then the goal just got reduced to a fraction of the original.

> The Chinese have committed

This may be more complicated than that, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29159944

> Japan reactivating nuclear reactors:

Japan invested on nuclear then nowadays don't want it anymore but now needs energy. One has to see them canceling their planned phase-out, as "in March 2021, only 11 percent of Japanese said they wanted that nuclear energy generation be discontinued immediately. Another 49 percent was asking for a gradual exit from nuclear energy" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan#Post-Fu... )

> UK. Rolls-Royce gets funding

"£195m cash injection from private firms and a £210m grant" are ridiculous sums. In France Macron announced 1 billion €: given that nuclear research already burnt ~900 millions € per year (public research), a fair part of the 2.2 billions allocated to the CEA's civilian programs, this isn't decisive.

> > Japan reactivating nuclear reactors:

> Japan invested on nuclear then nowadays don't want it anymore but now needs energy. One has to see them canceling their planned phase-out, as "in March 2021, only 11 percent of Japanese said they wanted that nuclear energy generation be discontinued immediately. Another 49 percent was asking for a gradual exit from nuclear energy" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan#Post-Fu... )

Wow. To have even ~40% of the population not opposing nuclear after a national trauma like Fukushima, shows their sophistication as a people.

"49 percent was asking for a gradual exit from nuclear energy" isn't exactly "not opposing".

> The Chinese have committed to building over 150 new nuclear reactors.

Hang on, China also announced a couple of months ago to build 43 new coal-fired power plants.

It's not that long ago - perhaps a decade - that China was building a new coal-fired power plant every 10 days or so. Not small ones, but on the same scale as the largest coal-fired power plant we had in Australia at the time.

I mention this as a counterpoint to any 'If China's doing it, it must make sense' fallacy.

>I mention this as a counterpoint to any 'If China's doing it, it must make sense' fallacy.

It makes sense if you realize

1. China pledges to peak carbon emission by 2030

2. Any increase in emission before 2030 will increase China's peak carbon allowance afterward.

3. Coal plants are cheap to build. Who cares if you only run them at 30% load factor for their entire lifespan.

4. Cap and trade between countries mean the carbon credit will worth a lot in the near future.

> China pledges to peak carbon emission by 2030

China pledged to peak Carbon emissions as a share of GDP by 2030. Not the same thing, given that GDP is increasing by 6-8% each year. Most Western nations already have had emissions per GDP declining for a long time.

> 2030 will increase China's peak carbon allowance afterward

China has rejected abiding by any Carbon "allowance", nor will it adopt any cap and trade system for carbon.

Can someone explain why 1.5°C is considered a realistic goal? It seems rather obvious to me that the world is going to warm a bit beyond that. Staying under 2°C is going to be quite the challenge. 1.5°C doesn't seem remotely likely. I realize the climate science says it's the ideal temperature to aim for giving the 1.2°C warming we've already done, but it doesn't seem politically or economically feasible at this point.

Still building coal plant doesn't mean the plant operated continuously in the future. Perhaps they may use those coal plant only when solar power generation isn't good (I don't know).

Last I looked at the numbers (which was 2 weeks ago):

China seems to be adding ~30GW of coal, 70GW of wind, ~50GW of solar, and ~6 GW of nuclear power/year to its grid.

It makes sense to build both. Coal fired plants are much less expensive to produce and get to a positive ROI much faster. If you don't like it, you can always try launching a land war in Asia to stop them.

Not everybody has the ability to launch a land war in Asia

Anyone can with enough self-confidence and elan, but, uh, no one can win!

Don't have to launch a war. Climate change will fuck them up without the need to involve military. Downside is that we have to deal with that shitstorm too.

It's only good news if they aren't PWR/LWR meltdown-possible 70 year old designs.

I do like there is a large market to this startup. Hopefully that will result in a somewhat price-competitive reactor design. But I doubt that will happen for another 10 years.

I think solar/wind/battery will eat the lunch of any new nuclear plant in cost once it goes online.

Hoping for the best!

"The comeback of nuclear energy" At last, I would say. We have magic energy source in our hands but, no, better spend milliards on wind turbines and solar panels, although we know they sometimes work and sometimes don't, so they can't provide predictable input for a grid without batteries that we don't have and will not have in foreseeable future.

I am wondering what Germany is going to do. They have bet heavily on wind & solar (apparently they haven't check how many sunny days Germany has...) with the backup from Russian gas from Nord Stream 1/2 (for some reason this gas is "clean" although burning it produces CO2). If everyone around will switch to nuclear, what I hope will happen, they can end up with the very expensive setup that is still producing a lot of CO2.

I am afraid that Germany will try to enforce ban on nuclear by European Union (what they can do, since Brexit Germany is in fact ruling UE), as the wrong investment might hurt their economy. I hope France will oppose.

Exactly. Unfortunately the problem is the people are opposing nuclear and to make people happy Germany leaders will do what they can, to push the whole EU to their home politics drama. One of the biggest drawback of any union when the big guys are incentivized for something not aligning with rest of members. No wonder so many neighbors are unhappy

This is super good. Again, the point is not Europe in and of itself, but also India and China.

The demand for power in India and China is outstripping everyone else. And it is still stuck using coal power. India and China do NOT have land (for renewables) commensurate with the population or energy demand. Also one of the biggest sources of renewable hydro power is a geopolitical flashpoint for India vs China (https://www.indiatoday.in/news-analysis/story/china-proposed...). Almost a hundred soldiers died in an India vs China battle recently around this area.

Both India and China have unilaterally rejected COP26 restrictive measures from developed nations... simply because it is not possible to reduce the power demand coming from populations (the size of Europe) being lifted up from poverty.

The only answer for the next 50 years is nuclear tech. And France is literally the only game in town right now. So let us pray, this happens sooner than later. You do NOT want coal from 2 BILLION people in the atmosphere.

Actually, it is not so clear nuclear is the solution in Europe (e.g. France) at this point. You still have to mine lots of uranium ore, because compared to coal, you actually only seek a small fraction of it, where with coal you can burn almost all of what you mine. The enrichment facilities have dual use for war and the uranium mostly comes from Russia which is geopolitically problematic (for Europe, somewhat similar to coal/ oil/ gas mostly). With nuclear fission, we basically don't recycle much if at all. You have to take care of the waste. With coal of course, you have ash and all the CO_2 you have to do something about (again in Europe at least) if you don't want to pay too much on emission allowances.

The last point, we just don't know how to build nuclear economically anymore. The process is so bureaucratic and slow it becomes infeasible to finance without major interventions. Letting Chinese or Russian companies build it from the standpoint of Europe is a geopolitical challenge and a security risk.

All this time and money would be perhaps spent better elsewhere. In Europe, we are not able to build a nuclear powerplant in 15 years, so that is lots of time for research and development and even building something useable. It is very likely, most of the renewable sources will become more economical and nuclear less even less. We might devise a scheme to store energy by e.g. splitting salt (NaOH) into sodium metal, hydrogen and oxygen and later combining sodium with water to NaOH again, while getting hydrogen as a byproduct and lots of electrical current. It is a simple process, we "just" have to scale it and develop it further. The first half of it is well known for 100 years and was used at industrial scale. Currently, we just split NaCl directly to obtain sodium... The second half is described in patents by Lockheed-Martin that are long expired. You can read more in this diagram: https://www.orgpad.com/s/iV3vbi

Btw. Slowakia has a lot of nuclear too and here in Czechia, we have a conversation about building new reactors in Dukovany too. For Czechia, the approach seems to be misguided as you can read here (Google Translated from Czech): https://denikreferendum-cz.translate.goog/clanek/32812-cesky...

My biggest argument against nuclear is that there are no incentives for decommissioning unsafe plants in the far future.

The usual pro-nuclear argument says that nuclear plants are only unsafe if managed incorrectly. However, the West doesn't have the political or economic framework to ensure they will get managed correctly: if you are the leader of the executive of some country, are you going to decomission a plant built 30 years ago that gives the country a lot gW of energy and raise energy prices for everyone, or are you going to risk the very low chance of a serious accident to keep prices down and pass the ball to whomever governs next?

If nuclear is the future, we need an effective process of automatic decommissioning that can bypass governments. That process doesn't exist yet.

You don't need __lots__ of uranium. The cost of uranium for running a nuclear reactor is a rounding error in their overall costs.

Um, what ? There is not really any meaningful voices against building a new reactor block in Dukovany. Rather, there was a debate about making sure non-friendly foreign blocks are excluded from the tender to avoid the power plant being used as bargaining chip in future diplomatic games involving the Czech Republic.

As outlined in the linked article quite in depth, it is economically infeasible and Czechia and the consumer have nothing to gain by it even compared to alternatives that also have their fair share of problems. If it was such a great idea/ investment, ČEZ wouldn't need any guarantees but it really isn't. I don't know how you evaluate, what voices are meaningful or not. Have you spent at least months researching the topic from multiple angles?

Of course China as more than enough land for renewables. Ever heard of the Gobi desert?

There are already massive solar array farms in the Gobi desert.

You are misunderstanding the growth in power needed. If India and China move towards electric vehicles..... just New Delhi has 12 million cars. Just to compare, London has 2.6 million cars. New York has about 4 million cars.

I don't think people grasp what 2 billion people really means.

I’m no fan of the Chinese regime, but maybe they just concluded that the preening do-nothingness that goes on at these summits isn’t worth getting mixed up with. From last week:

“China has reported overnight to be planning 150 new nuclear reactors over the next 15 years — more than have been built around the world since 1980 — a signal that uranium production needs to be stepped up, fast and soon.”

That’s a reported planned investment of $440B.

https://smallcaps.com.au/china-supercharge-uranium-race-150-...

Why do you say that China does not have the land for renewables? Population denstity in China (145/km2) is less than for example Germany (232/km2).

FWIW, China is building nuclear power plants like crazy.

And actually doing that as we speak, instead of "planning".

It's mostly French tech from what I understand.

Macron said "We are going, for the first time in decades, to relaunch the construction of nuclear reactors in our country". This is a blatant lie, as France launched a project and never ceased trying to build. However it failed flat.

