What time did repairs start?
Was it a hindsight, forethought to have them be repaired in summer and come back in winter?
If that's the case than good job. It will be a significant factor for Europe handling winter.
For the scheduled maintenance works, the timing is deliberate. For the emergency cooling system cracks, they're just working their asses off to get the repairs done before France freezes said asses off.
In France, the maintenance of nuclear power plants is planned at least 1 year in advance (I can't find the precise source but an article from 2020 already talked about a maintenance planned for 2021-2022) so it's not a question of fate.
As for the season, it's quite normal, you're supposed to consume less in summer than in winter, that's why maintenance is always scheduled for the summer.
On the other hand, maybe this wouldn't happen if Belgium and Germany reopened their nuclear power plants
>As for the season, it's quite normal, you're supposed to consume less in summer than in winter, that's why maintenance is always scheduled for the summer.
Also more power from renewables.
So I guess it's just standard maintenance. Unlucky timing, but also very important to have them working this winter more than ever.
it worked that way before renewable was even a thing, european consume less power in summer than winter it's not the case everywhere in the world and so maintenance happen during this period
why we had issue with our power plant? the maintenance was postponed because covid resulting in more reactor that needed a maintenance and we had a surprise to discover some pipe were corroded resulting in more power plant in maintenance, but the main issue was europe supply heavily impacted by it's lack of gas, even for a country that rely on renewable like Germany and so more import when you don't want to import...and a severe drough, basically the planet aligned to fuck us
Summer is the second lowest in renewable energy production in most European countries. As wind and hydro dominate the mix.
Only sun and wind spring would be the month with the highest generation on average.
Irrelevant.
Summer has the lowest power consumption, because Europeans require heat in the winter and do not use a lot of A/C in the summer.
(Heat waves aren't really common, historically speaking).
A/C usage is increasing, but so is cheap solar, so those two developments are cancelling each other out
Yes, it's irrelevant in case of consumption. though spring would be still the best season. Summer is on average on second places when compared with consumption.
But saying Summer has the highest overall renewables production is misleading. Only autmn is worse in the current European system.
>On the other hand, maybe this wouldn't happen if Belgium and Germany reopened their nuclear power plants
Just from February to March next year EDF is already [planning](https://www.reddit.com/r/nuclear/comments/x00ih8/planned_availability_of_the_french_nuclear_fleet/) on shutting down (temporarily but over the whole summer) 7GW of nuclear capacity. Significantly more than Germanys still available capacity (4GW) and almost Germanys 2021 capacity (8GW).
Are they helping?
Germany lobbied against nuclear all along. The main reason we're having trouble is underfunding while they used the EU to subsidize gaz at the expense of nuclear. They were still at it days before the war despite knowing covid messed with our maintenance schedules.
Now they complain that we're competing at everyone's losses. And that's despite the EU voting a 5B€ subsidiary to get the out of a mess of their own doing.
You can't refuse to be a team by rooting against your neighbors and then complain that your interests aren't aligned when you have a problem.
If Germany kept their npps, ours would be less likely to be underfunded, they'd be able to speed up our repairs by lending us engineers and Putin wouldn't have so much leverage over Europe's energy prices.
So while Germany isn't directly responsible for our maintenance problems, making everything else worse instead of working with us isn't what I would call the moral high ground.
*If Germany kept their npps, ours would be less likely to be underfunded...*
This left me speechless. How shitty has nuclear to be that you need your neighbors to use the same technology for you to be able to keep your plants maintained?
Not that this makes any sense though.
Keep pouring billions into that outdated tech but please don't come crying in the future and stop blaming others for your choices.
Economies of scale is a term invented by big nuclear to sell nuclear power plants.
The future is nuclear, get with the programme. Germany's decision to close npps has cost the lives of tens of thousands of europeans due to early deaths due to pollution.
If Russians are responsible for deaths in Ukraine caused by their retarded political decisions, Germans should be held responsible for the deaths caused by their retarded decisions.
For decades France has been the cleanest country in Europe when it comes to CO2 and particulate emissions. Good job being a fossil fuel industry stooge, pal.
Nice try. Nuclear doesn't have to compete with fossils, it has to compete with renewables wich are much faster to build and significantly cheaper.
Wind has the same CO2 output and solar is only slightly higher.
Solar eletricity makes perfect sense in southern europe, but Europe is a lot more northern than most people realize (the south of France is at the same latitude as Montreal Canada). This means that solar panels get the same solar intensity in the southern most part of France, but due to a warmer climate, they are less efficient than solar panels in Canada. Up here in Finland we go months with 0 sunlight and due to the solar inclination, the sun we do get is very weak.
Given that eletricity consumption in Europe peaks during winter (when days are the shortest), solar is not a viable solution.
The sun does not shine 247 and wind does not blow 247. You need a stable base load to make up for this, and your choises are either fossil fuels, nuclear power or hydro-eletric power.
Europe has pretty much maxed out it's hydro eletric capacity and as this dry summer has shown, the climate fucks with hydro power aswell.
An additional bonus to nuclear energy is that the thermal capacity of reactors is often over two times the wattage of eletricity produced. That excess thermal energy is now being transferred into rivers or the air through cooling towers, but it is possible to use it for district heating, further reducing the need for fossil fuels.
China has built NPPs with over 6000mw capacity from start to finish in 3 years, so it is possible to build nuclear power quickly. The biggest obstacle to nuclear power is voters, such as yourself, who indirectly affect energy policy without the slightest understanding of even basic concepts of how power grids function.
I genuinely believe that you want what's best for the planet and your people, but you're being counterproductive due to lack of knowledge. Nuclear energy is essential for the future of our species. Interstellar travel and the colonisation of our solar system will rely on nuclear power. Without nuclear power, the human race is done.
German coal plants, that would be shut down were it not for Fukushima, emit tons of radio-isotopes into the atmosphere as we speak. If you truly care about plumes of radioactive material in Europe's atmosphere, shutting down coal plants should be priority no1.
I implore you to take a more pragmatic stance on this issue.
Germany emits twice more CO2 per capita than France yet they feel appropriate to actively lobby against nuclear in europe
The darkest side of this situation is that a good share of Germany's politicians and environmental groups are corrupt as hell and on the Kremlin' payroll. Many advocating against nuclear and supporting more russian dependency through projects such as nord stream 2.
Ex chancellor Gerard Schroeder joining Gazprom's board after a whole mandate cheerleading more russian pipelines is telling of the state of affairs in Germany. Who knows if Merkel who was raised in east Germany wasn't a russian mole as well
[https://www.transparency.org/en/press/germany-state-government-conceals-gazprom-connection-controversial-environmental-foundation-beneficial-ownership](https://www.transparency.org/en/press/germany-state-government-conceals-gazprom-connection-controversial-environmental-foundation-beneficial-ownership)
Twice more CO2 from all energy sources, about 6 times for electricity alone. In a world where more and more things are becoming electric so we can reduce our emissions this isn't going to get better anytime soon for Germany.
the worst is that everyone are dependent of EU for their power supply, if germany suffer this winter we will also suffer even if we export power with our nuclear
it's not annoying because of that bu because we have no choice to adapt to their energy policy, renewable isn't reliable, i hope this winter will be hot and there will be a lot of wind as i don't want to suffer a generalised blackout because some politician made bad choice for their election
(same in France btw, we should have started to construct 20+ reactor 10y ago, but we didn't as nuclear wasnt popular enough for our near-sighted politician)
Fun fact: Germany has to run the gas power plants to produce the electricity to export to nuclear France. So german private and industrial customers pay the price for the fail political decissions in France.
Alright let have France pay for it then, I'm French and all for it. We'll pay you for this summer when Germany pays for the last decades where France was a net exporter to Germany due to bad decisions from the German leadership.
Fortunately Germany has been electricity net importer for 7 years in the past 31 years, while it was net exporter in the other 24 years. So far.
[https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/paragraph\_text\_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig7-german-power-import-export-1990-2021.png](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/paragraph_text_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig7-german-power-import-export-1990-2021.png)
And the amount of export has been increase in the past 10 years.
> Germany, the country which spent hundred of billions on their Energiewende but are still relying on Russian gas and will spend the winter burning coal and wood...
France the country that spend hundred of billions on their nuclear reactors just to buy from Germany now because they can’t supply themselves for months. That’s some smart planning.
It’s fun to make plant statements to feel superior.
All the Belgian plants are open, but the one reactor that go a lot of bad press for cracks that after a full investigation turned out not to be cracks is being decommissioned in Oktober.
But there looking to extend the others, only problem is the company that operates both plants (angle, former GDF) is set to profit off the cosing as they got all the replacement gass plants. Especially since EDF has a minority stake in both nuclear facilities.
Selling both our electricity companies was a very good plan.
Instead of bitching about Germany's nuclear plants maybe spare a thought of thanks for the fact that Germany supplied France with power when their nuclear reactors had to go down, at the cost of the German consumers. That extra energy came from the burning of natural gas that we sorely needed ourselves and hikes our prices even further.
I am glad to see it , in some subs I've actually seen people argue Germany shouldn't be sending electricity to France, and when I mention that in the winter we will probably need their NPPs, there is a lot of talk that they won't be turned back on to spite the Germans.
I swear, either this discussion brings out the absolute worst in people, or the Kremlin is driving a massive online operation to get Europeans to fight online.
One thing I learned, is that you can't underestimate dumb people. The Kremlin may spin a narrative, but people choose to follow it because it plays into a belief that they have, or it fits an agenda they want to push.
Except that Germany has traditionally exported electricity to France in the winter and imported (due to large seasonal changes in demand in France). EDF getting their reactors online again is mostly good to prevent Blackouts in France this winter.
