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France To Invest One Billion Euros In Nuclear Power
An anonymous reader writes "France will invest one billion euros in future nuclear power development while boosting research into security, President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Monday."
The Guardian has a more detailed article. It's not a huge investment, but it is nice to see continued commitment to Generation IV reactors by at least one Western country.
They will make a fortune selling power to all those countries "phasing out" nuclear power with no plan to replace it but the underpants gnomes.
They will be weak when all that radiation causes TEH SUBLUXATIONZZZ!!!! lol.
...President Sarkozy kissed his pinky.
At least there will be a good side if there is another nuclear catastrophe as in Japan recently. France will up its investment to one TRIIIIIIILION EUROS!
They'll make a fortune selling excess to the Germans.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
But investing in nuclear power is a good thing. The rest of the world is wrong; it's been said a thousand times that the chief reason nuclear plants fail is because they aren't replaced, so I hardly see this as a bad thing.
Politicians are similar, in many respects, to companies that derive their revenue from advertising.
They are, in truth, extremely focused on customers service. It's just that voters aren't the customers.
So I guess the current score is 2 - 2:
For:
France
UK
Against:
Italy
Germany
I made an app! Shoutium
I mean, I love Final Fantasy comics as much as the next guy, but apparently France is batshit insane for it!
Interesting. France's going to be selling nuclear power to Germany for the rest of our lives. The French are smart people. Not only have they weighed out all the environmental concerns (don't get me started about coal), but these guys are really going to cash in on energy sales. Props to you, France!
It's not a huge investment, but it is nice to see continued commitment to Generation IV reactors by at least one Western country.
If it's only chomp change, where is the 1 billion euro for solar?
Please, the pro-nuke lobby has received enough indulgence.
Quite. Although the germans have said they won't use nuclear power - they will. It's just that they'll use FRENCH nuclear power, since the french can - apparently - do it better than the germans.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Italy is in the same boat... France will be selling power to all of Europe. Perhaps they are going to position themselves as the European energy broker...
Except the right wing in France isn't right-wing. Rather it's left of centre, with huge cultural blind spots as much as the left. Just not as bad.
Om, nomnomnom...
1) Eliminate All Nuclear Power
2) ???
3) Profit!!!
Who else are you going to vote for ? The left wing party who only talk about the party internal politics who no one else cares about. The far right whose economic program would bankrupt france even faster than the current government current policies do ? the trotskysts that wants a bloody revolution ? The greens who haven't been ecologists since maoists entered and hijacked the movement ? Not many like our current president but all current candidates suck anyway.
Don't connect them to the internet, duh.
Don't we have a crapload of unused base load power in this world which we could use for hydrogen production?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Canada is selling it's nuclear industry to private interests.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/ottawa-to-sell-aecl-to-snc-lavalin/article2078110/
1) Spend 1$ Billion dollars in future nuclear power development
2) ???
3) Profit!!!
tougher international policies ? nothing.
Policies about what? Or is being tough an end in itself?
please, someone, explain that.
Team spirit.
The world to the US: you are not the belly button of the world and you don't get to define what is and what is not right wing in other countries. It'd be as stupid for Castro to tell you the communist party of america is right wing.
At least someone isn't giving up.
Still, the lessons of Fukushima Daiichi are serious. There are a sizable number of reactors out there which will melt down if they lose cooling pump power. (The reactors and the pumps at Fukushima survived the earthquake and tsunami. Cooling continued until the battery bank ran down, then stopped. All the damage shown in photos is from later hydrogen explosions.) That's unacceptable. There has to be backup passive cooling.
All plants should have catalytic hydrogen recombiners to prevent hydrogen explosions. There's no excuse for not having those. That should have been fixed after TMI, decades ago.
Long term storage of used fuel rods on site has got to stop. After initial cooling, those need to go to dry cask storage.
The really tough issue is evacuation zones. Indian Point in New York has 19 million people within 50 miles.
Yea, it is always nice to see reactors being built close to other countries borders to minimize risk.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
I wonder if any of that money will go towards moving away from uranium 235? If anything, France would be a good candidate to show the western world that thorium 232 is a viable fuel source. All we'd lose is the plutonium and we really don't need more nuclear weapons anyways. Just about everything that sucks about using uranium nuclear fuel (scarcity, goes critical if not cooled, needs to be enriched, unusable waste) would go away.
No, it is right of center. The US center is practically far right, and seems to keep slipping that way.
One reactor set up?