The last delivered reactor was Civaux-2 (generation II), in 1999. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civaux_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Then in 2002 the project Flamanville-3 was launched (a generation III reactor, the "EPR", first one of its kind), and the building phase started in 2007. It is a major failure, not delivered, at least 11 years behind schedule, and will cost at least 19.1 billion euros (initial budget: 3.4 billions €). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

I believe the Flamanville EPR is considered as some sort of prototype. It was planned to be years in the making and difficulties were expected.

However, they were not expecting this much. The reasons that they are pushing are:

1. Lack of proper trained personnel

2. More constraints imposed during the projects due to Fukushima

3. First design of that kind

And as you said, the last nuclear reactor to be finished in France was 20 years ago[0]. The people who worked on that last plant were probably the one who worked on plants during the 70s, 80s and 90s and retired right after. It fits with reason 1.

[0]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrale_nucl%C3%A9aire_en_Fra...

I believe the Flamanville EPR is considered as some sort of prototype. It was planned to be years in the making and difficulties were expected.

It was scheduled to take 54 months to build when construction started in 2007:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110613091002/http://www.neimag...

The last reactors to enter commercial operation in France, the 2 units at Civaux Nuclear Power Plant, took 13 and 11 years from construction start in 1988/1991 to commercial operation in 2002:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civaux_Nuclear_Power_Plant

I wonder if EDF succumbed to hubris in thinking that they could build a new reactor design twice as fast as the last-completed reactors, or if they published optimistic numbers because they thought that there was more institutional tolerance for constant slippage than for estimating unhappily large numbers right at the start.

> the 2 units at Civaux Nuclear Power Plant, took 13 and 11 years from construction start in 1988/1991 to commercial operation in 2002:

At the time France was simultaneously building many reactors, see: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_r%C3%A9acteurs_nucl%...

Some say that Flamanville-3 is a failure because it should be built along with many other reactors. This seems ridiculous to me, as if the problems (lack of adequate applied skill, bad project management... there is a complete official report about the causes, written by M. Folz) would be alleviated by parallelizing projects (it would instead worsen their effects and add delays).

> if they published optimistic numbers because they thought that there was more institutional tolerance

In France institutional tolerance for the nuclear industry is at its max. Start in 2007, to be delivered in 2012, nothing delivered in 2021 and 5.6 times over-budget... and no-one even talks about calling it off. Even better: M. Macron wants to start new projects!

I would bet on hubris here. In parallel with the Flamanville unit, they've been building EPR in Olkiluoto, Finland. There's a number of issues that have been shared by both of the projects, of course with some issues specific to each one. They agreed to deliver the Finnish plant on turnkey basis and are facing billions in losses because the quoted price is something like 1/3 of the final cost.

> Flamanville EPR is considered as some sort of prototype

No, it officially is a "tête de série" (meaning among the firsts of a series). It cannot be a prototype because this very model, the EPR, was sold to Finland and the corresponding project (Olkiluoto-3) started 2 years before Flamanville's.

> the one who worked on plants during the 70s, 80s and 90s and retired right after

In such huge heavy industry projects occupying tens of thoosands persons there is a constant stream of newcomers. Moreover this industry must maintain existing (exploited) reactors, and a non-neglectable portion of skills needed when building are also needed during maintenance. Also: many critical specialties, especially outside the nuclear isle, are qualifications built upon a non nuclear-specific trade (concrete, welding...): a "standard" professional can be trained in nuclear-specific skills in months. In any case the industry (which isn't exactly a low-cost lo-margin one...) has to manage human resources, and to find ways to maintain critical and very specific skills.

It can get complicated [1] ...

Honestly I don't know if we can really build nuclear plants anymore, at least for a reasonable cost in a timely fashion.

[1] https://www.franceculture.fr/economie/scandale-de-la-forge-d...

As happy as I am that nuclear is back, I really don't trust Macron on this. For the record, here is what he did in his current term regarding nuclear:

- shut down the Fessenheim plant, one of the most reliable one. Yes it was the oldest, but not by far, and reports from the nuclear authority are pretty clear that this plant was in a much better shape than others built just a few years afterwards (Bugey, one year later which is now older than Fessenheim was when shut down, and Blayais started 4 years later).

- promised to reduce the share of nuclear in the electricty mix to 50% by 2025.

- shut down Astrid, the French research project for 4th generation nuclear (which is the only long term viable path for nuclear, since there will never be a shortage of fertile material (U238 or Thorium) whereas fissile one is pretty limited. Breeding reactors also solve the very-long lived nuclear waste issue).

He did all of this when he was trying to seduce electors from the green party. Now he don't seem to care about them, but who knows for how long…

Maybe the green party elector finally realised that the battle against CO2 doesn't need to be 100% renewable?

Regarding the closing of Fessenheim, it seems like a sensible decision. The central was designed to last 40 years and long exceeded its expiration date. In the last 10 years it had roughly one incident per year with graver and graver consequences. And in any case, France would have started lose a lot of money because, due to the geographical position and the risk it pose, its neighbours, Switzerland and Germany were not really happy with it and had started to repetedly attack the decision to maintain it open in courts.

The fact that a politician had to take this decision (and not engineers) is in my opinion the most shocking part. It shows that the ANS probably became complacent with the state of security of centrals. Probably similar to finanicial markets or aviation regulators. And generally when that happens it's the begining of catastrophes.

> Maybe the green party elector finally realised that the battle against CO2 doesn't need to be 100% renewable?

I wish it was it, but it's not what's happening. Macron is currently campaigning for his reelection and has decided to adopt a really conservative tone for his campaign: it's all about “fighting islamism”, reducing welfare, etc., etc., the strong nuclear narrative fits clearly in this tone.

> Regarding the closing of Fessenheim, it seems like a sensible decision. The central was designed to last 40 years and long exceeded its expiration date. In the last 10 years it had roughly one incident per year with graver and graver consequences.

It was designed for 40 years, but so did every other plants that were given a extended lifetime approval. Actually, it's not uncommon at all to design a power plant with a specific lifetime in mind, and extending it afterwards when you realize it hasn't wore out too much (fun facts, some systems were dead long before reaching the 40 years span they had been designed for, and have been replaced even though it wasn't part of the original plan). And as I said, Fessenheim was one of the best plant of that generation when it comes to incidents, it had a much better rating than several plants built a bit later and which will still be in service for the next decade.

> And in any case, France would have started lose a lot of money because, due to the geographical position and the risk it pose, its neighbours, Switzerland and Germany were not really happy with it

I don't know where you take that from but in reality, France have to pay a huge sum of money to Germany as compensation for the shut-down because part of Fessenheim's plant (17.5%) was owned by the land of Bade-Wurtemberg. The overall price that will be paid until the end of the compensation period (supposed to last until 2041) is still unknown because it will depend on the market price of electricity on that period, but it's expected to be between a faction of billion to a few billion euros.[1]

> The fact that a politician had to take this decision (and not engineers) is in my opinion the most shocking part. It shows that the ANS probably became complacent with the state of security of centrals. Probably similar to finanicial markets or aviation regulators. And generally when that happens it's the begining of catastrophes.

This is indeed a serious risk with regulation authorities, but in the case of the ASN it's proven pretty reliable in recent days: rthe 50 years lifetime extension was granted in exchange of a huge overhaul of the existing plants (“le grand carénage)” costing several billions, to add a lot of new safety equipment, most of them designed with the Fukushima accident in mind.

[1]: https://www.lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/2017/04/05/20002-2017040...

To promise to reduce the share of nuclear in itself means nothing. If you increase the production with renewable, automatically, nuclear will have a smaller share. It does not mean that you do not plan ahead.

Fessenheim had been a thorn in the back of previous governments for years. Sometimes political move are not logical from a technical standpoint but can be seen as intermediate step in a larger plan. I don't blame him for that.

Astrid though seems to be the real mistake. The new CEA boss at the time said that[0] we don't need that kind of reactor because uranium is cheap as nobody wants nuclear anymore since Fukushima. This is such a stupid reason that I cannot believe to be the real one.

[0] https://www.lefigaro.fr/sciences/nucleaire-le-patron-du-cea-...

Vogtle nuclear delayed again due to shoddy work that needs redoing, raising cost to >$27.8 billion.

New timeline means 16 to 17 years between planning and operation, thus 16-17 years of CO2 and pollution before a single kWh

https://www.wabe.org/new-delay-for-georgia-nuclear-reactors-...

we are running out of time! the transition to WWS is faster and cheaper.

see: https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/WWS-...

Oh stop with the "it's too slow" already: https://twitter.com/steeve/status/1426103525050814464?s=20

I'm not sure what's been debunked. The US does not have the construction capabilities of 1970s France. And for that matter, neither does France, as is being proven in Flamanville and in Olkiluoto, Finland.

Perhaps we can invite Slovakia or Russia to build in other countries, but there's no knowing if they could train local workforces accomplish what they have.

UK is taking decades to buils a train line, and its gonna cost as much as the moon landings, all of them.

Maybe this whole outsourcing of all technical skills and manufacturing actually has something to do with it?

Maybe treating staff as disposable cpgs hollows out skills untill the companies can no longer do anything right?

I suspect the real reason is "maybe turning profit-skimming by intermediate layers of management into an art-form, makes any large-scale project-costs trend to infinity".

HS2 spent ungodly sums on "consulting" and management fees to do stuff that, back in the day, would have probably been carried out by a couple of commandeered civil servants. But I'm sure all their Word reports have nice headings and lots of "holistic" something.

The best time to invest in nuclear was 40 years ago. The second best time is now.

If this is combined with a move away from fossiel fuel for heating and logistics - and a significant investment in renewable - then it is an excellent move for France.

I would sign up today for nuclear power in 2025 if it replaced all natural gas and diesel/petrol vehicles on the roads.

2025 is a pipedream -- they'd be lucky to break ground by 2025.

> Median construction time required for nuclear reactors worldwide oscillated from around 84 months to 117 months, from 1981 to 2019 respectively.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/712841/median-constructi...