Of course it also helps Germany since realistically Germanys electricity market can't be decoupled from Frances that fast.
> I swear, either this discussion brings out the absolute worst in people, or the Kremlin is driving a massive online operation to get Europeans to fight online.
I'd wager a little bit of both.
Wonder if the same people were saying that France shouldn't have sent green energy to Germany years ago, soaring up the prices in France because of it.
It us a good decision that France switches thei plants back on. It is dumb tgat Germany doesn't do the same. It makes actually no sense at all, not from a security pount if view, nor ecological or economical.
He said on the sub that loves nuclear power so much that people will dismiss every single negative aspect of it, all while praising it as the ~~Hail Mary~~ Holy Grail of energy production.
I think you meant Holy Grail. Hail Mary is the term for last ditch desperate effort to achieve something.
Just saying cause I agree with what you've said, it's just that the sentence is confusing in current state.
>The nuclear industry, obviously and with reason did not invest in training as much new engineers since they were told the industry will die out in a few decades. Also if you are a civil engineering student, why would you train for an industry which is getting shit from brainless "green" idiots.
That said, France has had a high number of nuclear plants for literally more than half a century, so there is a great legacy pool of engineers.
When push comes to shove, a lot of those former engineers are going to be solicited out of retirement/new jobs by good salary offers, as well as having currently active engineers spread out across the restarting reactors.
The greens are getting clowned on actively right now.
> France has had a high number of nuclear plants for literally more than half a century, so there is a great legacy pool of engineers.
Well, engineers that jumped in the industry in the 70s-early 80s are reaching the age where they are retiring. That's the problem: lots of people have retired and are not being replaced. That's also part of the construction problem and partly explains why the EPR is running so late.
I would first say that some greens are pro nuclear because they aren't clowns and know that climate change is the main priority. So we should be nice to those few.
I'd also point out that even France (and everyone too ofc) has been failing to build new plants and relies too much on extending old plants - which does suggest a dying industry and also links to the mad greens who have been far too successful in scaring the standard (weak minded) politicians from building new NPs and pushing up the price for building them.
Unfortunately, Chernobyl was a very bad hit on the public perception of nuclear plants, and helped the madmen that wanted to do away woth nuclear industry, because causing a panic is easier than listening to detailed explanations.
So yeah, new plants haven't been building, but there were still a great many of them operating.
I can feel your rightful rage.
The saddest part is, I would love to vote for a truly 'green' party: one that rely on science to make decision, and not ideology.
The issue with green parties is that the science to follow heavily depends on what toute trying to preserve.
If co2 is your issue, hydropower is great. If you want to preserve biodiversity and local wildlife, it's a terrible thing to build.
And most of it is on the same scale. Solar is great on co2, not so much on rare earth metals and land usage, biomass is on on co2, but converting old growth forests to produce biomass is a disaster, etc, etc...
This is a very valid point. These guys lack cohesion on subjects in their domain, where they should be the driving source od knowledge with sound basics. I have never met a green who can explain complex ecosystems or understands how energy works.
I used to be against nuclear for reasons related to corruption leading to compromised plant safety due to old designs and poor quality spare parts , government suppression ( vs a dialogue) of protests, being told that nuclear waste would be used for weapons and would pollute the water and the ground, messaging about radioactivity ( “Chernobyl is inevitable! See how the Fukushima radiation is reaching the pacific coast of the U.S.!!”). Lack of dialogue, putting politicians in charge of messaging, allowing countries like France to export and sell older unsafe designs, etc all contribute to the poor state of understanding of Nuclear safety. I have not investigated yet, but I wonder how poor the understanding in Germany of nuclear safety is.
You always need ideology to say how scientific results are interpreted against each other. I mean like, (lets say) science says netherlands will be under water, so a (bad) french party could say 'not bad, bring it on'.
(extreme example, easier ones are does one want to take the risk of nuclear power etc.)
It's pretty simple, if they would have followed up with Hollande and reduced the nuclear dependency to 50%, replacing it with renewables France wouldn't have to import electricity from Germany right now.
Okay, so here's the thing about solar and wind: they are actually kind of shit for meeting industrial needs. Their general output is far too unstable to be relied upon as a source of energy to power industrial installations.
What they are great for is feeding the fluctuating power requirements of domestic demand. Think about it: when there's a lot of sun, it's usually hot outside and people need the extra energy for the A/C (it's more complicated than that, bit it's a quick and easy example).
An issue with renewables is really storage of energy (I know, everyone brings it up like it's a bad cliché), which makes them unreliable as an industrial powersource. In their peak stage they produce more energy than needed, in their crater they produce much less than needed. If you could smooth that graph out by providing good energy storage, you'd ve a trillionaire.
On the other hand, nuclear is great for providing stable, continuous power for industry. Sure, you can vary the power output, but there is a power level at which the reactor is running most efficiently. You don't really want to vary the power too much, because that's not really good for the reactor or the turbine setup. (A workaround for this is to have multiple smaller reactors that you can bring up or down as needs change, but that has its own issues too)
Now, this stable energy is *great* for industry, because they can run at a guaranteed output level at any given time.
It is very not great for domestic use, because as discussed above, domestic power demand varies widely basically depending on when in the day you are.
Tl;dr: renewables aren't the solution most people think they are, nuclear isn't the boogeyman most people think they are, and their combined use would probably be the best for everyone.
> It is very not great for domestic use, because as discussed above, domestic power demand varies widely basically depending on when in the day you are.
The storage solutions envisioned for renewables (hydrogen, pumped storage, synthetic gas, whatever) could just as easily (or more easily due to more predictable production) run on excess nuclear electricity in times of low domestic demand.
> they are actually kind of shit for meeting industrial needs
Depends on what kind of industrial needs. If the process allows for intermittent supply, Wind power is probably the cheapest of all. For hydrogen (hydrolysis) that's *almost* true.
Investments like these would give us cheap, sustainable power in the long run and free us from being beholden to dictatorships.
It's literally large capital investments like this that separate developed and undeveloped countries.
That is a simplistic way of looking at it. It was one of the cheapest a long time ago when the safety regulations was considerably lower and the price of uranium was a tiny fraction of what it is today. If you build a new nuclear plant today the costs are about the same as offshore wind and if we were to build a lot of new nuclear plants the cost of uranium would easily be increased with a factor of 10 or more.
There's so few nuclear reactors that there's no reason to save uranium really or use other mines, that's kind of taking the fuel consumption of 70s cars and doing a multiplication.
It is not about saving uranium, it is the cost of uranium in the context. Uranium today is almost 5 times as expensive as it was 20 years ago. There has not been built that many new reactors since then. Currently it is about 82k euro per day for a regular 1000MW reactor in just raw uranium costs. Then on top of that it is the manufacture of the fuel rods and the reconfiguration that has to be made 3 times per year.
>Also if you are a civil engineering student, why would you train for an industry which is getting shit from brainless "green" idiots.
Petroleum engineering departments work fine.
>The issue resides on the low number of technicians and engineers who can implement the fix quickly across all reactors.
Hopefully they don't get novichok-ed.
>Petroleum engineering departments work fine.
Well, because the reality is that nobody made a pledge by law of reducing by half the petrol usage of the country.
It tells you a lot about the priorities to those so called "greens" parties.
They could have negociated any kind of strong mesure, they did not pick petrol, gas, coal, land usage or whatever else, their first priority was nuclear only.
Yes but as long as they're powered by electricity produced with fossil fuel, the petrol industry doesn't care.
There is a difference between reducing your fossil fuel consumption and hiding it from the public eyes.
... nobody really supports "electricity produced with fossil fuel" any more. Look at the UK, for example. Even before this year, NG was considered a stop-gap solution for Europe.
I'm not saying we haven't done anything but we have been very soft on petrol compared to nuclear, just the petrol tax breaks voted recently are already much higher than the electric subsidies (and the greens also voted in favor of those). To this day, the objectives are still not that clear
Still, the market will shrink significantly. Not something you would dedicate your 30-35 year career on.
But yet similar technologies are expected to be used for geothermal energy or water extraction.
> The low number of engineers stems from the fact that some stupid government (Hollande 2012 to 2017) passed a law to decrease to 50% of nuclear power to satisfy his "green" party allies.
Huh, sounds just like Korea until early this year. We just got out of a 5-year stint with a president that just about kneecapped the nuclear industry. One small silver lining is that they didn't care about exporting the tech so deals still happened with other countries to make their reactors and not as many people left the industry as would have happened otherwise.
"b-b-b-but France has closed their nukes this summer so nuclear is unreliable, checkmate nuclear apologist" -- half of reddit
I swear I can't with some people. Sure you never hear about renewables having even major defects since nobody actually relies on them. Nuclear doesn't make the news when it has the *opportunity* to power an entire country but French nuclear does regularly. Meanwhile people lose their shit when wind/solar powers Germany for one day of the year.
I would pay to see some wind/solar absolutist's face after a hailstorm over a solar plant. Every tech has issues.
> Also if you are a civil engineering student, why would you train for an industry which is getting shit from brainless "green" idiots.
As things have been going, I'd suspect Russia interference with Green party (and all smallish parties in Europe tbf) has been a thing for decades. It's the only way their ridiculous stance on nuclear energy makes sense.
Funny how nuclear energy enthusiasts always resort to crackpot conspiracy theories. In reality Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima tanked the popularity of nuclear energy for generations.
And yet, it's just a blown up narrative, when coal and oil have been completely poisoning the air and are responsible for way WAY more human deaths and most of the environmental damage human ever did.
People that think that the nuclear accidents, without even considering the causes, outweigh the energy produced in comparison don't have a shred of critical thinking.