I'll charge them 1% of whatever they're going to spend on "boosting security" to advise that they do not build reactors in flood planes or on fault lines.
it's been said a thousand times that the chief reason nuclear plants fail is because they aren't replaced.
Exactly. The plants in the news are like saying a car with 500,000 miles on it broke. Really? What do you mean we can't build a new car? OK. Patch it one more time.
This is probably going to be more like 1 billion Euros for Areva. As others have said at least some first world country will be developing the next generation nuclear reactors.
Time to offend someone
Today I got a good idea for nuclear power plants. Build them on a raised platform above ground, like an oil rig sits above the sea floor (but not so high of course), but instead of using solid struts, use flexible ones or giant shock absorbers combined with giant caster wheels in parabolic pits. This way earthquakes are no longer a problem and the risk of damage from tsunamis or floods is decreased. Also with a limited number of ramps leading up to it, security becomes easier to manage.
Next, install a metal drain pan that covers the very bottom of the platform. This way if something is leaking out (for some reason...maybe it got hit by a 9/11-style attack), you'll know for sure and you'll know right away, and you'll have an easy way to collect any hazardous waste.
Now would this be horribly expensive? Seems like a great idea.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
So it's Germany retreating in fear while France attacks the problem? What a change 70 years make.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
You can bet that France and Germany are going into the Nuclear energy business together, only the reactors will be in France. Must be that the political landscape makes this kind of shell game plausible to the German people (let's move the reactors over the border) after all French fallout wouldn't dare cross into Germany.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
1. nuclear power is the only hope we have of fulfilling the planet's energy needs. getting everything from solar, wind, and hydro is a silly left wing tree hugger fantasy. in fact, nuclear power is only the first step. step two involves getting a stable mining operation in space. that's a 200 year process right there.
2. from what I've read, immigration problems, 'cultural fragmentation', and being tough on international relations are NOT leftwing strong suits. they're the ones appeasing middle eastern 'peaceful invasion' under the guise of 'multi culturalism' and 'community cohesion.' granted, the right rarely lives up to its blustering, but expecting left wingers to take strong anti-immigration stances is insanity. it goes against their entire ideology.
3. people still vote left despite its failures too. what does that tell you about the problem? maybe people are just stupid.
Keep telling yourself that. If we were slipping to the "right", we would have a shrinking government, not a growing one.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
A large capital expenditure plant doesn't make any money to pay the stockholders when you cut off the power... if you pull the plug 25% of the time, they just lost 25% of their gross revenues and probably more than 25% of their profits... So that means electricity has to be, roughly, over a quarter of their expenses and has to practically be free, to interest them.
It's very important that the investors always get their cut, or they won't let us have any toys.
Nikola Tesla may have been right about everything else, but we're quite fortunate that he was wrong about his wanting to extract energy from the "wheelwork of nature". Imagine the chaos if "investors" had to support themselves with work instead of "investment".
Imagine the chaos if THAT black swan took flight. :)
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Keep telling yourself that.
Right does not mean small government, nor does left mean large. An anarcho-communist commume would be far left and have nearly no government.
Right and left describe beliefs not size of government. You can have right wing and large government which fascism is one example.
I think the mechanic that caused this was Skippy from the Grease Money out on route 40. You need to take up your complaints with him.
"Other nations of europe, please get rid of your nuclear power..and buy from us!"
USA is NOT going to abandon our nukes. Simple as that. Hopefully, we will spend more on THorium R&D and soon. Likewise, we need to spend more on building a new IFR, but this time, make them SMALL (as in 300-500 MWe). By doing that, they can be constructed in a factory and then transported. In addition, rather than building brand new power plants all over the place, we simply enhance the current and shutdown ones with this new equipment. Then we are able to 'burn' all of this 'waste' fuel and simply bury it in the old reactors for 200 years. Or the true waste can go to WIPP. Regardless, new IFR's burning the current 'waste' would last about 100 years. Well worth it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
America has had multiple thorium reactors, the most famous and largest being Ft. St Vrain. The only real issue with is that GA took short cuts during construction (because it was 'safe'), and that lead to issues with alarms. After 15 years of that, PSC gave up on it and closed it.