7-10 years is not bad at all. New coal plants take 8 years to build (1). Seems for energy projects this is par for the course.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/a-new-coal-fired-pow...

Large coal plants.

At least one of the reasons why solar and wind really got off the ground is because the marginal cost of one more installation is not very high. Panels on the roof may not be the most efficient, but they are actually feasible for a homeowner to purchase and install.

7-10 years is a death sentence if we need to transition in the next 15 years, by 2035. Especially since we don't know which design to build, and our current nuclear fleet is rapidly aging out.

The nuclear industry will be lucky if its able to pull off enough construction to replace reactors that age out. There's no chance of nuclear becoming a backbone of our new grid, when we would need to produce 400GW of new nuclear. The napkin math does not work out.

However, renewables and storage are scaling their production at just barely a high enough rate, if we continue on the same exponential growth curves we have been on for the next decade.

Hopefully production will scale even faster, now that solar is the cheapest form of new energy.

> 7-10 years is a death sentence if we need to transition in the next 15 years, by 2035

France has no need to transition when it comes to electricity. We're already almost as low emission as possible so there is no urgency. What we need is a medium term plan, because the plants may start being decommissioned in around 10 years (unless ASN give them the right to run for ten more years, which isn't completely impossible: in the US, some plants from the same technology (PWR) is allowed to run until 70 years!).

And btw, solar in France makes zero sense except in the Mediterranean region, the weather is just not good enough…

I thought the whole issue with wind and solar is that the storage issue isn't yet solved. Nuclear on the other hand is 70 year old technology that is proven to be capable of being the majority energy source of a nation.

We need a law that for megaprojects, local governments and/or federal agencies must respond to requests within X days, or be fined an escalating per-day rate. And if their responses are incomplete, same.

The timeline ballooning as all external parties take their time weighing in and covering their asses, and costs associated with idling construction waiting for same, are getting ridiculous.

Either it's a priority (in which case everyone should treat it as such), or it's not (in which case we should accept we just can't build non-priority projects over a certain scale).

IIRC one of the big problems is that the construction standards a nuclear plant has to meet are the ones in effect when it comes online, not the ones in effect when construction begins, and then costs balloon because the requirements change multiple times in the middle of construction.

If the construction requirements of 1980 are sufficient for a plant operating ten years from now that came online in 1980 then the construction requirements of this year should be sufficient for a plant operating ten years from now even if it hasn't come online yet. So the obvious fix for this is to use the requirements as of the day construction begins rather than the day it ends.

The Maas river at the Tihange plant in Belgium beat its projected 1000-year maximum by a sizable percentage this year, using up about half of the plant's safety margin. Climate change makes such events harder to predict and if such a thing were to happen during construction, you'd absolutely have to reconsider flooding defenses while you still can, anything else would be irresponsible. This sort of cutting corners to essentially make these plants more profitable is (in part) what gives nuclear such a bad rep. Given that several of our supposedly invulnerable plants had serious incidents, I'd say we're still pretty bad at designing and running these things, and in no position to skimp on safety.

> We need a law that for megaprojects, local governments and/or federal agencies must respond to requests within X days, or be fined an escalating per-day rate.

Other than the fact that the federal government fining the federal government has no actual effect, all that making a high-legal stakes response timeline with impossible to concretely define completeness requirements would do is increase litigation and litigation costs around such projects.

The fine proceeds would go to applicant, of course.

Sometimes a five year delay could be a community that sues over a new reactor, then appeals, appeals, etc. Then if that lawsuit was posted here the title might be "US government tries to rush reactor, threatens small town life".

You'd never get megaprojects built then, because no-one would reasonably commit to them given the risk that they undergo scope creep and the steepness of that punishment.

Yeah, that would simply put more obstacles in place. We need less ass covering and bureaucracy and more action. You don't solve that by creating more risk and the need for more ass covering.

It would be easier to just make a law against continued consumption of energy produced from fossil fuels, with the fines focused on when the government eventually breaks the law in order to prevent blackouts.

If you forbid fossil fuels at a point in time (say 2030), the energy market will know ahead when demand will exceed supply. There aren't better incentives avilable if you want the mega projects built on time

EDF has been quietly acquiring land around existing nuclear power plants for many years (like Cattenom, near Luxembourg), with the unstated but likely goal of expanding them rather than going for brand new sites.

In some cases EDF even planned building more reactors from the very beginning, for example at the nuclear power plant of Belleville-sur-Loire: everything was planned for 4 reactors, but only 2 were built. So they can build two extra right there, no need to find a new site.

The current not so small problem is that EDF needs to learn how to build nuclear reactors again. That's what they are currently doing, at great cost and great delays... But if the political will is there, they can start to break ground quite literally tomorrow.

The French have a streamlined regulatory framework including standardized reactor designs and limited public comment that helps to reduces their costs and timelines.

Source: chapter 6 of “Nuclear Power: A Brief Introduction.”

In theory yes, in practice...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Flamanvi...

I think what this points out is that the problem isn't government regulation, it's incompetent design, engineering, procurement, and construction.

The stories in the US about VC Summer and Vogtle construction failures do not point to government regulation being the problem, they point to basic flaws throughout the construction process. Design of the AP1000 that is "unconstructable" according to the EPC contractor, who then goes on to build their own unproven design, which then requires an external check. The problem wasn't that the design had to be certified by the government, the problem was that design wasn't in touch with construction.

It is really all the lawsuits, environmental impact reports, and bureaucracy that slows infrastructure down.

We used to be able to build things quite quickly. E.g. The Bay Bridge was built in 5 years for $77 million (~$1.5 Billion today) in 1931-1936. This is not ground breaking, but law passed to bridge opening.

Just replacing the Eastern span cost $6.5 Billion and took ~18 years to build (1995-2013) from law passed to section opening.

Its not about laws, its lack of skills - we hollowed out manufacturing, have outsource-mania, and we are surprised we can't build?

Decisions have consequences.

Make that 2050 until it affects emissions positively.

If you create hydrocarbon fuels with sequestered CO_2, driven by nuclear electricity, you have a clean, energy-dense battery. Plus, you don’t have to retrofit the entire automobile fleet.

Just make sure to do something about NOx emissions, the cause of the downfall of Diesel in many countries. As long as you burn just about any fuel - hydrocarbon or otherwise - using air you'll end up with NOx as a combustion by-product. Filtering out nitrogen from air is possible - zeolites are used for this purpose in oxygen concentrators - but hard to do at a high enough capacity to satisfy the needs of even modest-sized ICEs so a post-combustion NOx capture/conversion step will be needed regardless of the provenance of the fuel [1].

[1] http://www.meca.org/technology/technology-details?id=5&name=...

Sort of - but it doesn't solve the issue with air quality. Electrification of transport isn't just about CO2. We'll see more instant benefits from having air we can breathe.

A lot of the air pollution from cars is from brake dust and tire micro particles. EVs do result in less brake dust, but the tires are still a problem.

And if you live on the West coast, it was recently discovered that an essential chemical used for tire durability and safety causes mass deaths in salmon. (Or rather, the chemical breaks down into another chemical, which causes mass salmon death, and probably other fish death too).

I will appreciate never having to hear a damn diesel truck again, however. Those things should be taxed heavily for noise pollution in addition tk their massive particulate emissions.

Since you couldn't realistically replace all ICE vehicles right away, it'd help ease the transition and especially in rural areas, air quality might not be a big concern anyway. If you end up with a surplus of clean gas, you could just burn it in dedicated plants and take care of the NOx there, or use it for aviation and in agriculture.

Air quality is a problem that basically all of the first world has solved to varying extents that depend mostly on whether the local areas are affected are rich enough that it tops their lists of problems.

When the developing world gets rich they'll care too.

Is that why the richest people in london enjoy illegally toxic air?

https://www.clientearth.org/latest/press-office/press/top-co...

Every megacity is mega polluted, you cant have clean air with cars

They call them e-fuels.. but the overall efficiency is low. There is a recent Engineering Explained video about this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d0MPg7DxbY

But liquid fuels are incredibly convenient, so maybe they will be worth the high price in certain applications. For example in jet engines for airplanes.

>Plus, you don’t have to retrofit the entire automobile fleet.

The entire transportation fleet, a good chunk of the grid and a good chunk of the infrastructure for heating things.

How long does it take for CO2 sequestered in the ground to form hydrocarbon chains?

Thousands? Probably millions of years. Far longer than human civilization/species will last or need to worry about.

But big auto bought into EVs and climate change once they realized it was a way to make everyone have to buy new cars. So your idea is a non-starter.

People already cycle through cars quite frequently. Big Auto doesn't need to convince anybody to buy a new car. This would be a purposeless conspiracy.

I don't think it's about making everyone buy new cars as much as about realizing that there's a new category of ultra-palatable government subsidies for them to cash in on.

Except most manufacturers are losing money on every EV they sell.

France already has 80-90% of electricity supply being supplied by nuclear. It also exports an enormous amount of power to other European countries.

I don't know exactly how true this is but I believe gas usage for heating is much rarer in France than other countries. They have a lot of electrical storage heating due to the cheap off peak baseload that nuclear gives.

uranium may not be a fossil fuel but it shares all the problems of them

- pollution and waste - it's limited

At the current consumption, uranium would only last 80 years, if all the countries start to build new power plants, won't last more than 2 decades before it's depleted, and we will have the same problem again.

nuclear power is not a solution, is just a small patch.

> At the current consumption, uranium would only last 80 years

Interesting. I had not heard this before, and Wikipedia seems to somewhat agree. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Uranium_resource...:

> As of 2011 the world's known resources of uranium, economically recoverable at the arbitrary price ceiling of US$130/kg, were enough to last for between 70 and 100 years.[60][61][62] In 2007, the OECD estimated 670 years of economically recoverable uranium in total conventional resources and phosphate ores assuming the then-current use rate.[63]

> Light water reactors make relatively inefficient use of nuclear fuel, mostly using only the very rare uranium-235 isotope.[64] Nuclear reprocessing can make this waste reusable, and newer reactors also achieve a more efficient use of the available resources than older ones.[64] With a pure fast reactor fuel cycle with a burn up of all the uranium and actinides (which presently make up the most hazardous substances in nuclear waste), there is an estimated 160,000 years worth of Uranium in total conventional resources and phosphate ore at the price of 60–100 US$/kg.[65]

> uranium would only last 80 years

Thank you for pointing this out. People blithely assume that U235 is available in unlimited supply when it is not.