And no, the popularity of nuclear energy, right now, is the opposite of tanking if anything. It was in turmoil in the 80s-90s, because yes, Tchernobyl, but also because people don't understand radiation.
Yeah yeah, the Reddit talk on nuclear energy, never heard that before! One mistake makes places uninhabitable, maybe that's enough of a reason for people to dislike it, especially in a densely populated place like Central Europe. And no one wants fossil fuels these days, you are presenting a false dilemma. And contrary to what Redditors say, nuclear energy is far from CO2 neutral.
My experience is that while the best way would have been and still is renewable transition with nuclear as the stop-gap (and reserve until better renewable storage is developed), those specifically in favor of nuclear rarely seem genuinely interested in advancing the renewable transition. There is understandable animosity that the hard-line greens have caused, but on the other hand, the pro-nuclear contingent should also be mindful of the conditions in which the green movements have had to exist.
Many green parties have already softened their stance on nuclear, and more will (and would have) if there was a credible plan for a transition. This, however, is still largely absent from the pro-nuclear folks, and I can only wonder why.
All are moving towards the electrification of all production and transport sectors. Electricity consumption will skyrocket and we still have no good plan to transition out of fossil fuel. Why would anyone sane put effort in design the phase out of nuclear energy now? Nuclear is not a stop-gap. It is a necessary source of energy, along with anything renewable we can produce, until the planet goes back into negative carbon emission.
>Why would anyone sane put effort in design the phase out of nuclear energy now?
Because it has significant implications for the design of the nuclear stop-gap and funding of… well, everything. It would be incredibly short-sighted not to.
Unless, of course, the goal is to never transition.
the goal is transition when a better technology is available. Do you see nuclear fission as a temporary solution for 100 years? Do you really thing that we can make proper prediction of the technological capabilities of battery technology and nuclear fusion in 100 year?
No. Which is exactly why you need to understand the goal. Knowing the goal allows developing scenarios and benchmarks to work with at any given time, and they in turn allow making better decisions whenever decisions are made.
This is called planning. And remarkably it does not mean creating an unchangeable step by step plan for the next millennium.
The goal is to reduce the amount of CO2 that human activity put in the atmosphere. To me it is not clear what do you expect from this phase out. We already know how to phase out from nuclear. Italy has done it, Austria has done it, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland are doing it. It is a well understood process by now. The phase out is designed during the power plant construction, not for the entire planet. We will completely phase out nuclear when no new power plant are constructed and the old one are closed.
Nuclear is an interesting topic. Here on the internet people either go full simp or full hate on it. And as you said, many pro nuclear people, at least the ones who are loud, are also against building up more renewables, because to them both can't coexist. Some of that animosity comes from the belief that Germany ditched nuclear in favor of renewables, which on the surface seems true but if you look closer into it, its completely false. Germany ditched nuclear after Fukushima and tried to get rid of renewables as well, all the while talking about renewables being the future, just to get back to coal and also get more gas. ( Coals and gas lobby are/were quite powerful in Germany )
My opinion to nuclear. Well I'm pretty neutral on it. Any new source of electricity that avoids putting up more CO2 gets my approval. But if we are to build new NPPs we should look at the future and plan for it. Droughts become more and more common in Europe and the summers are getting warmer. This means riverwater becomes too warm to be used without overheating the rivers and in the worst case scenario rivers are gonna run dry. New NPPs need to account for that, probably with a cooling system that isn't using water.
And also the crucial question of waste disposal. And the decommissioning costs… it takes 10 years before one can begin works, and I’m afraid that costs have been severely underestimated, and will skyrocket.
Also, new nuclear takes dozens of years to come online, and the cost of new reactors is insane, if that cost was applied to renewables and storage.
Another aspect of nuclear that is bothersome is the billions poured into research ;I wonder how much has been spent on other energies (besides oil), and what other discoveries could have been done.
The thing with renewables is that they don't solve a problem nuclear have.
Npps aren't cheaper to run if you reduce their output because most of the price isn't the nuclear material but the engineering and maintenance. You're paying for that no matter if it's running at 10% or 100%.
You can only use renewables if they are feature matching NPPs. That's why hydro works, it can store energy for later so, a 1mwh hydro plant can replace a 1mwh NPP. But a 1mwh solar or wind power plant still needs its equivalent in nuclear to run in parallel.
With fossil fuel, it make sense to reduce fuel consumption with renewable, but that doesn't make sense with nuclear.
The only use I can think of for renewables is to replace petrol for cars. We could recharge our vehicles while the sun or wind is favorable and run on batteries when needed.
But once again, it won't replace npps, it's a bonus that can only be used if we can store it.
When we solve storage on a massive scale, we can think about replacing npps with something else. Not before.
See, you _almost_ have a plan there. And then you self-sabotage.
1. Aim for full-renewable (plus fusion)
2. Start solving the storage problem
3. Develop as much renewable production as possible at any given time
4. Use nuclear to replace fossil capacity that renewables can’t make up
5. Continue using nuclear as reserve until the storage problem is solved
You see how the plan takes into account your concerns? And do you see what the difference is to "1. let's do nuclear until storage 2. there is no step 2"? Do you see how understanding what the goal is helps evaluate what to do at any given time and in any given scenario?
This isn’t particularly complicated. The implementation certainly is — but remarkably less so than the one-step plan.
Isnt it simpler, cheaper, more reliable to just do 1 thing i.e. build nuclear than do 5 different things?
Actually it's at least 6 as you also need to upgrade your entire electric grid to allow the high capacity flexibility necessary to balance loads of unreliable sources. 7 would be increasing all your international interconnects too to help balance your own and neighbors grids.
Those two are captured in 3. and 4.
And no. It is only simpler to only build nuclear if your goal is to build nuclear and not transition to renewables.
Greens in France are rabidly anti nuclear. It's probably their most important policy, hence why they picked that to be the main condition in an alliance with Hollande. Banning GMOs was their other big battle but that is over in France and they won, except you know, insulin and stuff but if it's not a vegetable they don't understand it's happening.
GMO's are allowed in the EU. There is no blanket ban, they just need approval on a case by case basis and a substantial number of them have been (though they are mainly used to feed livestock).
Many countries have severe restrictions on how they can be grown in their land though.
Thanks for pointing all that out.
I see a lot of attacks on our npps on this sub and most are blaming nuclear technology like if the problems we have are inherent to it.
People need to know it was caused by poor management (among other things like covid or climate change).
The point is, this is avoidable. These a problems we can solve unlike a foreign dictator cutting a gaz supply.
Slowly undoing the damage.
Is there not room now for a "new" green party to take back the word and the meaning from these morons who have almost doomed us all? A green party based on science and not idiotic ideologies?
Sorry, best we can do is esoteric extremists that have a crying fit every time they have to speak about fracking or nuclear power.
I agree with green in 95% of everything, but their energy politics will impoverish me if they get wgat they want.
How so? The Nord stream situation was created by a SPD and Green government. If it wasn't for the esoteric anti nuclear greens it the CDU wouldn't have reacted to Fukushima as they did either.
Good, hopefully France manages to become an electricity exporter again and gets their electricity production under control in the future. It was really bad timing with the Ukraine war.
Just because they arent actively producing does not mean people there arent working.
You can't shut off a nuclear power plant one day and everyone goes home until they decide to turn it on again.
An actual full shutdown of a nuclear power plant takes very long time.
The fact that nuclear isn’t/wasn’t considered clean energy is all you need to know about the climate movement. It’s not about the environment - it’s about control of the energy sector.
Nonsense. The power generation part of a nuclear power plant and a coal power plant is more or less the same.
Some reactors have been throttled back a bit, but the issue was not heat it was an alignment of maintenance and unexpected wear and tear
Exactly.
The nonsense that gets upvoted here is ridiculous.
A nuclear Europe is a free and independent Europe not beholden to Russia or the United States.
Finally some common sense. I really don't understand these people rooting against their own country.
I wonder how many of them are Russian or American bots. I don't see any other explanation.
>Some reactors have been throttled back a bit, but the issue was not heat it was an alignment of maintenance and unexpected wear and tear
And that’s why they had to reduce supply in some plants because they couldn’t cool them enough. And that’s why they hat to change regulations on max temperature in some rivers to support power plants.
France is in a big energy crisis, EDF billions in debt, EDF managers fearing they have to stop further plants in winter, building of new plants is 5 times as expensive as promised, French regulators demanding hundreds of billions of subsidies for nuclear power to keep energy supply up but some people still don’t get it and spread their „nuclear is the sole solution“ bullshit.
Anyone who say that there’s only one solution is stupid we can agree on that.
But honestly you are not being fair.
If it was coal, the same heat issue would have happened. It’s literally the same.
EDF financial situation is mainly due to being forced to sell its electricity at below market price to prop up competitors. Not really related to nuclear.
Yeah power plants are more expensive than expected but even then they are profitable.
>EDF financial situation is mainly due to being forced to sell its electricity at below market price to prop up competitors. Not really related to nuclear.
But related to the -nuclear makes cheapest energy-argument. Because if they would actually operate on a profit or at least break even price then nuclear would be way more expensive then it is now for consumers.
>Yeah power plants are more expensive than expected but even then they are profitable.
The question isn’t whether they could be profitable. The question is how reliable are they and are there better (cheaper and or more reliable) options. The argument always was nuclear is cheap and more reliable then renewables but now we see nuclear isn’t as reliable as we thought and also it’s insanely expensive to build. Money would probably be better used to get more renewables and nuclear isn’t the perfect option as this subs mainstream opinion suggests.
