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Comment by _ph_ | Hacker News Reader

France doesn't have any good answer on how to solve energy problems. Yes, they currently have a large amount of nuclear reactors - probably the most nuclear industry nation on the planet. However, most of them are aging and so far they fail to build new plants at a rate to sustain their production long term. They have 1 in construction, much delayed and with huge cost overruns. Even if they build another 10 that only delays the switch, they would have to replace 50 nuclear power plants. Their nuclear future so far depends on prolonging the run times of the existing plants.

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Yes but even those problems are far easier to handle than the ones of renewables. On one side we have investment problems, large scale planning issues, political issues, workforce issues. On the other side we simply have the tech ... just not existing at all (and nobody knows if it will).

Current rollout of renewables in France has also been a financial disaster and I don't see many people talking about that.

>Yes but even those problems are far easier to handle than the ones of renewables.

I don't think so. Look at UK's recent transition to renewables. They're making big moves nowadays, but we only talk about Germany. France is going backwards (it was an excellent idea to build nuclear plants after WW2, but not so much today compared to renewables' plunging cost and progress in energy storage).

France's renewable story has also been a disaster, 120 billions euros invested (half of the total cost of the whole nuclear grid (!) ) for 5% of the electricity production. Even Flamanville isn't as bad as that, there's hope it'll be good for future plants, that was just completely wasted.

France needs renewables, if they don't want to ruin themselves and build 150 additional reactors. If they want to become carbon neutral at some point...

"On the other side we simply have the tech ... just not existing at all (and nobody knows if it will)."

What tech doesn't exist in your opinion? P2G is tech with "large scale planning issues".

> France needs renewables, if they don't want to ruin themselves and build 150 additional reactors. If they want to become carbon neutral at some point...

As I said in another comment, France's investment in renewable has actually been even worse in terms of results than Flamanville. 120 billions euros (half of the cost of the whole nuclear grid) for 5% of the production, you can't really go lower than that.

In terms of carbon, the other European countries have a lot to catchup to reach France's level. They currently fight very hard against carbon pricing because well, that would mean the french industry would have an edge compared to them...

P2G just isn't good enough for now, let's be fair.

> France's investment in renewable has actually been even worse in terms of results than Flamanville.

so what? France inefficiently invests into renewables, thus renewables aren't the answer and we wait for a miracle?

> P2G just isn't good enough for now, let's be fair.

what does good enough mean? not as cheap as burning subsidized natural gas?

It looks like solar capacity has been ramping up fairly steadily[1] in France in recent years, from near-zero around 2007 - perhaps that's a sign of progress?

(and regarding apparent investment issues: is that definitely a case of poor financial results, or could it be that large up-front investments were required in order to foster development, and that the returns are just beginning?)

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_France

France has 50 plants? They need to go headfirst into modular reactors.

Usually I would say that nuclear research and development dollars are wasted: they just displace purchasing solar/wind/storage. But with that big of an extant installed base, with approved/regulated sites and various other infrastructure, they may be the only country that can save money staying nuclear.

Of course, being a LFTR stan I would push for mass manufactured LFTRs the size of a couple shipping containers that can be decommissioned on a regular basis. 50 big nuclear plants replaced with about 1000 or more shipping container sized reactors on a replacement schedule.

LFTR would reduce waste, and separation of other fission products could be done elsewhere.

WHat is the French resistance to LFTR? I know that the US has strange bureaucratic resistances to LFTR built into academic funding and their regulatory agencies as an artifact of the ORNL reactor vs PWR reactor politics from the 1950s.

If France just piggybacking on the solid fuel rod reprocessing industry of the US and its same resistance to new reactor designs?

None of these modular "blueprint reactors" has been build. not a single one is producing power on gridscale.

You are correct, but nuclear is weird: it has so many regulatory and NIMBY hurdles that change is hard.

However, what has happened is that many many people have taken a swing at scalable reactors for a long time in the design phase.

And we do know the test ORNL reactor for MSR/LFTR practically fit in a closet, at least for the actual reactor.

So there is an opportunity.

The U.S. Navy has a few hundred samples built. They just put boats around them.

Its 56 even. That is a huge fleet to replace. I am not in the details of their decisions, but I think one can simply conclude that if a nation, which is so all-in on nuclear like France, doesn't have a good answer yet, it seems to be a non-trivial problem. France has their own fuel reprocessing industry and had breeding reactors in the past but gave up on them.

Per capita I believe they do, total amount the US has about 50% more capacity(which is a shame given how much bigger we are than France). we should have a lot more if we were serious about global warming.

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