My own view is that it is a useful partial interim solution that buys us some time. That is worth quite a lot.

Uranium can be used to create weapons, so we don't want to allow Uranium mining everywhere except a few safe spots. If demand for Uranium will increase, then price for Uranium will skyrocket (buyer marker will switch to seller market) and will match prices for other kinds of energy.

Maybe they and China will create a little power envy in the USA, and we can get back on track for some real change and improvements in CO2 pollution containment.

The construction of the only new nuclear reactor in France started fourteen years ago (2007), and is not due before two more years.

It was expected to cost 3.3B€, but in the end will probably cost around 19B€.

The major drawback of nuclear seems to be their large power output and long durability. Once you built the few plants you need (France and Sweden for example) you don't have to build any more for 50 or so years and then the manufacturing capability dies.

Hoping for companies like NuScale, maybe they can get a continuous operation going and churn out cheaper and cheaper plants.

The manufacturing/construction capability for nuclear needs to be global, rather than national. There is plenty of need for new nuclear to sustain and grow the expertise around the world. This goes for the governments as well, but unfortunately governments seem to be abysmal about learning from other countries.

I'm hoping China will leverage this and actually make some real modular mini nuke plants and make the US jealous enough to do the same. The USA has been stuck in the 60s as far as nuclear tech goes. Unpragmatic "environmental" groups have all but killed it here out of Luddite fears of teh nuclear radiation.

Yes, lack of success for exporting nuclear plants is killing nuclear industry in Japan.

This should be Elon’s next startup.

Context needed. This is the cost to get the tools and craftsmenship to build it, thats we lost.

Is it? I've never seen anybody in the field claim that.

What has been learned at Flamanville that could be transferred elsewhere?

What has been learned is that the new third generation pressurised water reactor design was more complicated design than initial thought, as recognized by the Électricité de France. The first operational EPR unit started commercial operation in December 2018.

The gen 3 design is, depending on how you view it, 3 years old. It was found to be too expensive and too complex.

There exist new version of gen 3 reactors and there are design for gen 4 reactors, both claiming to solve many of the issues of the old gen 3 reactors.

Well, the plant in the UK being constructed by EDF, Hinckley Point C is the same design as Flamanville.

Flamanville is the second or third EPR depending on how you count.

Jean Marc Jancovici is one of the most vocal of we can call "Nuclear ecologist" around in France, the content is amazing and he definitely have a point if you want to follow [0].

He is a realist, but in this field we need to go beyond and to open big money for the research into small and decentralized nuclear power.

Every citizen have to know the pros and the cons, and be educated to the risks. Energy provide good living standards, but we have to know the drawbacks and we have to account for externalities in every business model.

This will be the only way to keep our standards of living and keep an habitable home.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGt4XwBbCvA

Janco on HN, finally !

> This will be the only way to keep our standards of living and keep an habitable home.

Jancovici uses physics and maths to prove we definitely won't have western standard of living for 8B people. Even for 2, not for long.

Bonjour.

In France there are reactors, now they are OLD.

OLD is a cost, and also a risk.

France already has gaz (cost is hight), or hydrolic (water daws are all in use at its max in France), but it seems France doesnt want to go the german way and switch on the coal power plants.

The press article mention green peace, while most of people think gren peace are communicant people who doesnt get aware about science news and will applause germany for leaving nuclear (but going COAL) and blame france for keeping nuclear (but having low CO2 energy ratio) like if wastes are worst than CO2 while CO2 is nowday issue.

Government tryed to open the energy market in France, but since it has done that, the consumer prices are only getting highter and highter while the historic company EDF is making profit, and not the new comers who are often at the edge to termination plan. Also, Having a company not being EDF (governement has 80% part of it) to own a reactor is a risk, because profit always come first for a company.

Having new reactor will give more low-CO2 emission energy and give more time to have more decent work (r&d) on renewable energy and stockage (not daws since we already use them all here) probably.

There are risk to have reactor, and also wastes, but the CO2 costs look the best until there is something else.

PS: I'm not a macron side voter; I think many french people think like this; I'm not backing anything with source, because it's just what it is on people minds i guess and i agree a bit to that; so I'm just sharing this here for the discussion

Mr Burns was the most environmentally responsible Simpson's character and likely a real scientific expert. Big shame they selected him for the villan.

Remind us again where he stored nuclear waste ?

If you don't believe that as part of the tragedy, and the misinfluenced public's opinion over nuclear industry, then you probably did not get what the parent really means...

I have a hard time parsing your sentence but if you believe that:

> Mr Burns was the most environmentally responsible Simpson's character and likely a real scientific expert.

then you really need to watch the show again.

He hid nuclear waste in trees.

It doesn't necessarily mean nuclear is intrinsically bad, it means humans can be really bad at handling it.

You want characters like Burns handling a nuclear revival ? Then that's a really good argument to be against nuclear.

The point is that:

* Portrait nuclear energy tycoon as the only villain is sad. Because it reflects a unconscious strong mental imprint of nuclear being fearful.

* The show can portrait coal miner. Instead of hiding nuclear waste in the tree. Coal miner can pollute the sky as some form of "sky painting".

The setup itself is sad.

There is no intention to argue that that bad guy is good, or is better suited to revive nuclear energy.

The real tragedy:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactiv...

Indeed. But let's be clear that those practices are on the bad actors themselves. Let's not paint these tragedies as some form of inherent flaws of nuclear energy.

One thing I cannot fully communicate with posts like this, is that it's not clear what the intention is. By these posts, I refer to posts which uses emotional summary, backed by human loss that has the subject involved. Then leave no trace of the actual rational conclusion from the facts.

It looks just like an intentional emotional manipulation, which plagued most US news reports. This type of approach, makes rational discussion very difficult to progress.

Edit: Look at the child reply. See what emotion brings to a discussion. From nuclear energy to illegal disposal of nuclear waste, then to holocaust. The emotion is increasing, but the subject of the discussion is dissolved in the process without any trace of respect to the other parties in the discussion.

Emotion sucks the rationality from the discussion, and literally deprive the common grounds between people. In the end, achieve nothing.

Ok where do we store it for 10,000 years? Keep in mind we only started agriculture about 10,000 years ago.

In a breeder reactor. Our nuclear "waste" still contains lots of energy. Common nuclear plants only extract a couple of percent of the energy.

Dig a hole and dump it in the hole. Then worry about real problems.

I promise you no mutant monster will arise from the earth to destroy civilization.

The hysteria over where we store this waste is really silly. Even if spray it into the air all over the planet, we'd still release 1/100 the amount of thorium and uranium than is currently being released into the air by the world's coal plants. Therefore even if we spray the waste into the air, it's still safer than coal. Burying it in the ground is much, much safer.

The correct spelling is 'nucilar'.

Whats the word for backing cartoonish monsters because they're on your team?

Reddit has a few subreddits dedicated to uranium investing. I caught wind of this a few months ago, and my investments are doing well.

Some in the community seem to think that the market will 10-20x due to the world waking up to the immediate, pressing need for nuclear. (Insufficient wind/solar capacity, storage, transmission, etc.)

There are also some interesting behaviors going on in the uranium market, where certain players are buying up all of the supply. It's short-squeezeish in nature.

China announcement, French announcement. US uranium exploration. Lots going on.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UraniumSqueeze

For those interested here's the thesis written out by someone at the start of this year.

https://josephcollinsul.medium.com/the-uranium-bull-thesis-c...

Any investment that you caught wind of a few months ago would be doing well

Not this well... https://robinhood.com/stocks/DNN https://robinhood.com/stocks/UEC https://robinhood.com/stocks/CCJ

A better (unintentional) pun would be:

Any investment that you were gassed about a few months ago would be doing well.

France already has one 3rd gen nuclear plant under construction, Flamanville 3, and it's 10 years behind schedule. That's discouraging. France did so well at nuclear plant construction in the 1980s.

France nuclear innovation was very linked to military force and bombs. Over the decades, skills where lost and biggest players in the field are failing companies deep in dept. The enregetical status quo looks good but there is absolutely no research in the field except fusion which is very far away. France lost his nuclear leadership times ago and there is absolutely no reason to wait for innovation here. The risk of a nuclear disaster in the center of e Europe is not to dismiss, with 55 aging reactors across the territory. Wasted genius ressources by politics 101.

Not mentioned there that

>France derives about 70% of its electricity from nuclear energy, due to a long-standing policy based on energy security. Government policy is to reduce this to 50% by 2035. [1]

according to the target set in the "Energy transition for green growth" bill.

[1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...

The recent gas shortage must have shaken everybody awake.

There's been a lot of talk about nuclear (both fusion and fission) recently, and it's great news!

Or is the nuclear cartel astroturfing hard because they know they are circling the drain with regard to cheaper, safer renewables?

OPEC is the official cartel, and its been working to kill off nuclear for decades

I get the fascination with base load and the incredible amount of energy compared to chemical based alternatives. But: 1. What will the net online time be? (Lots of these plants go in maintenance for long stretches of time) 2. Spent fuel? 3. Proliferation risk? 4. Accident mitigation?

I can try to answer your questions. (Disclaimer, I'm a masters student studying systems with a focus on energy systems. Obviously not an expert, and am somewhat biased pro-nuclear.)

1. Net online time for nuclear isn't particularly bad, especially when you consider that other alternatives too go down. [1] Of course you'll need some extra capacity/more plants, but that was anyway the case.

2. I feel this is probably the strongest point that can be held against nuclear. Short-term fuel management is not an issue/already figured out, and climate change is a much quicker risk in the next 50 years, so I'd argue it's still better to go 0-carbon instead of finding a perfect solution right now.