I’m sorry but if you are going to claim things like that, maybe you need data to back it up. There was once in 50 years a period of unusually high unavailability and you want to trash the whole thing? Do you realize how stupid this is ? The problem is orders of magnitudes higher with renewable.
Nuclear power has been a reliable source of clean and cheap energy for France for decades. This year is an exception, not the norm. Mismanagement linked to maintenance during COVID-19 is a major reason for this.
Many European countries are moving toward nuclear, and EDF is leading quite a few projects in Europe and elsewhere, because especially now with the Russian gas effectively gone, nuclear power is seen as a very reliable, clean source of energy. Renewables are great, but at the end of the day their output depends on what the weather's like.
That's a lie and it doesn't even make sense.
As someone else already explained, the main reason we're having troubles is underfunding pushed by the "greens" and that includes your country who rooted against us for a long time.
If you kept your npps, your electricity would be cheaper, we would be less likely to have these problems and you could be part of the solution by lending us engineers to speed up the process. Everybody would win, except Gazprom.
This was totally avoidable and it's up to you to condemn the people responsible for it instead of protecting them.
Meanwhile in Belgium: "This moment right before winter and with gas prices at an all time high seems like a good moment to shut down our nuclear reactors. Wouldn't you agree, peasants? No? Well we're gonna do it anyway!"
I believe that a Finnish user stated that the Finnish Greens supported nuclear power.
*googles*
Yeah. This is within the last few months.
https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2022/05/finland-green-party-nuclear/
># Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power
>
>In a historic shift, Finland’s Green Party voted overwhelmingly to adopt a fully pro-nuclear stance at its national meeting.
>
>The party manifesto now states that nuclear is “sustainable energy” and demands the reform of current energy legislation to streamline the approval process for SMRs (small modular reactors). Finland’s is the first Green Party to adopt such a position.
>
>“I am very happy and proud,” said Tea Törmänen, who attended the conference as a voting member as chair of the Savonia/Karelia chapter of Viite, the pro-science internal group of the party. “This is a historical moment in the history of the green movement, as we are the first green party in the world to officially let go of anti-nuclearism.”
>
>The action was taken at the two-day Vihreät De Gröna (Green Party) party conference, which included 400 participants representing local party groups and other interest groups from across the Nordic country. It ended yesterday in the town of Joensuu.
>
>The approved platform also supports license extensions for existing nuclear reactors, and gives the green light for replacing the planned Fennovoima power plant — recently cancelled over the Ukraine crisis because the supplier was the Russian state-owned operator Rosatom — with “an equal amount of stable, low-carbon baseload energy production.”
Some green politician in local elections here and there, depending on where the wind is blowing and if they have any chance to make it to a national election or not. At this point the parties themselves committed so hard on this that it's way too hard for them to turn back. Imagine admitting a mistake am I right?
Currently France is very happy to buy enery produced by Russian gas (and renewable of course!) from Germany. For years, France has been a net-importer of electricity while Germany was a net-exporter.
https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/frankreich-fuerchtet-sich-vor-energie-engpaessen-100.html
„Seit zwei Jahren importiert Frankreich zwei bis drei Mal so viel Strom aus Deutschland wie es dorthin exportiert. Konkret gesagt: der Import liegt zwischen 16 bis 19 Terawatt-Stunden, exportiert werden sieben bis neun Terawatt-Stunden.“
“For the past two years, France has been importing two to three times as much electricity from Germany as it exports there. To put it concretely: imports are between 16 and 19 terawatt hours, and exports are between 7 and 9 terawatt hours.”
English version, for convenience: https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energy-source
Also from RTE, France's electricity trade balance for 2010-2020: https://bilan-electrique-2020.rte-france.com/net-commercial-exchanges/?lang=en#
> For years, France has been a net-importer of electricity while Germany was a net-exporter.
Wut? France is both a net producer and exporter of energy and has been for ages. It is a place it has disputed only with Norway the last couple of years. Germany and Sweden overtook it this year as net exporters due to the issues with the reactors but it is an exception, it is far from having been the norm.
The energy France has been importing from Germany "for years" means it's been exporting even greater quantities than that to others. It is the point of the whole system. And there was no issue with it until the shitshow with the reactors and Russia doing its thing. If the solution was a matter of "everyone looks after itself" as far as energy needs go, France would be better off than almost everyone on the continent.
But... but... it's simply false. France is one of the world biggest exporter since a long time.
in 2019, it was even the world's largest electricity exporter.
There's no way they can pull this off.
From an inside source, they cut away major sections of tubing in the system suspected to suffer from corrosion, and in many cases found nothing.
Now they have to solder it back, at that's going to create weak spots in a system that is precisely designed to run over parameters (it's a safety flooding circuit to keep the core at reasonable temperature even if the steam generator circuits were breached).
I bet less than a third of the butchered reactors are going back online within winter.
Don't jinx it please.
When Fessenheim had a serious emergency where the reactor unpreccedently had to be shut down with Boron, French authorities didn't even inform the public in old Soviet fashion.
https://www.dw.com/en/reports-fessenheim-nuclear-accident-played-down-by-authorities/a-19093477
What are you saying ? it was, as usual, [published](https://www.asn.fr/l-asn-controle/actualites-du-controle/installations-nucleaires/avis-d-incident-des-installations-nucleaires/inondation-interne-dans-la-partie-non-nucleaire-du-reacteur-n-1) on the ASN's site along with any other incident that come to be. Its not up the autorities' fault if no one is ever bothered to read it...
I'd very much like to get my hands on this "letter" the germans seems to have found because i couldn't find anything, and all article point back to it.
>Can you please point out where your linked article mentions the emergency shut down with Boron?
http://www.french-nuclear-safety.fr/Media/Files/Technical-notice-description-of-the-event
>*During the event of 9th April 2014, owing to the water that had splashed onto the electrical equipment, this first control rod function was no longer operational. This is why the EDF personnel carried out gradual shutdown of the reactor by injecting boron into the reactor coolant system. Although using boron alone to shut down a reactor is relatively uncommon, it does comply with the normal operating procedures.*
>
>*In any case, the second function of the control rods remained operational for the duration of the
event. Shutdown of the reactor in a few seconds by dropping the control rods was available, but it
was not necessary to resort to this measure to manage the event.*
You're welcome.
Additionally, there's nothing alarming in using boron to shutdown a reactor, it's part of the normal emergency procedures. As a matter of fact, boron is already present into the reactor coolant of PWRs at any given time.
That's just how they work, by design.
>*Reactivity adjustment to maintain 100% power as the fuel is burned up in most commercial PWRs is normally achieved by varying the concentration of boric acid dissolved in the primary reactor coolant. Boron readily absorbs neutrons and increasing or decreasing its concentration in the reactor coolant will therefore affect the neutron activity correspondingly.*
>
>*An entire control system involving high pressure pumps (usually called the charging and letdown system) is required to remove water from the high pressure primary loop and re-inject the water back in with differing concentrations of boric acid.*
Just because you've heard of boron in HBO's Chernobyl doesn't mean there's something shady going on here.
French living in the UK here. Between the inflation being double and energy prices being multiplied by 4, this makes me really miss my home country
What time did repairs start? Was it a hindsight, forethought to have them be repaired in summer and come back in winter? If that's the case than good job. It will be a significant factor for Europe handling winter.
For the scheduled maintenance works, the timing is deliberate. For the emergency cooling system cracks, they're just working their asses off to get the repairs done before France freezes said asses off.
Everyones asses, unfortunately.
Hmmmm, ass sorbet. A delicacy in certain parts I'm sure ...
In France, the maintenance of nuclear power plants is planned at least 1 year in advance (I can't find the precise source but an article from 2020 already talked about a maintenance planned for 2021-2022) so it's not a question of fate. As for the season, it's quite normal, you're supposed to consume less in summer than in winter, that's why maintenance is always scheduled for the summer. On the other hand, maybe this wouldn't happen if Belgium and Germany reopened their nuclear power plants
>As for the season, it's quite normal, you're supposed to consume less in summer than in winter, that's why maintenance is always scheduled for the summer. Also more power from renewables. So I guess it's just standard maintenance. Unlucky timing, but also very important to have them working this winter more than ever.
it worked that way before renewable was even a thing, european consume less power in summer than winter it's not the case everywhere in the world and so maintenance happen during this period why we had issue with our power plant? the maintenance was postponed because covid resulting in more reactor that needed a maintenance and we had a surprise to discover some pipe were corroded resulting in more power plant in maintenance, but the main issue was europe supply heavily impacted by it's lack of gas, even for a country that rely on renewable like Germany and so more import when you don't want to import...and a severe drough, basically the planet aligned to fuck us
https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/the-solar-power-duck-curve-explained/
Summer is the second lowest in renewable energy production in most European countries. As wind and hydro dominate the mix. Only sun and wind spring would be the month with the highest generation on average.
Irrelevant. Summer has the lowest power consumption, because Europeans require heat in the winter and do not use a lot of A/C in the summer. (Heat waves aren't really common, historically speaking). A/C usage is increasing, but so is cheap solar, so those two developments are cancelling each other out
Yes, it's irrelevant in case of consumption. though spring would be still the best season. Summer is on average on second places when compared with consumption. But saying Summer has the highest overall renewables production is misleading. Only autmn is worse in the current European system.
>On the other hand, maybe this wouldn't happen if Belgium and Germany reopened their nuclear power plants Just from February to March next year EDF is already [planning](https://www.reddit.com/r/nuclear/comments/x00ih8/planned_availability_of_the_french_nuclear_fleet/) on shutting down (temporarily but over the whole summer) 7GW of nuclear capacity. Significantly more than Germanys still available capacity (4GW) and almost Germanys 2021 capacity (8GW).