Right now, if General Atomic chose to get back into the game, they could re-do this intelligently and be the big winners on this in under 5 years.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
is that all reactors should have waste heat generators. Seriously. This issue would not have happened had they simply had attached one or more waste heat generators that could use the heat coming from the piles to run the pumps. Amazingly, they can only run when the nukes are running above 90C or more, which would then require cooling. Oddly, nobody is thinking that way. They put in diesel generators that require zero issues, but are likely to have more issues. Sad, sad, sad.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Nope. The neo-cons and tea* are far right (bordering on fascism along the lines of NAZIs), but the core of US is not rightwing. We are right of center, but not that much. However, it will come back as the economy comes back. I think that more and more Americans are learning that neo-cons and possible tea* do not have America's best interest at heart.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
1, You can store energy in artificial lakes, and get it back with hydro.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped_storage
2, You can use extra electricity to power water-boilers in households, and that doesn't have to be continous, it only has to meet a daily average power, with a rather low precision. (This is how it works in Hungary, but I guess it's used elsewhere as well.) This unreliable power is sold at a much cheaper rate, and uses separate wiring.
Immobile hydrogen storage is a completely solved problem.
Hydrogen stores that have to move around on wheels, yeah, that's not really a good idea. But static storage is a doddle.
Unless some unforeseen energy breakthrough like this (link) hampers their plans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell
We'll see who made the smarter move in 10 months or 10 years (depending on who you talk to).
one billion is that all...watch this money pit scam grow massively......YOU GOT what you asked for with sarkozy
It isn't practical to rapidly change the load on nuke reactors
AREVA, the makers of the EPR, would disagree.
Load follow: between 60 and 100% nominal output, the EPRâ reactor can adjust it power output at a rate of 5% nominal power per minute at constant temperature, preserving the service life of the components and of the plant.
src: http://www.areva.com/EN/global-offer-419/epr-reactor-one-of-the-most-powerful-in-the-world.html
Since this is a 1650MWe reactor, 5% is over 82MWe/minute slew rate between 990 - 1650MWe load. To myself at least, that is quite high ability to follow load.
Load following is important if you want to incorporate renewables to any extent into the power grid. Going full steam ahead all the time (no pun intended) causes unnecessary wear-and-tear on equipment like steam turbine and pumps and also burns fuel, though very cheap.
Old reactors are not very good at load following because they were not designed for that purpose. That does not preclude nuclear reactors from being able to follow the unreliable supply of most renewables.
PS. France is not the only nation investing in nuclear. Canada, Russia will be building new reactors. There will be new reactors in eastern Europe. China and India have MAJOR builds in progress and planned. US will have to start replacing its current fleet soonish but I suspect nothing will happen until natural gas spikes within a few years.
Fuck you, you Muslim loving cunt. I hope you and your Muslim brothers all go to concentration camps.
Fuck Mohammad, Fuck Allah, FUCK ISLAM!!!!!
I'm not anti-nuke, though I was in the 1970s. My main aggravation was the sheer amount of money (Sarkozy is just dropping another billion in the tip jar) that put Nuclear ahead of solar. It's like comparing the Yankees to the Bad New Bears. The one solar investment the US government funded (the power tower in the mohave desert) actually broke even - that's a demo facility, breaking even - in the 1990s. I'm not against nuclear NOW, I think this is great, but I don't think at this stage it should be getting government money on top of all the billions of dollars in bonds defaulted on when it was being built, and on top of the Los Alamos publicly funded R&D information which was given to Halliburton etc. It's ok that Nukes are cleaner than coal, and that solar didn't really have the same chance, and I'm not against nukes. But some of the chest beating about nuclear beating solar really in not mod-+-6 in my opinion.
Gently reply
Wow, that should buy them about one-fifth of a reactor!
Slow news day huh?
If a breakthrough was available today, it would still take years, even decades to scale it up. Unforseen breakthrough immediately scalable may happen, the same way a new ice age may start tomorrow or we can get hit by a giant meteorite. And even in that case, how would that hampers their plan in any way ? Do you really think that too much cheap energy will cripple France economy ?
...why on ./ I read a lot of comments ignoring the problem of the disposal of nuclear waste?
I don't know that much about this stuff, but what I know is that 'Ndrangheta was involved in the illegal dumping of nuclear waste in the past years. They took it from countries like Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, and the US and shipped it to Somalia, or, even "better", they loaded some ships and sank them in the Mediterranean Sea. This was back in 1980/1990, but can anyone be sure this is not happening today?
Btw, probably there were some technological breakthrough I'm not aware of.
"I'm selling these fine leather jackets"
Governments do not INVEST in anything. At the end of each financial year, do you receive a cheque for dividends in the last year's profit; or do you receive a bill for what it costs to run the government for the next year? They SPEND money.
Inb4 the government dictating to the market is the antithesis of market efficiency.
Really surprised how many are seeing this as a positive thing.