3. I'm not sure if you're referring to proliferation of the fuel or technologies, but both are reasonably well-developed fields that France should not have major problems.

4. Similar to point one - nuclear accidents vs risks/deaths from coal is like comparing flight safety with cars. Sure, airplanes feel unsafe but are statistically MUCH safer than cars. Chernobyl and Fukushima were both avoidable (though that can admitably be said for a lot of accidents). Deaths from pollution itself are in the millions instead. [2]

1. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliab... 2. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

>airplanes feel unsafe but are statistically MUCH safer than cars.

It depends. Are you comparing deaths per kilometer, journey or hour?

Deaths per billion

Type...Journey...km.....Hours

Bus........4.3........0.4.......1.1

Rail.......20.0.......0.6.....30.0

Car........40.0.......3.1....130.0

Plane...170.0......0.05....30.8

Do you want to know the likelihood of dying on your next trip, the next kilometer or in the next hour?

> both avoidable (though that can admitably be said for a lot of accidents)

I'm pro-nuclear, but the need to be circumspect about safety is real.

I always think of a Bruce Cockburn song, "Radium Rain", written in 1986 when visiting Germany right after Chernobyl:

    Every day in the paper
    You can watch the numbers rise
    No such event can overtake us here
    We're much too wise
    In the meantime, don't eat anything that grows
    And don't breathe when the cars go by

Proliferation in the context of nuclear is the risk of terrorists or states intercepting fuel that can be refined to weapon-grade.

Some reactors don't have this risk, but I'm not read on it.

Decades with hundred of nuclear power plants in the world have not seen them be a significant source of fissionable material for terrorists or new nations developing nuclear weapons. See Iran, a nation that has devoted significant resources to such an endeavor, as a case in point.

Spent fuel from nuclear power plants-- probably the more vulnerable point in the supply chain-- is nonetheless difficult to the point of extreme expense & impractical to refine to weapons grade. You would need such large quantities that it would be extremely difficult to steal enough without notice: Someone is going to notice the 200,000 lb cask leaving a storage facility. Then the refinement process is difficult, requiring immense sums of money to built the significant infrastructure required for refinement. North Korea, the newest nuclear power, got there with significant help from the Soviets extending back in the 60's and it still took them decades to get there.

This is all on top of the fact that any modern plant designs use feedstock fuel that is even harder to refine into anything weapons grade, and is much more efficient to the point that spend fuel refinement difficulties dwarfs the above roadblocks for fuel from older designs.

Dirty bombs are more problematic, but also significantly less destructive, and suffer from many of the same logistical hurdles, notably that the material most useful for a dirty bomb is also material that requires massively robust precautions to ensure the thieves don't kill themselves with radiation exposure long before any chance of making use of it. Less useful material that requires fewer precautions is not practical for dirty bombs without significant refinement capacity.

All of this at a time when real measurable deaths from fossil fuel powerplants, their pollution, and their industrial accidents, are themselves more dangerous, right now, than theoretical & difficult to achieve usages of fuel from new nuclear power plants.

Generally speaking, any operator of any reactor can make nuclear weapons if they want to.

Some reactors don't generate weapons-grade isotopes when operated as intended, but if you control the reactor, my understanding is that it is easy to modify it so that it does.

There is no technical safeguard against nuclear proliferation - all of them are political.

France has been running on 75%+ nuclear power mix for the past 50 years and is doing better energy/emissions-wise than almost every other country in the world. Your questions have already been answered, it seems. They seem to have bet on the right horse, and went full steam ahead with it (no pun intended). And now they are supplying all their neighbours with surplus clean energy.

I always point at this when my American "environmental" friends yell at me as a proponent of a Manhattan style project in nuclear tech here in the USA as the solution to climate change.

See also the province of Ontario ("Supply" tab):

* https://www.ieso.ca/power-data

1 - During my study, I visited a nuclear plant. They explained to us the plant is designed around 4 quadrants, each one capable of turning on and off independently of each other. So when one needs maintenance, you just put this one offline, and the others keep running. This way the reactor is never totally shut off, as I understand that starting it from scratch is an expensive operation.

2 - For the spent fuel, France has plenty of strategically maintained relationships in what used to be West African colonies with uranium mines. Why do you think we sent the army during the Mali war ? We cultivate those alliances because they bring a lot on the table, from resources to routes and bases. Nuclear is doubly interesting for us, because we can source it even if Russia or China decide to tell us to go to hell. In case of a conflict, this is priceless.

3 - I don't know anything about proliferation, so can't answer this one.

4 - Accident mitigation is the big problem, IMO. I've seen how they operate inside, and let's just say I'm glad the people that designed the thing were very, very, _very_ good at their job. Because the ones maintaining it have a very relaxed attitude. And the plants are pushed to produce way past their initial expected life span. But I insist, I'm amazed at how good engineers of the 70' were. Those plants are old tech, but they are incredible. However, even if the probability of an accident is low (there are triple safety mechanisms everywhere), the severity of a potential accident is such that I consider nuclear disasters a huge risk that we don't take seriously enough. What's more, it nourishes the growing anti-nuclear sentiment, so we should really get our act together.

The risks of nuclear energy is far more favourable than global warming.

Global warming effects are global, non-linear and there are still many unknowns, which makes it more risky. Nuclear risks are local and the harm is well known. Also nuclear energy is anti-fragile (more disasters means saver plants).

I believe we are far too cautious with building new nuclear plants. Not because I think that nuclear energy is not dangerous, but I believe global warming is a far greater risk.

It's not an "or" proposition.

Nuclear energy should not be our only source of energy for other reasons like resiliance (diversity in sources make a society more robust), power balance (you don't want one type of industry to have it all) and long term cost opportunity (some energy may prove cheaper later if we also develop them).

And since we are using nuclear energy, we engage in this risk, which we should mitigate given the magnitude of it. Ignoring it is not rational.

Opposing the risk of a nuclear accident to globalm warming is a false dichotomie. Like stating we don't spend money on fighting covid because cancer is more deadly, more likely, and need all the money we have.

None of those questions are new, nor show stoppers for existing plants. Why do you think the existing procedures may not be satisfactory? (I'm assuming you think so based on the way you ask the question)

EDIT: to be clear, I'm not asking this as a backhanded question. I'm genuinely curious why this is not seen as a "solved problem", at least in a country with relatively strong government institutions

Well, the way previous generations fizzled suggests these problems aren’t that solved after all.

Just 1 long term waste storage has ever been built in the world, plant productivity has always been relatively low (initial manufacturing delays, refueling, minor accidents, refurbishments), many anti-proliferation techniques just over-produce rad-waste.

Oh, and if we were to buildout nuclear globally how long would the ore reserves last?

It fizzled due to FUD. Existing plants work and are defensible. The waste can be stored safely.

In emerging economies new designs can be used, but they'll probably have to be trialed in a developed economy. You could also pursue economic policy that has developing economies fund the research instead of letting them expect handouts.

> Oh, and if we were to buildout nuclear globally how long would the ore reserves last?

If we fully burn all available nuclear fuel, it will last about 5 billion years. [0]

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20130114062518/http://sustainabl...

France has significantly less spent fuel to deal with since they allow civilian energy production to reprocess spent fuel back into usable fuel.

True, but breeder technology has a lot more potential for weaponry proliferation (part of the reason France is so much invested in nuclear is precisely because of that.)

And it’s not as easy as recycling empty glass bottles… the French struggled to keep their breeders online and keep them economical (but then the military we’re still happy so…)

1. if a real effort is put in, 10 years or so

2. Solved problem. Spent fuel is not really an issue, we have solutions and areas to put it in both Europe and the USA. Only green Luddites hold it back. Storage really does not take up a lot of space.

3. Next to none if the right type of fuel stock and reactor is chosen. Obviously security comes in, but that is also a solved issue

4. Lots of modern designs literally cannot go critical, I suggest we use those, instead of old designs just because they're "a known known".

5. don't build reactors that can go critical near known tsunami shorlines.

6. At worst we'll surely have fusion by the end of the century and can then retire the nuclear plants. Solar and wind without a 100x improvement in battery storage tech do not make sense right now as the sole producer of energy like a lot of unrealistic "environmental" groups claim.

This was going well until point 6. Fusion isn't anywhere near practical in 2021, it requires lots of investment and research to do even a first prototype. And it is a high tech marvel that won't be cheap to operate. So the funding for it may eventually dry out in favour of boring tech fission plants.

I said by the end of the century, not 2021. Fission plants are the answer until fusion becomes practical.

> 1. What will the net online time be?

Hard to say tbh. But these reactors probably aren't offline as much as you think. They shut down for 1 month every 18-24 months for refueling.

> 2. Spent fuel?

France is the world leader in this regard. Remember that 17% of France's entire power comes from _recycled_ nuclear. But if you want to see what their entire nuclear waste. This is _decades_ worth, and I'm betting much smaller than you expected.[0] (coal is doing this on a a daily or weekly basis). Just for fun, let's look at Russia's too.[1] We're literally just talking a warehouse. People vastly overestimate the waste and what to do with it. It is fine where it is for hundreds of years. The only "problem" that we have with "long term storage" is how to store it somewhere where if somehow all knowledge was lost that future humans with no radiation detecting equipment could accidentally release waste (quite a high bar, and not one we're concerned with other long lasting waste like lead or heavy metals). We have a few hundred years to figure that out.

> 3. Proliferation risk?

None? It is France. They already have nuclear weapons. But while we're talking about it, Megatons to Megawatts[2] has been the best deproliferation project in history, reducing the number of nuclear warheads by over 20,000.

> 4. Accident mitigation?

Very low. This is also over estimated. We have a very early reactor which no other country besides Russia built because it had the ability to explode. And we have another event where we didn't know earthquakes could happen of that size until basically right before said earthquake happened. These are major disasters, but the two should not be conflated. Even including these, they are far less environmentally damaging than the fossil fuels we've been using. The major problem with nuclear is that disasters are both temporally and spatially localized. There's advantages and disadvantages to this in terms of dealing with the consequences. On one hand, it is a lot to clean up. On the other hand the country that created the disaster is the one that suffers the most (as opposed to what we're seeing with oil spills and the entire climate crisis, which is not temporally localized and thus the danger is not weighted properly).