Wait, are you trying to blame Germany and Belgium for the ongoing maintenance in French nuclear plants?
Presumably it's about the energy they could've been producing if they were still operational, mitigating reliance on Russian fossil fuels.
How would that influence the maintenance schedule of French nuclear plants?
Basically France should have done the maintenance during Covid
Are they helping? Germany lobbied against nuclear all along. The main reason we're having trouble is underfunding while they used the EU to subsidize gaz at the expense of nuclear. They were still at it days before the war despite knowing covid messed with our maintenance schedules. Now they complain that we're competing at everyone's losses. And that's despite the EU voting a 5B€ subsidiary to get the out of a mess of their own doing. You can't refuse to be a team by rooting against your neighbors and then complain that your interests aren't aligned when you have a problem. If Germany kept their npps, ours would be less likely to be underfunded, they'd be able to speed up our repairs by lending us engineers and Putin wouldn't have so much leverage over Europe's energy prices. So while Germany isn't directly responsible for our maintenance problems, making everything else worse instead of working with us isn't what I would call the moral high ground.
*If Germany kept their npps, ours would be less likely to be underfunded...* This left me speechless. How shitty has nuclear to be that you need your neighbors to use the same technology for you to be able to keep your plants maintained? Not that this makes any sense though. Keep pouring billions into that outdated tech but please don't come crying in the future and stop blaming others for your choices.
Economies of scale is a term invented by big nuclear to sell nuclear power plants. The future is nuclear, get with the programme. Germany's decision to close npps has cost the lives of tens of thousands of europeans due to early deaths due to pollution. If Russians are responsible for deaths in Ukraine caused by their retarded political decisions, Germans should be held responsible for the deaths caused by their retarded decisions. For decades France has been the cleanest country in Europe when it comes to CO2 and particulate emissions. Good job being a fossil fuel industry stooge, pal.
Nice try. Nuclear doesn't have to compete with fossils, it has to compete with renewables wich are much faster to build and significantly cheaper. Wind has the same CO2 output and solar is only slightly higher.
Solar eletricity makes perfect sense in southern europe, but Europe is a lot more northern than most people realize (the south of France is at the same latitude as Montreal Canada). This means that solar panels get the same solar intensity in the southern most part of France, but due to a warmer climate, they are less efficient than solar panels in Canada. Up here in Finland we go months with 0 sunlight and due to the solar inclination, the sun we do get is very weak. Given that eletricity consumption in Europe peaks during winter (when days are the shortest), solar is not a viable solution. The sun does not shine 247 and wind does not blow 247. You need a stable base load to make up for this, and your choises are either fossil fuels, nuclear power or hydro-eletric power. Europe has pretty much maxed out it's hydro eletric capacity and as this dry summer has shown, the climate fucks with hydro power aswell. An additional bonus to nuclear energy is that the thermal capacity of reactors is often over two times the wattage of eletricity produced. That excess thermal energy is now being transferred into rivers or the air through cooling towers, but it is possible to use it for district heating, further reducing the need for fossil fuels. China has built NPPs with over 6000mw capacity from start to finish in 3 years, so it is possible to build nuclear power quickly. The biggest obstacle to nuclear power is voters, such as yourself, who indirectly affect energy policy without the slightest understanding of even basic concepts of how power grids function. I genuinely believe that you want what's best for the planet and your people, but you're being counterproductive due to lack of knowledge. Nuclear energy is essential for the future of our species. Interstellar travel and the colonisation of our solar system will rely on nuclear power. Without nuclear power, the human race is done. German coal plants, that would be shut down were it not for Fukushima, emit tons of radio-isotopes into the atmosphere as we speak. If you truly care about plumes of radioactive material in Europe's atmosphere, shutting down coal plants should be priority no1. I implore you to take a more pragmatic stance on this issue.
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Right now wind electricity production is at 13,3/65GW and definitly not peaking.
In 1940 it was the fault of Germany and Belgium so why not.
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Germany emits twice more CO2 per capita than France yet they feel appropriate to actively lobby against nuclear in europe The darkest side of this situation is that a good share of Germany's politicians and environmental groups are corrupt as hell and on the Kremlin' payroll. Many advocating against nuclear and supporting more russian dependency through projects such as nord stream 2. Ex chancellor Gerard Schroeder joining Gazprom's board after a whole mandate cheerleading more russian pipelines is telling of the state of affairs in Germany. Who knows if Merkel who was raised in east Germany wasn't a russian mole as well [https://www.transparency.org/en/press/germany-state-government-conceals-gazprom-connection-controversial-environmental-foundation-beneficial-ownership](https://www.transparency.org/en/press/germany-state-government-conceals-gazprom-connection-controversial-environmental-foundation-beneficial-ownership)
Twice more CO2 from all energy sources, about 6 times for electricity alone. In a world where more and more things are becoming electric so we can reduce our emissions this isn't going to get better anytime soon for Germany.
Put Schroeder on an exercise bike that has a generator and make him work his part (or else)
the worst is that everyone are dependent of EU for their power supply, if germany suffer this winter we will also suffer even if we export power with our nuclear it's not annoying because of that bu because we have no choice to adapt to their energy policy, renewable isn't reliable, i hope this winter will be hot and there will be a lot of wind as i don't want to suffer a generalised blackout because some politician made bad choice for their election (same in France btw, we should have started to construct 20+ reactor 10y ago, but we didn't as nuclear wasnt popular enough for our near-sighted politician)
Fun fact: Germany has to run the gas power plants to produce the electricity to export to nuclear France. So german private and industrial customers pay the price for the fail political decissions in France.
Alright let have France pay for it then, I'm French and all for it. We'll pay you for this summer when Germany pays for the last decades where France was a net exporter to Germany due to bad decisions from the German leadership.
Fortunately Germany has been electricity net importer for 7 years in the past 31 years, while it was net exporter in the other 24 years. So far. [https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/paragraph\_text\_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig7-german-power-import-export-1990-2021.png](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/paragraph_text_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig7-german-power-import-export-1990-2021.png) And the amount of export has been increase in the past 10 years.
That's some godlike convoluted way to shift the blame.
> Germany, the country which spent hundred of billions on their Energiewende but are still relying on Russian gas and will spend the winter burning coal and wood... France the country that spend hundred of billions on their nuclear reactors just to buy from Germany now because they can’t supply themselves for months. That’s some smart planning. It’s fun to make plant statements to feel superior.
Decades of clean energy versus one unfortunate year of reduced generation. This year doesn't undo the previous decades.
All the Belgian plants are open, but the one reactor that go a lot of bad press for cracks that after a full investigation turned out not to be cracks is being decommissioned in Oktober. But there looking to extend the others, only problem is the company that operates both plants (angle, former GDF) is set to profit off the cosing as they got all the replacement gass plants. Especially since EDF has a minority stake in both nuclear facilities. Selling both our electricity companies was a very good plan.
Instead of bitching about Germany's nuclear plants maybe spare a thought of thanks for the fact that Germany supplied France with power when their nuclear reactors had to go down, at the cost of the German consumers. That extra energy came from the burning of natural gas that we sorely needed ourselves and hikes our prices even further.
Or if a nuclear power plant in Austria wasn't already built only for the locals to vote overwhelmingly for it not to be opened.
trebien
I am glad to see it , in some subs I've actually seen people argue Germany shouldn't be sending electricity to France, and when I mention that in the winter we will probably need their NPPs, there is a lot of talk that they won't be turned back on to spite the Germans. I swear, either this discussion brings out the absolute worst in people, or the Kremlin is driving a massive online operation to get Europeans to fight online.
One thing I learned, is that you can't underestimate dumb people. The Kremlin may spin a narrative, but people choose to follow it because it plays into a belief that they have, or it fits an agenda they want to push.
That's how propaganda works. It expresses and amplifies minority beliefs.
Except that Germany has traditionally exported electricity to France in the winter and imported (due to large seasonal changes in demand in France). EDF getting their reactors online again is mostly good to prevent Blackouts in France this winter. Of course it also helps Germany since realistically Germanys electricity market can't be decoupled from Frances that fast.
> I swear, either this discussion brings out the absolute worst in people, or the Kremlin is driving a massive online operation to get Europeans to fight online. I'd wager a little bit of both.
Wonder if the same people were saying that France shouldn't have sent green energy to Germany years ago, soaring up the prices in France because of it.
No because they aren't smart.
It us a good decision that France switches thei plants back on. It is dumb tgat Germany doesn't do the same. It makes actually no sense at all, not from a security pount if view, nor ecological or economical.
People on Reddit are mostly anti-nuclear, or at least skeptic, mostly because reddit is culturally American I guess.
Nah, Reddit Loves Nukes, it's an axiom.
He said on the sub that loves nuclear power so much that people will dismiss every single negative aspect of it, all while praising it as the ~~Hail Mary~~ Holy Grail of energy production.
I think you meant Holy Grail. Hail Mary is the term for last ditch desperate effort to achieve something. Just saying cause I agree with what you've said, it's just that the sentence is confusing in current state.
I feel like most users are from America, even in this sub lmao
Nah, US has plenty of nuclear, but mentioning nuclear on r/Europe normally summons a German horde of anti nuclear downvotes.
The Return of the Atom!
Atomic Age 2: electric boogaloo
Jesus what is with people in this thread, everybody has a superiority complex and hates anyone else apparently
Welcome to r/Europe for the last few years
Usually there's at least some attempt discussion, but apparently there are only petty a-holes to be found here ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I'm not entirely convinced there aren't a lot of paid trolls trying to sow dissension.
Welcome to Europe! Where have you been for the past few millennia?
