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Comment by hef19898 | Hacker News Reader

hef19898

It is so funny to see all those anti-renewable lobbiests come out of the woods everybtime something happens with regard to energy that can be, somehow, blamed on renewables. Previously it was the fossil fuel lobby, now it is the pro nuclear lobby. All predict doom, everytime. And all of those fail to properly analyse the way electricity is priced on the European market, and then start looking at those special causes, French lower then expected nuclear capacity, a screwed up gas market among other things.

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lower than expected capacity because macron wanted to go away from nuclear five year ago. what do you think the shareholders of french nuclear and energy company wanted when they heard that? to reduce cost, hires, maintenance. the government is to blame for everything happening in france for abidding to the green party that were fed russian propaganda about renewable energies such as solars that just have renewable the name (cheap solar panel made in china using gas and with a life of 10-20years) not the pro nuclear lobby.

Oh, so it is some politians fault that power plant operators screw up maintenance?

PV and wind, using Chinese modules, outbid nuclear already in 2017 (?), being cheaper then Hinkley C. Never mind where we vet nuclear fuel rods from, right? Plus the fact that the summer heat wave and drought had negative effects on power plant output, not for the first time, due to limited cooling capacities. But hey, the current political climate is great to turn that into a "we are all gonna freeze in the darkness of winter" narrative, one thatt is easily highjacked by populist movements. Movements, I have to remind everyone, that are, and have been, manipulated by Russia.

It is the German greens that oush for more weapons for Ukraine and extensions for nuclear power plants. It doesn't get anymore real politik than that.

What you are saying is both inaccurate and lies.

>Oh, so it is some politians fault that power plant operators screw up maintenance?

Firstly, EDF, the french operator for nuclear power plants belongs to 80+% to the state. So, first off: fucking yes it is, especially when said politicians have spent the last 20 years not investing in their plants, despite the insane work that EDF has done. Reminder that said politicians are forcing EDF to sell 120TWh worth of electricity to "alternative providers", who are currently kicking out their customers to just make money selling that electricity back on the market.. Secondly, maintenance was delayed by Covid, a once in a century event, and two years worth of delay is remarkably short. Thirdly, due to said politicians continuous non-maintenance of the nuclear sector, there are indeed very few people able to maintain said reactors. Surprising isn't it ? Spend 20 years saying nuclear is shit and should be abandoned (purely because of political plays to win alliances with the greens) and then play surprised when your only source of reliable power doesn't have anyone to maintain it, because what engineer would do the career suicide of going in an industry which is being abandoned ?

>PV and wind, using Chinese modules, outbid nuclear already in 2017 (?),

Ah yeah, the PV and wind that Germany has installed, that are currently pretty much all not working (https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE?utm_source=electrici..., 370gCO2/kWh, up to 510 yesterday, and hasn't gone underneath 300 for the past month) ? Sounds great. Both for people who get to sell their PV that only needs to run for half the year because it literally can't in winter and for the petrol groups that are selling gas to make up for the energy.

But sure, they cost less. Don't take into account the insane maintenance costs (have fun changing your turbines every 20 years, they're made of non recyclable material, it's all good), the insane land use (contrary to some beliefs, not every country has surface to waste like the US does), the inconsistency of the production (see: germany).

The german greens are, for once in their fucking lives, doing something sensible, both when it comes to Ukraine or nuclear power plants (and they're doing so because they are forced). Don't let that make you forget the past 30 years of decisions that set all of us back.

Your post would be a lot more convincing without the easy scape goat identifying and cursing.

No, it's you choosing to cherry-pick it because I said "fucking". Grow up.

Act like a shithead, get ignored like a shithead.

Of course PV and wind outbid nuclear. Using those when the weather are optimal and Russian natural gas when it doesn't was much cheaper than having a nuclear plant produce both when the weather is optimal and when it isn't. It was this economic model that resulted in Russian natural gas being declared green by Germany.

Operating a nuclear plant only in order to compete with oil and natural gas is simply too expensive, and wind and solar can always out compete nuclear when its windy and sunny. Everyone has acted economical rational to create the situation we are in.

> because macron wanted to go away from nuclear five year ago

Source? The plan was to reduce nuclear share to ~50%, not "go away from nuclear", which still required building a ton of new reactors to replace those close to their end of life. Furthermore, the nuclear reactors are owned and operated by EDF, which has always been majority state owned and is in the process of being renationalisated. Shareholders were never asked about anything.

tomorrow your boss says to you he’s gonna reduce headcount in IT by 50%. what is your boss gonna do short term? is he gonna plan how he is gonna manage your promotion when you will be one of the few not fired or is he gonna focus on firing the 50% he needs so that shareholders are happy with stock price?

Not reduce by 50%, reduce to 50% from the current 50%. With the increasing electric consumption, it's barely a reduction in real terms at all.

it was 70% in 2021 not 50%. so you can take my sample and apply the reduce to 20% if you want and get the same outcome: it still sends the signal that they going away from nuclear. any kind of shareholder would vote against investing in the field… dont understand what you dont understand there.

Yeah, that's a typo, 70%, as you can see from the rest of my comment about the fact that with the increasing electricity consumption it's barely a reduction in net terms.

So it's not reducing by 20%, it's "with projected growth it will only account for 50% instead of 70%, so capacity will stay roughly the same, only refreshed".

And again, shareholders don't matter, EDF has always been majority state owned.

So I don't understand what you don't understand there. There was barely any reduction to speak of, a full refresh was needed anyways due to age, and was planned for the future 50% of the grid, and private shareholders were never asked.

edf is owned by the french government the french government says they moving away from investing in the future of nuclear; the media permanently relayed it, you the CEO of EDF. what would you do? shareholders matter when i say shareholders I mean all shareholder including one of the majority owner, not even talking about the fact that germany and EU permanently pushed for more privatization of energy and constantly undermined nuclear in the EU. 5 years ago macron main goal was to CLOSE 15 reactors. after 5 years he wants to open guess how many? 15 reactors. I mean you can turn around the issue but he needs to be held accountable

Not to mention that next generation nuclear in France was also killed by the Left and the Greens in the 90s. France could have many Superphénix by now.

> now it is the pro nuclear lobby.

Its hilarious that a real button support for nuclear is claimed to be driven by a nuclear lobby.

The scary Nuclear lobby of Greenpeace imagination has never existed and was always tiny and almost totally incompetence.

But it just so happens that these dangerous underground force comes out of nowhere during this energy crisis to destroy renewables.

Part of the pro-nuclear 'lobby' seems to be people who can't handle that wind and solar are less predictable.

So they create horror stories where the lights go out when there is no wind in the middle of the night in winter. And then nuclear has to save the day.

Any kind of storage is immediately dismissed as infeasible or too expensive.

The make it extra scary, this article also introduces importing electricity as really bad. Without any kind of argument why just a single number of how much is imported shows how bad it is.

This way, shutting down a nuclear plant in Germany can be made extra scary because of a few neighboring countries that import electricity.

The "pro nuclear lobby" doesn't even exist.

There's two big players, oil and renewable companies. Which are actually the same and both hate nuclear.

I thought this was obvious to everyone?

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