[0] https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5uN0bZBOic&t=105s

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program

>> 3. Proliferation risk?

> None? It is France. They already have nuclear weapons. But while we're talking about it, Megatons to Megawatts[2] has been the best deproliferation project in history, reducing the number of nuclear warheads by over 20,000.

More nuclear trained personnel, designs, materials, and plants mean more opportunities for someone to acquire technology or materials.

More opportunities - yes, more risk - not necessarily. Interested people already know how to build a nuclear bomb, there is very little mystery there, not much need to steal designs. The greatest risk here is someone stealing enriched fuel, because getting it is the hard part of building the nuclear bomb.

If a big country like France can handle guarding hundreds of small nuclear weapons, they can certainly handle guarding nuclear fuel in small number of additional NPPs. We are not talking about building NPPs in every small town guarded by incompetent local volunteers. Trained armed personnel and accountability of processes and personnel in few facilities can prevent this risk.

By who? Someone not... French? I think you misunderstand both how difficult that would be to pull off and how much enriched uranium you would need for a bomb. Bombs and reactors don't use the same materials. Bombs use a shit ton more enriched materials. If you look back at that M2M page you'll notice how much highly enriched material was turned into unenriched (500 tonns -> 15000 tons, in case you didn't click). That's a pretty big differential.

I'm sorry, but you're just spreading FUD. There's a reason the Iran Deal is a fine deal. But I don't expect anyone to understand this without 1) reading the fucking thing and 2) actually understanding nuclear physics and reactor design (this should be rather unsurprising, but for some reason everyone thinks they are qualified on this matter). I suspect you don't meet either qualification, given your comment.

1. What will the net online time be? (Lots of these plants go in maintenance for long stretches of time)

The term you're referring to is capacity factor. Nuclear power typically has the highest capacity factor of any energy source. [1] [2] For reference, nuclear is 92%, while wind is 35% and photovoltaic solar at 25%.

> 2. Spent fuel?

It can be reprocessed, reclaiming over 90% of fuel. Even without reprocessing, nuclear fuel's energy density is such that a tiny amount of waste is produced per unit of energy. For comparison, the sum total of all of the USA's nuclear electricity production occupies a volume the footprint of a football field, and 10 yards high. [3]

> 3. Proliferation risk?

Nuclear fuel is refined to about ~20% fissile material. Nuclear weapons typically need over 80% or 90%. Countries would need to build their own enrichment facilities to bring nuclear fuel to weapons grade uranium, and then further refine that to plutonium. If they had such facilities they'd be able to refine natural uranium to weapons grade anyway.

> 4. Accident mitigation?

First of all, even if you include Chernobyl nuclear power (which didn't even have secondary storage) has the lowest fatalities per unit of energy produced [4]. People often neglect the fact that fossil fuels kill millions each year due to air pollution. Renewables like hydroelectricity have had accidents far more devastating that nuclear power [5]. Nuclear plants are expensive because a lot of effort is made to make them safe, and to contain a potential failure. People often forget that the USA had a reactor meltdown analogous to Chernobyl during the Three Mile Island incident. Except nobody died and there was no widespread contamination because the reactor had a big concrete condom over it, unlike Chernobyl.

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/183680/us-average-capaci...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor#Worldwide

3. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...

4. https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

Not so sure about Banquiao, at it "took place during the Chinese Cultural Revolution when most people were busy with the "revolution" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

The "Cultural Revolution" began in 1966. In such a context an otherwise avoidable catastrophe may happen.

This Revolution followed the "Great Leap Forward" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward ), with famines. "In the subsequent famines of the early 1960s popularly attributed to the Great Leap Forward, Henan was one of the hardest hit and millions of lives were lost." Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henan#Modern_Era .

Moreover all this came after a civil war and violent Japanese invasion, during which dams were bombed, causing "massive flooding in Henan" (same source).

In such a context and chain of events a nuclear reactor and its nearby spent fuel may cause some headaches.

Banqiao: predicting and adverting this catastrophe was possible, but given such a context nobody was able to do so.

> Nuclear fuel is refined to about ~20% fissile material. Nuclear weapons typically need over 80% or 90%. Countries would need to build their own enrichment facilities to bring nuclear fuel to weapons grade uranium, and then further refine that to plutonium. If they had such facilities they'd be able to refine natural uranium to weapons grade anyway.

I've wondered about that. On one hand, the reasoning above makes sense. On the other, people who know far more than I do say there is proliferation risk. I suspect there is something I don't understand.

The proliferation risk is that countries build enrichment facilities claiming it's for nuclear electricity production, but instead used for weapons production. This can be addressed by prohibiting the construction of enrichment facilities and having countries that already possess nuclear weapons enrich fuel for other countries pro-bono.

> On the other, people who know far more than I do say there is proliferation risk.

Who? I mean I hear people on the news state it, but never any concerns at a certain 3 letter agencies that is not the department of education. I haven't heard a serious nuclear physicist be concerned with the Iran Deal. And when Iran broke the deal (not long ago) those same people knew it was a bluff, because Iran didn't even have the ability to produce enough enriched material to create bombs. Even running their enrichment centers at full capacity. Which btw, these enrichment centers don't scale linearly, which is why it is easy to vet through satellite photography. Weapon enrichment centers are typically kinda obvious. This may be a key part in what you aren't understanding. I also linked in another comment the Megatons to Megawatts program. You'll notice there the conversion rate of weapons material to fuel was about 30x (remember, reversing that process is not linear).

Are there any existing reactor types, blueprints or built, that are engineered toward utilizing spent fuel first and foremost?

If not, I hope France seriously considers using breeder reactors to reduce leftover radioactive material.

Otherwise, I think this is fantastic news. In fact even if they build light water reactors I think it is the ideal base load solution to bridge the gap from oil and coal.

Aren't reactors like that typically a proliferation risk? That might not be an issue as long as France doesn't decide to start selling its nuclear power plants to questionable countries again.

Both recycling fuel and breeder reactors have side effects that could be used for proliferation.

France is one of the few countries that do recycle spent fuel. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/frances-efficiency-in-t...

France is a nuclear capable country, so the proliferation risk is fairly low from what I understand. They could even sell the plants abroad and bring the waste back to France to be recycled.

Germany is not a nuclear capable country, and I am not sure how they feel about France being their primary source of energy (or enriched uranium, if they have their own plants). Hopefully they prefer French nuclear energy to Russian oil and gas.

> Germany is not a nuclear capable country, and I am not sure how they feel about France being their primary source of energy (or enriched uranium, if they have their own plants). Hopefully they prefer French nuclear energy to Russian oil and gas.

Considering europe has a harmonized energy market[0][1], does that really matter?

France, germany and the benelux are so tightly economically integrated anyways, that doing harm to one would result in massive chaos in the others.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Network_of_Transmissi... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Market_in_Electricity...

France recycle spent fuel for whole Europe. In order to reuse a part of plutonium, most of the plant consume a mix of uranium and plutonium: mox. AFAIK, France has huge piles of useless plutonium.

France has had atom bombs since 1960, so that train has sailed.

This may be the one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8ApH-0YHkA

After Superphenix I don't think they are in any hurry to develop the LMFBR.

There was ASTRID, another sodium cooled fast reactor design, that was cancelled a couple of years ago before it got off the drawing board.

(Answering again as the previous answer was attached to the wrong parent when the articles were merged)

These 'fast breeder reactors' are difficult to tame.

In France: ASTRID burnt ~700 millions euros and didn't get past plans. Before it the 'Superphenix' project burnt ~8 billions euros, was built, had a long chain of incidents, then was canceled. Before it the 'Phenix' project ran then had serious problems ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix#Earlier_work_... ). Before it the 'Rapsodie' project also ended with problems.

Notwithstanding numerous projects in other nations. Nowadays Russia (and India, to an extent) is the only nation pursuing this path.

Yes, look at traveling wave reactors.

Nuclear energy is THE power source of NIMBY-ism, relatively clean, ecological, always available but just so long as it's next door to somebody else. The Germany plans to do away with this power source with come back to bite them badly in the next thirty years.

Nuclear is the most expensive form of energy on the market. If you fast forward two decades, countries will be producing power at vastly different cost levels that will dictate their economic success. Those relying on nuclear will be piling on debt for getting power way above market prices.

Germany never had a substantial nuclear deployment. It peaked around 20GW. About 8 remains. The disappearance of 16GW from the grid was a complete non event. No blackouts. No instability. It just happened gradually and now its gone. The remaining 8 are tiny compared to daily fluctuations in wind and solar that are also not an issue. In terms of base load it is completely irrelevant whether it stays or goes. It's certainly not worth paying a lot for. If you replace 20GW with a few hundred GW of wind and solar, you end up with plenty of capacity and baseload. That's more or less what happened in the last few decades. The French already import excess power from Germany and elsewhere below the price they are selling their own nuclear power quite often.

Nuclear never mattered in Germany other than for military strategic reasons that stopped being relevant when Russia withdrew their tanks from the DDR 30 years ago. All that remains is cold war era obsolete plants that are expensive to keep going. Shutting them down was going to happen no matter what (because they are obsolete and near end of life) and the decision to not build replacement plants was pretty much a constant. The debate around that was pretty much over before Fukushima already. All that did was fast track some of the decision making. It remains a popular and uncontroversial decision in Germany.

Macron is announcing intentions and plans in the middle of an election season where Macron is under a lot of pressure from right wing populist parties. This nuclear push is very much motivated by nationalist sentiments and Macron is in damage control mode as he's losing voters to several right wing parties; some of which you might classify as far right or even neo fascist.