Keep telling yourself that, and eventually the BS will become true. In the reality of the world in political makeup nearly every political party in europe which is 'right wing' is centreist or just slightly right of centre. Even the 'far right' parties, are slightly to the right.
Om, nomnomnom...
on French soil !! news at 11
I would say France needs to be f****d in the a*** until it bleeds but by electing that right-wing nutcase and moron, they are doing a really good job of self 'analysing' themselves.
Many fast reactors have the ability to adjust their power output on relatively short timescales (eg several minutes to an hour instead of a couple days).
They work by producing enormous amounts of steam, rotating very large turbines and very large generators that have to spin at multiples of the AC frequency. Since you can't change the speed of the generators you get a fixed power output - thus base load. If you need to cover a peak that means firing up an entire new unit and supplying something like an extra 650MW or so no matter how much extra you need. Thermal power sources, whether nuclear, coal or whatever, work very well on a large scale but not so well on small scales and you want a lot of steam and really big bits of spinning metal so the losses turn out to be a smaller percentage of the total.
Anyone pushing the line of "one true power" is a lying salesman or a deluded victim of one. Gas turbines are great for covering peaks (they start quickly) but very expensive to scale up to cover base load. Hydro is easy to turn off and on but needs vast amounts of water and big hills. Windmills come in large groups and if you need just a bit more power you bring another windmill on line. Even photovoltaics have a place if they can give you that little bit extra, especially since peaks almost always happen in daylight.
You really believe that a government without national healthcare can be anything but far right?
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
Today, with nuclear power, germany sells (coal based) electric power to france, coz France cannot supply the peak demand, especially in winter, due to the bad electric heating.... Off peak, gerance sells (nuclear) electricity to Germany.
Until the shut down of 8 nuke plants, germany was exporting more than importing, so France was relying on Germany.
Now this gap seems to be closed, and the annual average could be 0....
France fears the lack of electricity from germany, and so wants to do more nuke. But nuke cannot do peak, and nuke is very dangerous, and expensive (due to the disposal costs not taken in account)
First they'll have to make a nuclear plant that turns a profit without public subsidies.
Remember "Safe, clean and too cheap to meter"? That was forty years ago. We still haven't even come close.
Only in your mind. Only when you take into account the legislative cost, and the insurance.
Regardless of which study you follow nuclear is far cheaper than Coal with CCS, Nat Gas Turbines, any Solar method, Offshore Wind, and Biomass.
It's time to get with the program and stop spewing out the Greenpeace propaganda. I too am waiting for power to turn a profit, but I am waiting for the massive wind farms built all over Europe to start making some money. Every successive generation of reactor has proved cheaper than the previous. France isn't building relics of the cold war here, they have a large number of reactors with recent technology including some Gen III+ EPR reactors coming online in the next few years. Some countries are actually still innovating in this area.
Why can't we ever have ANTI nuclear posts approved here, or for that matter PRO Apple posts approved? Slashdot sucks.
Oh, and you should learn how to make links
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
When everyone else is ready to decommision all their nuclear plants because of what happened to Japan, such as germany and others, France turns around and decides they want to invest even more into nuclear crap.......when the leaders of innovation (germany) are themselves dropping it like a hot potato, you would think that to speak volumes....i guess the french are really ....well you can fill in your own words here....I think you know which one I would use.
You may not have noticed, but of the 20+ planned plants in the United States, all but 4 have lost their financing because they could not be shown as profitable, even with the overwhelming advantage of government subsidies, loan guarantees and liability support.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but why can nuclear power only supply base-load, instead of peak as well? I've certainly heard that solar and wind are unsuitable to supply base load, as they're not terrifically reliable, but never anything about nuclear being unable to scale to peak load.
It isn't practical to rapidly change the load on nuke reactors, because it takes a significant amount of time to ramp up and down power output. Also, it basically costs the same to run whether you are at 10% capacity or 100% capacity, so it makes sense to run them as near to full capacity as possible. Contrast that with something like a gas-fired powerplant, where you can ramp generation quickly and you are pretty much only paying for the gas you are burning.
Of course, France announced at the same time as this announcement that they will be going ahead with something like 1.5 billion euros funding renewable resources over the same period, so it isn't like they are putting all their eggs in the nuclear basket - just not abandoning it entirely as others are doing.
I'm no expert but AFAIK there are reactor designs that can ramp power output up and down fast, like the designs used in US nuclear submarines.
So because the US screwed up then France will too.
Got you.
That is why the "right" and "left" labels are so useless. Nobody seems to agree on their definition.