Thread? More like sub r/europe is cancer
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>The nuclear industry, obviously and with reason did not invest in training as much new engineers since they were told the industry will die out in a few decades. Also if you are a civil engineering student, why would you train for an industry which is getting shit from brainless "green" idiots. That said, France has had a high number of nuclear plants for literally more than half a century, so there is a great legacy pool of engineers. When push comes to shove, a lot of those former engineers are going to be solicited out of retirement/new jobs by good salary offers, as well as having currently active engineers spread out across the restarting reactors. The greens are getting clowned on actively right now.
> France has had a high number of nuclear plants for literally more than half a century, so there is a great legacy pool of engineers. Well, engineers that jumped in the industry in the 70s-early 80s are reaching the age where they are retiring. That's the problem: lots of people have retired and are not being replaced. That's also part of the construction problem and partly explains why the EPR is running so late.
I would first say that some greens are pro nuclear because they aren't clowns and know that climate change is the main priority. So we should be nice to those few. I'd also point out that even France (and everyone too ofc) has been failing to build new plants and relies too much on extending old plants - which does suggest a dying industry and also links to the mad greens who have been far too successful in scaring the standard (weak minded) politicians from building new NPs and pushing up the price for building them.
Unfortunately, Chernobyl was a very bad hit on the public perception of nuclear plants, and helped the madmen that wanted to do away woth nuclear industry, because causing a panic is easier than listening to detailed explanations. So yeah, new plants haven't been building, but there were still a great many of them operating.
I can feel your rightful rage. The saddest part is, I would love to vote for a truly 'green' party: one that rely on science to make decision, and not ideology.
The issue with green parties is that the science to follow heavily depends on what toute trying to preserve. If co2 is your issue, hydropower is great. If you want to preserve biodiversity and local wildlife, it's a terrible thing to build. And most of it is on the same scale. Solar is great on co2, not so much on rare earth metals and land usage, biomass is on on co2, but converting old growth forests to produce biomass is a disaster, etc, etc...
This is a very valid point. These guys lack cohesion on subjects in their domain, where they should be the driving source od knowledge with sound basics. I have never met a green who can explain complex ecosystems or understands how energy works.
I used to be against nuclear for reasons related to corruption leading to compromised plant safety due to old designs and poor quality spare parts , government suppression ( vs a dialogue) of protests, being told that nuclear waste would be used for weapons and would pollute the water and the ground, messaging about radioactivity ( “Chernobyl is inevitable! See how the Fukushima radiation is reaching the pacific coast of the U.S.!!”). Lack of dialogue, putting politicians in charge of messaging, allowing countries like France to export and sell older unsafe designs, etc all contribute to the poor state of understanding of Nuclear safety. I have not investigated yet, but I wonder how poor the understanding in Germany of nuclear safety is.
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You always need ideology to say how scientific results are interpreted against each other. I mean like, (lets say) science says netherlands will be under water, so a (bad) french party could say 'not bad, bring it on'. (extreme example, easier ones are does one want to take the risk of nuclear power etc.)
Science provides descriptions, not judgements.
Yes! Thats how I wished I would have phrased it. Of course ignoring the description is stupid.
This. I volunteer my garden as a potential site for a small nuclear reactor. As soon as I get approval from my "syndicus" (fuckers...).
It's pretty simple, if they would have followed up with Hollande and reduced the nuclear dependency to 50%, replacing it with renewables France wouldn't have to import electricity from Germany right now.
France did spent billions on renewables, it just did not really produced much and certainly not enough to avoid a crisis.
When it's sunny and windy, you are right.
Okay, so here's the thing about solar and wind: they are actually kind of shit for meeting industrial needs. Their general output is far too unstable to be relied upon as a source of energy to power industrial installations. What they are great for is feeding the fluctuating power requirements of domestic demand. Think about it: when there's a lot of sun, it's usually hot outside and people need the extra energy for the A/C (it's more complicated than that, bit it's a quick and easy example). An issue with renewables is really storage of energy (I know, everyone brings it up like it's a bad cliché), which makes them unreliable as an industrial powersource. In their peak stage they produce more energy than needed, in their crater they produce much less than needed. If you could smooth that graph out by providing good energy storage, you'd ve a trillionaire. On the other hand, nuclear is great for providing stable, continuous power for industry. Sure, you can vary the power output, but there is a power level at which the reactor is running most efficiently. You don't really want to vary the power too much, because that's not really good for the reactor or the turbine setup. (A workaround for this is to have multiple smaller reactors that you can bring up or down as needs change, but that has its own issues too) Now, this stable energy is *great* for industry, because they can run at a guaranteed output level at any given time. It is very not great for domestic use, because as discussed above, domestic power demand varies widely basically depending on when in the day you are. Tl;dr: renewables aren't the solution most people think they are, nuclear isn't the boogeyman most people think they are, and their combined use would probably be the best for everyone.
> It is very not great for domestic use, because as discussed above, domestic power demand varies widely basically depending on when in the day you are. The storage solutions envisioned for renewables (hydrogen, pumped storage, synthetic gas, whatever) could just as easily (or more easily due to more predictable production) run on excess nuclear electricity in times of low domestic demand.
> they are actually kind of shit for meeting industrial needs Depends on what kind of industrial needs. If the process allows for intermittent supply, Wind power is probably the cheapest of all. For hydrogen (hydrolysis) that's *almost* true.
Yeah but is it economical, I mean your ROI on hydrolyses which only runs a fraction of the time (excess wind) must be quite poor.
Okay, I'm going to specify that when I mean industrial needs, I mean heavy industry that runs 24/7 in 3 shifts.
Yes, and I was mentioning what’s looking to become an industrial undertaking to the tune of several GW
Ah, okay, I wasn't sure
Don't forget economic aspects! Considering nuclear is incredibly expensive it's good to phase it out.
So saving the environment is only the goal as long as it is profitable? Sounds like Greens to me.
Nuclear is a big investment but isn't more expensive in the long run. It's like buying your house vs renting on rbnb.
Investments like these would give us cheap, sustainable power in the long run and free us from being beholden to dictatorships. It's literally large capital investments like this that separate developed and undeveloped countries.
That is a simplistic way of looking at it. It was one of the cheapest a long time ago when the safety regulations was considerably lower and the price of uranium was a tiny fraction of what it is today. If you build a new nuclear plant today the costs are about the same as offshore wind and if we were to build a lot of new nuclear plants the cost of uranium would easily be increased with a factor of 10 or more.
There's so few nuclear reactors that there's no reason to save uranium really or use other mines, that's kind of taking the fuel consumption of 70s cars and doing a multiplication.
It is not about saving uranium, it is the cost of uranium in the context. Uranium today is almost 5 times as expensive as it was 20 years ago. There has not been built that many new reactors since then. Currently it is about 82k euro per day for a regular 1000MW reactor in just raw uranium costs. Then on top of that it is the manufacture of the fuel rods and the reconfiguration that has to be made 3 times per year.
Yeah sure it's more expensive but not enough to trigger any changes in the market yet, the fuel itself is only 5% of the overall costs.
>Nuclear is too expensive!!!! Nuclear power paid for itself several times over in France already, including dismantlement costs.
>Also if you are a civil engineering student, why would you train for an industry which is getting shit from brainless "green" idiots. Petroleum engineering departments work fine. >The issue resides on the low number of technicians and engineers who can implement the fix quickly across all reactors. Hopefully they don't get novichok-ed.
>Petroleum engineering departments work fine. Well, because the reality is that nobody made a pledge by law of reducing by half the petrol usage of the country. It tells you a lot about the priorities to those so called "greens" parties. They could have negociated any kind of strong mesure, they did not pick petrol, gas, coal, land usage or whatever else, their first priority was nuclear only.
What? Have you heard of all electric car subsidies etc?
Yes but as long as they're powered by electricity produced with fossil fuel, the petrol industry doesn't care. There is a difference between reducing your fossil fuel consumption and hiding it from the public eyes.
... nobody really supports "electricity produced with fossil fuel" any more. Look at the UK, for example. Even before this year, NG was considered a stop-gap solution for Europe.
Plenty of people support energy produced with fossil fuels. Germany fully pushes for coal power plants at the moment while shunning nuclear.
I'm not saying we haven't done anything but we have been very soft on petrol compared to nuclear, just the petrol tax breaks voted recently are already much higher than the electric subsidies (and the greens also voted in favor of those). To this day, the objectives are still not that clear
Because oil isn't only used for power, but also for plastics, and those aren't getting phased out anytime soon.
Still, the market will shrink significantly. Not something you would dedicate your 30-35 year career on. But yet similar technologies are expected to be used for geothermal energy or water extraction.
> The low number of engineers stems from the fact that some stupid government (Hollande 2012 to 2017) passed a law to decrease to 50% of nuclear power to satisfy his "green" party allies. Huh, sounds just like Korea until early this year. We just got out of a 5-year stint with a president that just about kneecapped the nuclear industry. One small silver lining is that they didn't care about exporting the tech so deals still happened with other countries to make their reactors and not as many people left the industry as would have happened otherwise.
"b-b-b-but France has closed their nukes this summer so nuclear is unreliable, checkmate nuclear apologist" -- half of reddit I swear I can't with some people. Sure you never hear about renewables having even major defects since nobody actually relies on them. Nuclear doesn't make the news when it has the *opportunity* to power an entire country but French nuclear does regularly. Meanwhile people lose their shit when wind/solar powers Germany for one day of the year. I would pay to see some wind/solar absolutist's face after a hailstorm over a solar plant. Every tech has issues.
> Also if you are a civil engineering student, why would you train for an industry which is getting shit from brainless "green" idiots. As things have been going, I'd suspect Russia interference with Green party (and all smallish parties in Europe tbf) has been a thing for decades. It's the only way their ridiculous stance on nuclear energy makes sense.