We'll see what remains of those intentions and plans after the elections. Election time posturing is not to be confused with actually policy to spend many billions on nuclear. Assuming he actually wins, he might find himself once more forming a government with a few other parties that will have strong opinions on this topic and not a lot of budget to allocate to a wide range of topics competing for attention. Until that government is a reality, all you have is a politician trying to stay in power trying to appeal to voters currently entertaining the thought to vote for someone else. Even with these announcements, we're still talking a net decline in nuclear capacity over time. It's just slowing it down slightly.

Personally, I think it is wise for the French to keep the knowledge to build reactors going for another generation. Additionally, exporting that knowledge to e.g. the UK is good for their economy. Hinkley Point C is being built by French EDF. Of course, there are plenty of scandals surrounding that particular setup related to cost overruns, delays, etc. That seems to be a constant with nuclear. One thing is certain, it won't be cheap power. Gas is cheaper, even with the recent price increases. Saving money is not a reason to go nuclear. It never was. Whether the UK ends up buying more is very much up in the air. The drama around Hinkley Point C is probably not helping the nuclear case currently. And having to send the money to France is probably not helping that case.

Friend of a friend is literally an expert on base load provision. What you’ve said about solar and wind providing base load is untrue. You need nuclear (or gas etc) to keep the grid stable. Your base load cannot come from solar or wind, it is literally impossible, this is why we use the term “base load”.

Who's going to invest though, when an accident in an entirely different country caused by issues your reactor might not even be susceptible to can easily get your project shut down by the fleeting winds of public opinion?

This new French energy supplier also advertises 100% nuclear-based energy: https://www.isotope.energy

EDIT: Huh, this was supposed to be a response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29168027 but apparently it got attached to the wrong parent when the articles were merged.

There was ASTRID, another sodium cooled fast reactor design, that was cancelled a couple of years ago before it got off the drawing board.

Excuse my ignorance but I'm wondering how difficult/feasible would it be to have all CO2 captured from burning coal etc and thus making them zero emission.

For me, what emerges from this story is the lack of anticipation on the part of the French government. For years, nuclear power was discredited because it was not environmentally friendly, so we shut down power plants, and now we have to refabricate them? All this makes no sense. Moreover, the production of a nuclear power plant is very long, how are we going to do it in the meantime?

Wasn't many of the reactors shut down in Europe in need of being decommissioned anyway? You shouldn't run a nuclear reactor forever and ever, and most of the reactors in Europe are quite old.

I know there are cases of decommissioning too early, or even a reactor that was fully built but not even started operation (I think Tom Scott had a video on that?), but I don't think that's the common case.

They were in "need" of decommissioning because necessary repairs had been intentionally stalled to the point of making them politically untenable.

many nuclear reactors in a lot of countries also have very low yields compared to modern reactors. (for instance, most nuclear reactors in the netherlands have been disbanded because they provided little power)

Nuclear has been in a holding pattern for years in France while they waited to see if the EPR unit being built at Flamanville 3 would work out.

There was also a scandal a few years ago when the state-owned nuclear construction company Areva acquired Le Creusot Forge. It turned out that there had been a decades long coverup of weaknesses in the steel forged there for nuclears plants, and falsification of documents.

I completely fail to understand why some think France didn't try to build new reactors for decades. This is not true! We tried , however it is a running disaster.

The problem here isn't "political will".

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

At the current consumption, uranium will only last 80 years, with the new surge for nuclear plants, will not even last 25

thorium won't last much more, and it's not even viable at this point, this seems like a desperate attempt to maintain the power consumption per capita for some more years before the inevitable collapse.

That's not true. We can use breeder reactors to produce more fissile material. Also, the "80 years" estimate does not include uranium reserves that are not currently being exploited. There is plenty of uranium in the ocean and it is constantly being replanished from the ground.

Nick Touran, occasionally active on HN, has a nice overview at https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-is-...

Will this be EPR 2 style design?

Flamanville has been super disappointing however in France.

Well, somebody has to help Germany accomplish its "Energiewende"

I interpret your sarcasm with amusement, but also depression. it's really sad to see how Germany turned away from nuclear evergy. It seems like the 3 main soures are now:

1. Coal,

2. Renewables (Solar, wind, perhaps ocean currents),

3. imported oil.

Coal should be deprecated already. Renewables are dependent on environmental effects, in particular solar doesn't work in emergency situations such as volcano eruptions rendering the sky dark. For oil, we depend on third parties, of which we know that they do not have our best interests at heart.

It is depressing to see the political situations on these metrics, especially the idea which gets pushed now, which claims that everything will be alright if we just optimize our energy consumption. It ain't gonna happen. People won't meaningfully reduce their energy-consumption, at least not in a way that would justify the use of fossil fuels.

So what are we left with? Nuclear is the only good bet you could make right now, while waiting out on fusion.

edit: I often think of this meme which goes around, talking about the fact that people are much more willing to donate to a single child in need, rather than a group of children who equally need help. People are prone to take action when they feel like their individual action makes an impact.

I feel like this is similar to the fossil fuels - vs - nuclear debate. We know, that about 20mil ppl die every single year due to air pollution. We also know, that a very small, countable number of people died of nuclear accidents, in the complete history of humanity, ever, in total.

Yet we seem to think that the few nuclear accident's fatalities are worse than the ones caused by air pollution. Why? Because we are in some way biased to give more meaning to individual events, rather than rates of change that are around us. And it'll break our backs if we don't carefully examine the problem at hand.

You forgot imported gas, but has the same problems as Oi, maybe worse because the conflicting party is geographically "around the corner" instead of on the other side of the globe.

Germanys relationship with Nuclear power had been one with Tons of absurdity from the get to go. To name a few examples (in no specific order):

- When West Germany decided where they should (temporary) store nuclear waste they had a list of potential abandon mines. While this list wasn't quite up to modern standards it was well thought out. But in the end they choose a mine which not only wasn't on the list, but was known to not be well suited. Reason: Pettiness, east Germany had just done so too, so they choose a mine at the border to east Germany.

- The Anti-Nuclear Power movement in West Germany was partially sponsored and instigated by East Germany (through so where most non-small movements).

- after Fukushima plans to stop using Nuclear Power where moved up costing the State millions due to existing contracts and being questionable. I mean the danger of Atom power had been well understood at that point in question, Fukushima didn't change this, nor did it unearth any (not already well known) huge flaws. So this asks the question if it is so important why wasn't it started years earlier, if it isn't why move so abrupt?

- Germany loves importing nuclear power, not only from France but also from other countries with lower safety standards of which the reactors aren't that far of Germany (geologically seen).

> after Fukushima > why wasn't it started years earlier

The phase-out was announced in 2000 and started https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out#German... and was effective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out#/media...

> Germany loves importing nuclear power

Each and every nation connected to the European supergrid imports when needed and exports when possible, because it is much more efficient than trying hard to maintain autonomy. The is eases balancing production (which may originate from anywhere) with consumption.

Here Germany often acts as a provider for Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Switzerland (which also may provide it to other needing nations).

Germany export surplus (physical flows) is positive for years, albeit it decreased (from 34 to 18 TWh in 2020). Source: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/news/2020/publi...

Well it may depress you even more that I didn't even expect constructive feedback like yours when I pulled in Germany into this discussion (it is the Elephant in the European Grid-Operators-Room anyways).

> 1. Coal

Yes, from Poland

> 2. Renewables

Yes, definetly

> Solar

Already plans underway to force every new home to have solar panels on its roof, regardless of the direction of the gabel and regardless how non-significant solar energy is in Germany anyways. Existing home-owners love the idea of increasing construction costs for future home-owners...

> Wind

Already plans underway to massively increase density of windmills per km, regardless that the existing mills already are turned off for most of the year (because it would melt the grid to keep them running), regardless that we're chopping down huge amounts of trees to make room for them, regardless of the environmental impact of planting unremovable kilo-tons of concrete footing into the ground

> Ocean Currents

No, for two reasons. One: Maintenance costs make this technology inefficient (rust). Two: Since we're world champions in moral soundness our whole tidal-range-gifted coastline is deemed a national park and as such is forever excluded from any such infrastructure work

> 3. imported oil

Already doing that.

I fear, unless there is some crucial pain of whatever sorts on behalf of the average German, our nomenclatura will continue to proceed with the current polciy of "nearshoring responsibility". Because:

> It ain't gonna happen. People won't meaningfully reduce their energy-consumption

German consumers still don't do that, despite paying the highest electricity bills in the developed world (almost twice of what the French pay). Apparently we can still afford to kick down the can (or rather to kick it across the border).

> German consumers still don't do that, despite paying the highest electricity bills in the developed world (almost twice of what the French pay).

No (France .32, Germany .19), and this comparison isn't sound because the financial models differ: Germany finances its transition by taxes on energy, and France mainly finances it thanks to other taxes (the consolidated tax burden is way higher in France).

Prices: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

Moreover higher prices are a way to moderate consumption and entice energy-saving approaches.

> in particular solar doesn't work in emergency situations such as volcano eruptions rendering the sky dark.

I'm not familiar with this. Is this a common problem in Germany? Are southern states like Baden-Württemberg more afflicted or less compared to more northern ones like Schleswig-Holstein?

No, it is a hypothesis of mine, that a large volcano eruption may disrupt the function of solar within a large area that was affected and which depends on solar energy. A particular example may be

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1815_eruption_of_Mount_Tambora

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

A single "year without summer" may be the fatal blow to a society basing their energy on solar energy, so I hypothesize.

No, but winter is. Inclination of the earth means solar produces considerably less energy in winter and this is even more prevalent in far northern/southern latitudes. Also cloud coverage can drastically reduce solar output.

Germany's electricity, as of H1 2021, actually comes from:

  1. Renewables: 41%
  2. Coal: 26%  
  3. Natural gas: 17%  
  4. Nuclear: 12%

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

New solar and wind have fallen drastically in price over the past decade and look like a very good bet right now.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=48736

Actually grouped:

1. Fossil fuels: 42.9%

2. Renewables: 41%

3. Nuclear: 11.7%

Actually split:

1. Lignite: 17.8%

2. Natural gas: 16.7%

3. Wind onshore: 16.4%

4. Nuclear: 11.7%

5. Solar: 9.5%

6. Hard coal: 8.4%

7. Biomass: 7.6%

8. Wind offshore: 4.0%

9. Others: 3.2%

8. Hydropower: 3.1%

Actually not as bad as I thought it would be!