Rethinking email
No they are agreed upon. People just like to add their own. Right and left on are one axis, size of government is another and authoritarian-ness is another axis.
we haven't really tamed nuclear power in 66 years, why should we continue? would you extend a similar commitment to other sources of energy?
Three axes? Totally unnecessary. The bigger the government, the fewer freedoms for the people-- or "authoritarian-ness" as you say. An authoritarian government that allows comprehensive freedoms to its citizens is a contradiction in terms.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
A commune is not "communist". Communism describes an authoritarian government. Anarchism describes the lack of government. A commune is a voluntary social order. If a commune enforces redistribution of wealth by law, it becomes authoritarian like Communism.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Why shouldn't he believe it? It is a fact, one that is objectively, absolutely, irrefutably true. A government can be anywhere on the spectrum with or without national healthcare.
Within a few years the new system of Power Generation , using Gravity Control, will come aboard, world-wide. It will be more economical and safer than any other system. It is based on the technology of the Flying Saucer, discovered and patented. The technology was rejected by Nasa, as it would make the Rocket Industry obsolete. These big spheres under a Saucer are the Propulsion Units (PU). They can lift a 10 or 100 ton vehicle off the ground. A PU can also lift a weight in a Silo to maximum height. When the weight is released, it can activate a generator. A Power Station would have two Silos, working alternately. No assistance needed after start-up. No radiation, no pollution, no water needed. It can be built in Micro-, Mega- or Gigawatt size. A Power Station can be buried underground. The System can even be used in Ships and Cruise Liners. The PUs will be LEASED to give investors and Taxman their due. Look at One Terminal Capacitor.
Not true. You can have a large government that does nothing, an example would be the olden days polish parliament.
An authoritarian government that allows comprehensive freedoms to its citizens is a contradiction in terms.
That is neither here nor there. The size of government, measured by money spent nor by body count implies anything about how much freedom its citizens enjoy.
You may not have noticed but France has a power industry which stands on it's own two feet and is a prime example of one of the biggest and cleanest base load supply in the world. The US is simply too bureaucratic to be capable of such a feat.
While we're on the topic of cost, it's ironic that you say Nuclear power is too expensive in a time when governments around the world are essentially bankrupting their countries attempting to prop up a green energy alternative. You seem to have no problem giving subsidies to plants which are 2-3 times the cost per TWh of energy, not to mention often so tiny that they make little to no difference to the power generation capacity of a country.
That's because they're not based on a scarce resource and an inherently dangerous technology.
You are welcome on my lawn.
What scarce resource? Uranium? Thorium? These supposed scarce resources will long outlast coal and hydrocarbons even if we replace all the worlds current power production with nuclear.
Dangerous technology? Nuclear is the safest form of technology in the world completely irregardless of what kind of measurement you want to apply to it. You're just scared because on the rare occasion that something does go wrong it stays in the news for a month of scaremongering. Fukushima had what ... 1 death? Or how about closer to home:
The death rate for the entire lifecycle of the nuclear power industry in the USA has been .... 0 per year. As far as I know it's 0 per EVER. That includes mining, haulage, etc as well as radiation related cancer cases.
The death rate for the lifecycle of the coal power industry in the USA is 34 deaths per year.
If you say one industry is bigger than the other then just look at in terms of Deaths per TWh of generation Coal in the USA alone is 15 deaths / TWh, Nuclear world wide is 0.04 deaths / TWh.
Clearly due to safety concerns we must ban all forms of power except for Nuclear.
My comment about the Greenpeace propaganda still stands. The best place to learn about Nuclear power is neither www.greenpeace.com nor www.iaea.org. Find something without bias. It may open your eyes a bit.
*sigh*
I've heard so many people say that nuclear fission, electricity generation can theoretically be done safely. I'm sure it can, but in the reality I live in these reactors are run by greedy Corporations whose sole remit is the procurement of profit for its owners and shareholders. How many environmental disasters caused by Corporations that do not and can not care about our planet and its inhabitance, does a person need to witness before they realise that we shouldn't be trusting corporations or our corporate-shill politicians to perform any kind of action on our behalf let alone power generation using nuclear fission reactors.
If we had a non-profit group of intelligent and loving people running these power plants with a safety-first attitude it would be better but it wouldn't be enough because all humans are fallible. We make mistakes - and that's ok for day to day decisions, but it's not ok when dealing with radioactive materials.
A while ago I put this point of view across to a guy I worked with and he thought I was being unreasonable. Only a year later the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster occurred: I wonder what he thinks now.