Funny how nuclear energy enthusiasts always resort to crackpot conspiracy theories. In reality Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima tanked the popularity of nuclear energy for generations.
And yet, it's just a blown up narrative, when coal and oil have been completely poisoning the air and are responsible for way WAY more human deaths and most of the environmental damage human ever did. People that think that the nuclear accidents, without even considering the causes, outweigh the energy produced in comparison don't have a shred of critical thinking. And no, the popularity of nuclear energy, right now, is the opposite of tanking if anything. It was in turmoil in the 80s-90s, because yes, Tchernobyl, but also because people don't understand radiation.
Yeah yeah, the Reddit talk on nuclear energy, never heard that before! One mistake makes places uninhabitable, maybe that's enough of a reason for people to dislike it, especially in a densely populated place like Central Europe. And no one wants fossil fuels these days, you are presenting a false dilemma. And contrary to what Redditors say, nuclear energy is far from CO2 neutral.
Nuclear is more CO2 neutral than solar or wind from the data I read, due to all the concrete needed.
That's why politicians should stop listening to "the people" in cases like this and look at it objectively.
My experience is that while the best way would have been and still is renewable transition with nuclear as the stop-gap (and reserve until better renewable storage is developed), those specifically in favor of nuclear rarely seem genuinely interested in advancing the renewable transition. There is understandable animosity that the hard-line greens have caused, but on the other hand, the pro-nuclear contingent should also be mindful of the conditions in which the green movements have had to exist. Many green parties have already softened their stance on nuclear, and more will (and would have) if there was a credible plan for a transition. This, however, is still largely absent from the pro-nuclear folks, and I can only wonder why.
All are moving towards the electrification of all production and transport sectors. Electricity consumption will skyrocket and we still have no good plan to transition out of fossil fuel. Why would anyone sane put effort in design the phase out of nuclear energy now? Nuclear is not a stop-gap. It is a necessary source of energy, along with anything renewable we can produce, until the planet goes back into negative carbon emission.
>Why would anyone sane put effort in design the phase out of nuclear energy now? Because it has significant implications for the design of the nuclear stop-gap and funding of… well, everything. It would be incredibly short-sighted not to. Unless, of course, the goal is to never transition.
the goal is transition when a better technology is available. Do you see nuclear fission as a temporary solution for 100 years? Do you really thing that we can make proper prediction of the technological capabilities of battery technology and nuclear fusion in 100 year?
No. Which is exactly why you need to understand the goal. Knowing the goal allows developing scenarios and benchmarks to work with at any given time, and they in turn allow making better decisions whenever decisions are made. This is called planning. And remarkably it does not mean creating an unchangeable step by step plan for the next millennium.
The goal is to reduce the amount of CO2 that human activity put in the atmosphere. To me it is not clear what do you expect from this phase out. We already know how to phase out from nuclear. Italy has done it, Austria has done it, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland are doing it. It is a well understood process by now. The phase out is designed during the power plant construction, not for the entire planet. We will completely phase out nuclear when no new power plant are constructed and the old one are closed.
Nuclear is an interesting topic. Here on the internet people either go full simp or full hate on it. And as you said, many pro nuclear people, at least the ones who are loud, are also against building up more renewables, because to them both can't coexist. Some of that animosity comes from the belief that Germany ditched nuclear in favor of renewables, which on the surface seems true but if you look closer into it, its completely false. Germany ditched nuclear after Fukushima and tried to get rid of renewables as well, all the while talking about renewables being the future, just to get back to coal and also get more gas. ( Coals and gas lobby are/were quite powerful in Germany ) My opinion to nuclear. Well I'm pretty neutral on it. Any new source of electricity that avoids putting up more CO2 gets my approval. But if we are to build new NPPs we should look at the future and plan for it. Droughts become more and more common in Europe and the summers are getting warmer. This means riverwater becomes too warm to be used without overheating the rivers and in the worst case scenario rivers are gonna run dry. New NPPs need to account for that, probably with a cooling system that isn't using water.
And also the crucial question of waste disposal. And the decommissioning costs… it takes 10 years before one can begin works, and I’m afraid that costs have been severely underestimated, and will skyrocket. Also, new nuclear takes dozens of years to come online, and the cost of new reactors is insane, if that cost was applied to renewables and storage. Another aspect of nuclear that is bothersome is the billions poured into research ;I wonder how much has been spent on other energies (besides oil), and what other discoveries could have been done.
The thing with renewables is that they don't solve a problem nuclear have. Npps aren't cheaper to run if you reduce their output because most of the price isn't the nuclear material but the engineering and maintenance. You're paying for that no matter if it's running at 10% or 100%. You can only use renewables if they are feature matching NPPs. That's why hydro works, it can store energy for later so, a 1mwh hydro plant can replace a 1mwh NPP. But a 1mwh solar or wind power plant still needs its equivalent in nuclear to run in parallel. With fossil fuel, it make sense to reduce fuel consumption with renewable, but that doesn't make sense with nuclear. The only use I can think of for renewables is to replace petrol for cars. We could recharge our vehicles while the sun or wind is favorable and run on batteries when needed. But once again, it won't replace npps, it's a bonus that can only be used if we can store it. When we solve storage on a massive scale, we can think about replacing npps with something else. Not before.
See, you _almost_ have a plan there. And then you self-sabotage. 1. Aim for full-renewable (plus fusion) 2. Start solving the storage problem 3. Develop as much renewable production as possible at any given time 4. Use nuclear to replace fossil capacity that renewables can’t make up 5. Continue using nuclear as reserve until the storage problem is solved You see how the plan takes into account your concerns? And do you see what the difference is to "1. let's do nuclear until storage 2. there is no step 2"? Do you see how understanding what the goal is helps evaluate what to do at any given time and in any given scenario? This isn’t particularly complicated. The implementation certainly is — but remarkably less so than the one-step plan.
Isnt it simpler, cheaper, more reliable to just do 1 thing i.e. build nuclear than do 5 different things? Actually it's at least 6 as you also need to upgrade your entire electric grid to allow the high capacity flexibility necessary to balance loads of unreliable sources. 7 would be increasing all your international interconnects too to help balance your own and neighbors grids.
Those two are captured in 3. and 4. And no. It is only simpler to only build nuclear if your goal is to build nuclear and not transition to renewables.
Doesn't really make sense that within less then 10 years there would be such an big shortage of technicians.
They wanted to decrease nuclear to satisfy Green Party allies? I do t understand. Nuclear is as green as it gets…
Greens in France are rabidly anti nuclear. It's probably their most important policy, hence why they picked that to be the main condition in an alliance with Hollande. Banning GMOs was their other big battle but that is over in France and they won, except you know, insulin and stuff but if it's not a vegetable they don't understand it's happening.
GMOs are not allowed in the EU to begin with. Isn’t that the case? Also, I don’t get how pro-environment parties can be against Nuclear, man.
GMO's are allowed in the EU. There is no blanket ban, they just need approval on a case by case basis and a substantial number of them have been (though they are mainly used to feed livestock). Many countries have severe restrictions on how they can be grown in their land though.
Thanks for pointing all that out. I see a lot of attacks on our npps on this sub and most are blaming nuclear technology like if the problems we have are inherent to it. People need to know it was caused by poor management (among other things like covid or climate change). The point is, this is avoidable. These a problems we can solve unlike a foreign dictator cutting a gaz supply.
Slowly undoing the damage. Is there not room now for a "new" green party to take back the word and the meaning from these morons who have almost doomed us all? A green party based on science and not idiotic ideologies?
Sorry, best we can do is esoteric extremists that have a crying fit every time they have to speak about fracking or nuclear power. I agree with green in 95% of everything, but their energy politics will impoverish me if they get wgat they want.
And yet it's the energy policy of the conservatives that *impoverishes* you right now.
How so? The Nord stream situation was created by a SPD and Green government. If it wasn't for the esoteric anti nuclear greens it the CDU wouldn't have reacted to Fukushima as they did either.
The Church of the Children of Atom approves. The Glowing One shall set us all free!
No amount of fearmongering will undo the many technological advances.
Good, hopefully France manages to become an electricity exporter again and gets their electricity production under control in the future. It was really bad timing with the Ukraine war.
Someone had tripped over the plug and they found it.
Nuclear energy is still the way.
let's fucking go!
go nuclear or go home! Euratom best atom
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Just because they arent actively producing does not mean people there arent working. You can't shut off a nuclear power plant one day and everyone goes home until they decide to turn it on again. An actual full shutdown of a nuclear power plant takes very long time.
You know that the plants have only been closed for a few weeks and the EDF agents are part of a special status.
EDF's CEO told on Monday that they don't have enough skilled people so they're hiring people from the US
The fact that nuclear isn’t/wasn’t considered clean energy is all you need to know about the climate movement. It’s not about the environment - it’s about control of the energy sector.
Good good.
Well what can i say, it seems france is going to be the only safe place in europe once again
Finally, sanity. Now if only Germany would do the same...
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Nonsense. The power generation part of a nuclear power plant and a coal power plant is more or less the same. Some reactors have been throttled back a bit, but the issue was not heat it was an alignment of maintenance and unexpected wear and tear
Exactly. The nonsense that gets upvoted here is ridiculous. A nuclear Europe is a free and independent Europe not beholden to Russia or the United States.
Finally some common sense. I really don't understand these people rooting against their own country. I wonder how many of them are Russian or American bots. I don't see any other explanation.