In recent years, the collaboration between France and Germany in energy production was very beneficial. There are times, when Germany does import electricity from France, this is increasing the profitability of the nuclear reactors, as they can be run at a higher percentage of their capacity, which generally is larger than the French requirements. To be able to follow the varying requirements of the grid, they usually run at 75% load on average. Selling surplus capacity is very attractive then. On the other side, there are times when surplus renewable energy is very welcome in France, when the reactory are struggling to keep up with demand, e.g. when they are low on cooling capacity due to low waters. Germany is still a net electricity exporter.

Germany "exports" as much as in "dumping excess energy onto it's neighbouring countries grids to keep its own grid from melting" – which is why we run the worst electricity export business in the world, having to pay our neighbours money as they aren't taking it for free.

It’s cool for the neighbours though, especially france which is a historical exporter (owing to its stable and relatively efficient nukes). When germany pays you 5c to take a kWh off their grid and italy 30 to get one there's good money to be made if your grid can cope.

> On the other side, there are times when surplus renewable energy is very welcome in France, when the reactory are struggling to keep up with demand, e.g. when they are low on cooling capacity due to low waters.

That’s usually not true fwiw, germany tends to export when nobody needs the electricity e.g. fair weather with high winds, especially week-ends.

And it’s not so much exporting as dumping, german electricity prices regularly go negative because winds crush the grid and they need to shift it so they don’t melt.

The “collaborative” aspect is that france has a large and resilient grid well connected to less provisioned southern neighbors (wholesale prices in spain and italy tend to be quite high), so they can arbitrate and profit some.

But they also must, because continental europe is a synchronous grid so if germany melts down it fucks up the entire continent.

I have been watching https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE?wind=true&solar=false for past 2 days... Winds weak, yet even when electricity was expensive yesterday around 6PM, Germany was pushing to France, mostly coal generated electricity... Someone cares to explain?

Nah it's cool they got Nord Stream 2, so they good.

Russia will provide them all the energy they need, and the US will provide them defense against Russia. Perfect!

- edit -

Is it still morally sound if you outsource the immorality elsewhere?

Hehe, Russia's just for heating. France for everything else. Poland, Hungary and Greece do our border checks. America does our defense. China is our only customer left and all our "dirty jobs" are done by Eastern Europeans.

If that's what it takes to be morally sound - then bring it on destiny, I say, bring it on!

Edit: This a German's attempt at sarcasm, please indugle me!

I laughed :)

Is there a German version of "cutting off your nose to spite your face" [0]?

I get German Greens have a very specific agenda for historical reasons, but sheesh.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_off_one%27s_nose_to_...

> I get German Greens have a very specific agenda for historical reasons, but sheesh.

Germany has been ruled by the CDU for the last 16 years so I'm not sure what exactly the Greens have to do with the current energy policies of Germany?

I imagine adversaries of the West are having the biggest laugh at us voluntarily giving up key commodity production abilities in the name of combatting climate change.

The historical problem of Russia is inability of exporting any produce other than raw materials, on account of having Europe as neighbour which can produce anything easier and often cheaper.

But now, with the carbon tax and gas prices in EU, I wonder if Russian mfg capacity will suddently become competitive.

The funniest thing would be Europe pricing itself out of Russian oil due to carbon tax, and then buying now-cheap goods from Russia made based on affordable oil.

They may be relieved, being the people who suffer most from climate change. It's not much of a laugh.

Please someone help Spain as well

I really like the promise of green energy source. I do see the huge advancements made in terms of safety.

I have a question around waste management though: Do we know if there are big improvements here? IOW - https://apnews.com/article/washington-business-nuclear-waste... bothers me.

Yes: https://international.andra.fr/solutions-long-lived-waste/ci...

Macron says things a year before the next presidential election.

Assuming they really set this project in motion, there's plenty of time for the next government to cancel it.

Am I reading correctly that the EPR only has enough water for 24 hours of passive cooling?

https://www.google.com/search?q=epr+emergency+feedwater+syst...

I guess they have to build with the tech they have, but it would be nice if they'd spent the last few decades researching better designs.

Hopefully not one of those: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattenom_Nuclear_Power_Plant

What are you referring to? The list of industrial accidents? I don’t think it’s fair to criticize this without comparing to the record of a non nuclear facility of similar scale.

Injuries and death are sadly a part of life at all large industrial plants.

The only way nuclear will come back is serious practical next generation reactors. We could have built these since the 70s and didn't. Rather waste money on fusion and renewables.

Based on first principles, nuclear is the cheapest. Its historical path dependency that it isn't.

Fission breeder reactors have the potential to use the least amount of land, be the safest form of energy, have the lowest cost of fuel (essentially free)and use the least amount of total resources (steel, concrete and so on).

These could be used for all kinds of applications, including creating of medical isotopes, nuclear batteries, industrial heat and power.

Non if this is new, these insights are from the 70s and in 50-100 years people will look back and ask 'why were these people don't doing it? They had all the technology, it makes no sense'.

> Macron says France will build new nuclear energy reactors (reuters.com)

France were about to build new nuclear energy reactors anyways. They had a 5-8 new plants in planning for this decade.

As Europe's dependence on polluting coal and Russian gas increases, France is making the right move. I hope other major European countries will follow suit.

It would be more important if Macron would announce a solution for the nuclear waste problem in France. But I guess it won‘t be stored in his garden.

Makes me wonder if this is not push back from the U.S. submarine deal with Australia.

With the sell of Alstom to the US, is France still able to build nuclear reactor ?

Alstom hasn’t been purchased by a US company AFAIK.

Are you talking about the sale of its power sector to GE in 2014? It is mostly about turbines, not the nuclear aspect, which is more typically under the expertise of Areva NC / Orano Cycle <https://www.orano.group/en>.

> It is mostly about turbines

Turbines used in nuclear power plants as well as nuclear ships. That sale was/is a major scandal in France.

Steam turbine is steam turbine no matter where steam comes from

You'd think so but that's not the case. Anyway the problem is mostly an independance one and there was no other French companies doing this.

I appreciate you, nuclear energy. Just don't have meltdowns.

This is great news for the Chinese subcontractors who'll get to do the parts we forgot about.

At least we'll have a debate topic during next year election cycle that is not immigration or Islam - that will be a change.

The job of the nuclear security agency will be tricky next year : they'll have to double their effort ("The President does not want an accident making the news") but also stay quieter than usual ("The President does not want any kind of small incident making the news".)

They're independant in theory, of course, and they want to do their job well, but they have biases and bosses who have bosses, etc... I doubt they'll let anything big slip just for électoral purpose, but the scrutiny on their job (especially from the left wing press) will be interesting to see...

Smart man. I can't believe I'm saying this about _Macron_. We _have to_ figure out a way to build reactors cheaply and safely, and you can't do that without the political will, unfortunately. If you could, electricity would be "too cheap to meter" by now already.

The political will didn't fail. The EPR reactor in Flamanville is a work-in-progress since 2007. Albeit it was scheduled to start in 2012 it isn't yet. It will cost at least 19.1 billions euros (initial budget: 3.4 billions euros). No governments pulled the plug on this disaster. How exactly isn't it "political will"?

Political will would be to commit to building _many_ reactors in the future, cheaply and safely. Cost overruns are a thing because this is still exotic, bespoke engineering, and it doesn't have to be. In fact, if nuclear is to succeed, it _can't_ be.

The EPR is a new generation (new reactor design).

As usual ramping it up implies to build one (the 'tête de série') or at max a few ones, then to launch series. We always did it this way.

Since 2005 4 projects were launched (France: Flamanville, Finland: Olkiluoto, China: Taishan, UK: Hinkley Point). The two first ones are ongoing disasters. Taishan was late and overbudget. Hinkley Point announced, 2 years into its launch, that it will be overschedule and overbudget.

In such a context launching now a huge amount of projects isn't realistic. When a project is late due to a lack of skills and project-management abilities (there is a report about this, the "rapport Folz"), launching 6 new projects may not be a terrific idea.

Is the _underscores_ around words supposed to signify something? Or am I just using the wrong browser to view HN and it's not rendering or something. Sorry if this is an obtuse question I'm new here.

It's a Reddit thing, it makes the text bold on there but people seem to use it on here by accident.

It's older than that, gmail (also maybe MSN messenger?) used to have underscores italicize text, and asterisks would bold text.

Probably habit on the part of the OP from other markup languages, to show emphasis. HN uses asterisks * for italics/emphasis: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

Was the full article title, "President Macron: France to build new nuclear energy reactors", too long? It's much more accurate.

Perhaps the submitter thought it was clickbait. I can see the argument either way, but have restored the fuller title now.

They oughta give up on the EPR and build AP1000s.

Why would France, which has specifically built its civilian nuclear fleet for independence from the US, want to rely on the American company Westinghouse?

France already did so. Their current reactor architecture (pressurized-water) was Westinghouse's (France bought a license in the 1970's). They even coined a partnership, see https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/cen-v054n002.p005

Because mr PaulHoule from hackernews owns shares from the company that makes them

Same from people all over europe who for decades pushed down France for its Nuclear efforts

Now that the US is working toward catching up, they all voice they pro-"US"-nuclear

It's very sad, europe is full of cowards

But yet again China ahead of everyone else because they are free from these little "marketshare" fights

Westinghouse is bankrupt many times over, if I was a shareholder I would be busted.

EPR was designed by followers of Amory Lovins that wanted to make a reactor which is unconstructable at any cost and schedule.

They tried building an EPR in Finland and it is a decade behind schedule and nobody cares because the people working on it have the best paying job they ever had.

They did get an EPR running in China but had fuel damage right away.

AP1000 is running in China for real and will be running at Vogtle in Georgia USA next year. There have been so many ownership changes that I would have said AP1000 was a Japanese design 10 years ago, now it is effectively a Chinese design.

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