Slashdot Mirror

Depends what you define a private company then.
The EDF is only a private company on paper in so far that it is a stock company, its mostly owned by the french state. And the new reactor in China is cough cough owned to 30% by EDF. See: https://www.edf.fr/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I switched to an electricity supplier who could guarantee that at least 74.5% of their supplies come from nuclear plants: http://www.edf.fr/

As people talk about fusion, it's hard not to notice all the rhetoric seems to forget the lessons learned in the 50's. Fusion won't save the world anymore than old-hat nuclear. But people believe it, just as they believed in the too-cheap-to-meter nonsense. Cheaper in France? I checked (the first plan I clicked to, you may find cheaper). That's cheaper than in most parts of the US, but considerably more than I pay now in Nova Scotia, which isn't even the cheapest in Canada and is delivered by a for-profit corporation. The real question however is whether nuclear is cheaper for producers. The markets seem to have settled that one long ago- not many nuclear plants have been started since 1980, while natural gas plants had their boom. Best figures I got were 10c per kWh for nuclear against 5-6 for natural gas. If you check out the data on page 23 of TFA, you'll see price trends for wind- and we expect several more doublings before that market matures. It's almost inevitable that wind and solar will be cheaper than even natural gas within 20 years. We already have a winner- so spending billions on an industry that has had too many excuses for it poor performance should be a non-starter.

According to the French electricity company (http://www.edf.fr/index.php4?coe_i_id=206), 85% of the electricty produced in 2003 was from nuclear energy. Of course, some of that may have been sold to neighboring countries so maybe the 75% is also correct for the domestic consumption...

On that same page, it says that an extra 10% is from hydro power and that 95% of their production doesn't generate CO2.

There is only one other project like this that I have heard of. It's in France, and its the Usine de la Rance.

The Usine Maremotice de la Rance is based on the French equivalent of the St Lawrence Bay. This is a place where the tide amplitude is one of the highest in the world.

At low tide, the sea truly is miles away from the shore. I have been there, and it's amazing how far away the ocean can go... and how fast it can come back. Saint Malo, the nearest city, was actually (a few centuries ago) an island at high tide, and people had to wait for the low tides to cross over the sand to the city.

The 'Usine' itself has been pretty successful, and provides 'clean', tide-based electricity to Saint Malo and other cities, but its ecological impact has been underestimated: the Rance, which used to be a clean river is now severely clogged with mud and silt that are not evacuated by the tide, to the detriment of wildlife. Many bird and fish species have left the river for others or have died off completely.

I hope the company that will build the New York project has taken this data into account for its project (which seems to be the case).

Here in France around 80% of the electricity is nuclear (15% hydroelectric ...), it's not cheap but it's possible. EDF , the french monopoly, is actually the world leader (45 € billions, 22 % of the electricity of the European Union), so it can even become profitable (despite the huge investments). There's however a problem with nuclear waste, which is vehemently debated here. All nuclear plants are using the same technology (pressured water) and the MOX fuel, so on a large scale, they reduce costs and increase security.

I think it's really hard to perform that kind of investigation and looking at the results I think they did a good job making the results widely available. Anyway, it's still unacceptable that such things happens in the most powerful country in the world.

Flame me if you want but France is known to have one of the best electrical system in the world. The government owns it and some laws do protect the costumer. It allows France to export a lot of power to other European countries thus making a lot of money from it and playing a big role in Europ energy.

I think France made good choices for power:
- nuclear (or nuculear whatever). Much cheaper and cleaner than oil. France is very strong on nuclear technology and do export its knowledge to other countries. To date we didn't have any major incident and I think it's pretty secure as long as enough money is spent.
- public service. There is a law in France stating that every citizen, wherever he lives, as the right to have access to electricity for free. Of course we pay bills but if you live in the country the government MUST bring you access to electricity even if you live far from everything. It's a law so sometimes it's not really followed but most of the time the government sticks to it.

When I arrived in the USA I was shocked by the poor quality of your electric system. Many outages, expensive bills and thousand of wires in the sky ! I think that it's a very advanced country with an outdated power system. I've seen on the TV recently that many companies as starting to produce their own power. I really think it's pretty bad since the installations needed are dangerous, potentially explosive and very expensive.

What happened on August the 14th also suggests that a country really depends on its energy distribution system and that it could be, in the near future, target for terrorists.

Here is a link with a photo.

EDF, the French state company that has the monopoly of electricity production and distribution, has operated the Rance tide-power electric plant since 1966.

In these 35 years, turbine technology evolved a lot. However, a few lessons can be learned from the Rance test plant:

• Tide power is awfully expensive to build and operated
• Maintenance is a technical and financial headache
• Profitability is more than questionable, it's virtually impossible to reach
• The coast segment "blessed" with the tide power plant can be dramatically affected.

From an environmental point of view, let's just notice that the waves and currents are an essential factor of oxygenation. Mess up with it, and you'll end up with stinking, stagnant water à la Venice laguna.

So will this Scottish innovation ever be deployed on a large scale? Don't hold your breath.

-- SysKoll

In the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, there is a small tidal power plant (experimental, I think).

There is a tidal power plant (not experimental) in Brittanny (France). It's been working for more than 30 years and powers 250 000 homes.

See here (in French) and here about the Bay of Fundy(in English).

In Brittany, the tidal power has also been used to power mills since the XIIth century. They would trap the the tide behind a wall and let it go back through the paddle wheel of the mill.

Check out: http://membres.lycos.fr/larance/main1.html (french), http://www.edf.fr/html/fr/decouvertes/voyage/usine /usine_d.html (french) or http://www.edf.fr/html/en/decouvertes/voyage/usine /retour-usine.html (english).

The 240 MW figure comes from this page: the power plant contains 24 groups, eeach group able to ouput 10 MW.

Check out: http://membres.lycos.fr/larance/main1.html (french), http://www.edf.fr/html/fr/decouvertes/voyage/usine /usine_d.html (french) or http://www.edf.fr/html/en/decouvertes/voyage/usine /retour-usine.html (english).

The 240 MW figure comes from this page: the power plant contains 24 groups, eeach group able to ouput 10 MW.

Check out: http://membres.lycos.fr/larance/main1.html (french), http://www.edf.fr/html/fr/decouvertes/voyage/usine /usine_d.html (french) or http://www.edf.fr/html/en/decouvertes/voyage/usine /retour-usine.html (english).

The 240 MW figure comes from this page: the power plant contains 24 groups, eeach group able to ouput 10 MW.

this is actually quite old

En effet..

The Rance plant in France is powered by the tides for more than 30 years...

240 MW maximum capacity (600 millions kWh per year, 68 MW actual capacity)
Very nice piece of french "ingenierie", like the concorde (OK half french, half british...).
Major drawbacks : expensive to build (1 billion $), big impact on the environment.
Some propaganda about it, by the french electricity company (Electricite de France) http://www.edf.fr/html/en/decouvertes/voyage/