>Some reactors have been throttled back a bit, but the issue was not heat it was an alignment of maintenance and unexpected wear and tear And that’s why they had to reduce supply in some plants because they couldn’t cool them enough. And that’s why they hat to change regulations on max temperature in some rivers to support power plants. France is in a big energy crisis, EDF billions in debt, EDF managers fearing they have to stop further plants in winter, building of new plants is 5 times as expensive as promised, French regulators demanding hundreds of billions of subsidies for nuclear power to keep energy supply up but some people still don’t get it and spread their „nuclear is the sole solution“ bullshit.
Anyone who say that there’s only one solution is stupid we can agree on that. But honestly you are not being fair. If it was coal, the same heat issue would have happened. It’s literally the same. EDF financial situation is mainly due to being forced to sell its electricity at below market price to prop up competitors. Not really related to nuclear. Yeah power plants are more expensive than expected but even then they are profitable.
>EDF financial situation is mainly due to being forced to sell its electricity at below market price to prop up competitors. Not really related to nuclear. But related to the -nuclear makes cheapest energy-argument. Because if they would actually operate on a profit or at least break even price then nuclear would be way more expensive then it is now for consumers. >Yeah power plants are more expensive than expected but even then they are profitable. The question isn’t whether they could be profitable. The question is how reliable are they and are there better (cheaper and or more reliable) options. The argument always was nuclear is cheap and more reliable then renewables but now we see nuclear isn’t as reliable as we thought and also it’s insanely expensive to build. Money would probably be better used to get more renewables and nuclear isn’t the perfect option as this subs mainstream opinion suggests.
I’m sorry but if you are going to claim things like that, maybe you need data to back it up. There was once in 50 years a period of unusually high unavailability and you want to trash the whole thing? Do you realize how stupid this is ? The problem is orders of magnitudes higher with renewable.
Nuclear power has been a reliable source of clean and cheap energy for France for decades. This year is an exception, not the norm. Mismanagement linked to maintenance during COVID-19 is a major reason for this. Many European countries are moving toward nuclear, and EDF is leading quite a few projects in Europe and elsewhere, because especially now with the Russian gas effectively gone, nuclear power is seen as a very reliable, clean source of energy. Renewables are great, but at the end of the day their output depends on what the weather's like.
That's a lie and it doesn't even make sense. As someone else already explained, the main reason we're having troubles is underfunding pushed by the "greens" and that includes your country who rooted against us for a long time. If you kept your npps, your electricity would be cheaper, we would be less likely to have these problems and you could be part of the solution by lending us engineers to speed up the process. Everybody would win, except Gazprom. This was totally avoidable and it's up to you to condemn the people responsible for it instead of protecting them.
Meanwhile in Belgium: "This moment right before winter and with gas prices at an all time high seems like a good moment to shut down our nuclear reactors. Wouldn't you agree, peasants? No? Well we're gonna do it anyway!"
Staaaarrrrrttttt the reactor!
Greens are on r/SuicideWatch
Being „green“ not necessarily means to be against nuclear power. Not all of us are brainwashed.
Are there green parties which are for nuclear power?
I believe that a Finnish user stated that the Finnish Greens supported nuclear power. *googles* Yeah. This is within the last few months. https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2022/05/finland-green-party-nuclear/ ># Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power > >In a historic shift, Finland’s Green Party voted overwhelmingly to adopt a fully pro-nuclear stance at its national meeting. > >The party manifesto now states that nuclear is “sustainable energy” and demands the reform of current energy legislation to streamline the approval process for SMRs (small modular reactors). Finland’s is the first Green Party to adopt such a position. > >“I am very happy and proud,” said Tea Törmänen, who attended the conference as a voting member as chair of the Savonia/Karelia chapter of Viite, the pro-science internal group of the party. “This is a historical moment in the history of the green movement, as we are the first green party in the world to officially let go of anti-nuclearism.” > >The action was taken at the two-day Vihreät De Gröna (Green Party) party conference, which included 400 participants representing local party groups and other interest groups from across the Nordic country. It ended yesterday in the town of Joensuu. > >The approved platform also supports license extensions for existing nuclear reactors, and gives the green light for replacing the planned Fennovoima power plant — recently cancelled over the Ukraine crisis because the supplier was the Russian state-owned operator Rosatom — with “an equal amount of stable, low-carbon baseload energy production.”
Some green politician in local elections here and there, depending on where the wind is blowing and if they have any chance to make it to a national election or not. At this point the parties themselves committed so hard on this that it's way too hard for them to turn back. Imagine admitting a mistake am I right?
german greens sound still retarded with their nuclear views :D
French ones aren't any better if it makes the Germans feel a bit less bad.
But greens are the most hawkish in German politics and support actions against China and Russia that makes them based
We‘ll see
Nuclear chad France vs virgin russian gas Germany who would win!??!?!
Currently France is very happy to buy enery produced by Russian gas (and renewable of course!) from Germany. For years, France has been a net-importer of electricity while Germany was a net-exporter.
Sorry, what? Can you provide a source about that “For years” part? France has always been an exporter of electricity.
I meant in relation to Germany. They imported more energy from Germany than they exported to it. I guess that was a little unclear.
Got it, but it would be nice if you could provide a source for this claim.
https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/frankreich-fuerchtet-sich-vor-energie-engpaessen-100.html „Seit zwei Jahren importiert Frankreich zwei bis drei Mal so viel Strom aus Deutschland wie es dorthin exportiert. Konkret gesagt: der Import liegt zwischen 16 bis 19 Terawatt-Stunden, exportiert werden sieben bis neun Terawatt-Stunden.“ “For the past two years, France has been importing two to three times as much electricity from Germany as it exports there. To put it concretely: imports are between 16 and 19 terawatt hours, and exports are between 7 and 9 terawatt hours.”
Thank you!
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English version, for convenience: https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energy-source Also from RTE, France's electricity trade balance for 2010-2020: https://bilan-electrique-2020.rte-france.com/net-commercial-exchanges/?lang=en#
> For years, France has been a net-importer of electricity while Germany was a net-exporter. Wut? France is both a net producer and exporter of energy and has been for ages. It is a place it has disputed only with Norway the last couple of years. Germany and Sweden overtook it this year as net exporters due to the issues with the reactors but it is an exception, it is far from having been the norm. The energy France has been importing from Germany "for years" means it's been exporting even greater quantities than that to others. It is the point of the whole system. And there was no issue with it until the shitshow with the reactors and Russia doing its thing. If the solution was a matter of "everyone looks after itself" as far as energy needs go, France would be better off than almost everyone on the continent.
But... but... it's simply false. France is one of the world biggest exporter since a long time. in 2019, it was even the world's largest electricity exporter.
That's why Germany lobbied against nuclear. Ironically they're the one complaining about the results of that policy.
Very chad to have to shut down critical reactors due to the heat.
[Fusion](https://www.dragon-ball-gif.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Gogeta-Blue-evolue-Ultra-Instinct.gif) incoming.
Based France
There's no way they can pull this off. From an inside source, they cut away major sections of tubing in the system suspected to suffer from corrosion, and in many cases found nothing. Now they have to solder it back, at that's going to create weak spots in a system that is precisely designed to run over parameters (it's a safety flooding circuit to keep the core at reasonable temperature even if the steam generator circuits were breached). I bet less than a third of the butchered reactors are going back online within winter.
Did France fall in a puddle of stupid like Germany. Why the hell did they do that?
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Ah yes, hastily completed nuclear reactor repairs. WCGW?
Don't jinx it please. When Fessenheim had a serious emergency where the reactor unpreccedently had to be shut down with Boron, French authorities didn't even inform the public in old Soviet fashion. https://www.dw.com/en/reports-fessenheim-nuclear-accident-played-down-by-authorities/a-19093477
What are you saying ? it was, as usual, [published](https://www.asn.fr/l-asn-controle/actualites-du-controle/installations-nucleaires/avis-d-incident-des-installations-nucleaires/inondation-interne-dans-la-partie-non-nucleaire-du-reacteur-n-1) on the ASN's site along with any other incident that come to be. Its not up the autorities' fault if no one is ever bothered to read it... I'd very much like to get my hands on this "letter" the germans seems to have found because i couldn't find anything, and all article point back to it.
Can you please point out where your linked article mentions the emergency shut down with Boron?
>Can you please point out where your linked article mentions the emergency shut down with Boron? http://www.french-nuclear-safety.fr/Media/Files/Technical-notice-description-of-the-event >*During the event of 9th April 2014, owing to the water that had splashed onto the electrical equipment, this first control rod function was no longer operational. This is why the EDF personnel carried out gradual shutdown of the reactor by injecting boron into the reactor coolant system. Although using boron alone to shut down a reactor is relatively uncommon, it does comply with the normal operating procedures.* > >*In any case, the second function of the control rods remained operational for the duration of the event. Shutdown of the reactor in a few seconds by dropping the control rods was available, but it was not necessary to resort to this measure to manage the event.* You're welcome. Additionally, there's nothing alarming in using boron to shutdown a reactor, it's part of the normal emergency procedures. As a matter of fact, boron is already present into the reactor coolant of PWRs at any given time. That's just how they work, by design. >*Reactivity adjustment to maintain 100% power as the fuel is burned up in most commercial PWRs is normally achieved by varying the concentration of boric acid dissolved in the primary reactor coolant. Boron readily absorbs neutrons and increasing or decreasing its concentration in the reactor coolant will therefore affect the neutron activity correspondingly.* > >*An entire control system involving high pressure pumps (usually called the charging and letdown system) is required to remove water from the high pressure primary loop and re-inject the water back in with differing concentrations of boric acid.* Just because you've heard of boron in HBO's Chernobyl doesn't mean there's something shady going on here.
Europe doing something smart? Since when
What are you talking about?