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.

Comments

They will make a fortune

[houstonbofh]

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.

Re:They will make a fortune

[MachineShedFred]

Yep. Spend a billion Euro now, get a nice return on that from Germany and Italy, because they can't meet energy demands.

Re:They will make a fortune

[Anonymous Coward]

They won't be making a fortune, they will be ensuring that their national security is more stable than almost any nation out there:

1: They won't be depending on Russia for natural gas. German citizens would freeze to death if Russia decides to shut the gas off, so Germany has ruined its national security.

2: They will have energy where others won't. While the US and China piss on each other over oil and coal, French independence and freedom from the Middle Eastern turmoil is assured.

3: They can do more energy-inefficient things such as thermal polymerization to turn garbage into oil ready for use for plastics or fuel. Similar with desalination. A nuke plant combined with a desalination plant assures France will not be affected by droughts.

4: Nuclear research can be sold. Eventually most countries will go nuclear when they realize it is that, or turning off the lights. North Korea can do either, but most nations pretty much will be dragged kicking and screaming into the nuclear age sooner or later. French firms will have a complete advantage in this department because their country didn't give into Luddite fears or Big Oil/Big Coal's siren songs.

5: Once nuclear power gets sufficient research behind it, it will be far more useful than now. Steam engines were VERY dangerous for a long time until R&D eventually fixed a lot of issues. Same with internal combustion engines. It took R&D to figure out how to minimize damage if a rod throws. Imagine if the people working with steam thought it was too dangerous to continue.

Oh, and the 1 billion Euros... that's a lot more than 1 billion dollars. Euros are immune to inflation, while dollars get printed on a daily basis.

Re:They will make a fortune

[EdZ]

A good combination would then to build your new plants near high-altitude lakes. Not only can you pump water up into the lakes to store energy during lulls (and let it flow out through turbine generators during peaks), you can use them as a gravity-fed water source in case of off-site-and-on-site power failure scenarios.The turbines could also act as additional on-site power generators, giving you even more redundancy (off-site grid power, on-site diesel, on-site battery, on-site water turbine, on-site gravity-feed).

Re:They will make a fortune

[elrous0]

No worries. The U.S. intends to keep Sarkozy and pro-American successors in power from now on. Anyone who challenges them will suddenly decide to become a rapist or child molester, or whatever shit is needed to get them out of the way.

Re:They will make a fortune

[PopeRatzo]

They will make a fortune selling power

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.

Re:They will make a fortune

[NeutronCowboy]

Dude, if you want to comment on French politics, fine, but at least inform yourself.

  DSK has a long history as a womanizer, and he finally made the mistake of assaulting someone who didn't care about who he was in a country where these things are taken seriously. This was a long time in the making, and the only thing that requires tinfoil hats is the initial reaction of French politicians who were aghast that he was being charged with attempted rape, and not let off with a private warning.

The president hand-picks his entire cabinet. Not sure what you're trying to imply by saying "hand-picked finance minister". That's how ministers are picked. Lagarde is the American favorite, because the alternatives were pretty unpleasant - specifically, a lot of developing countries were clamoring for the job. At that point, they were happy with going with tradition - which is someone from the French financial field.

And lastly, Sarkozy is pro-US only in the context of the American bashing that is popular in French politics.

I just hope no one takes your post seriously.

Re:They will make a fortune

[elrous0]

Yes, it's all just a conspiracy from the US government.

Yes, just like it was a conspiracy that the CIA propped-up numerous South American dictators and assassinated their opponents, tried to assassinate Castro several times, funded the Contras, secretly financed the Shah and his revolution, and did hundreds of other super-nasty things that stayed classified for decades after-the-fact.

And the CIA rarely assassinates high-profile figures anymore. They've found that it's much cleaner and easier to discredit them with a nice sex offense or corruption charge. Of course, sometimes (as recently with that stubborn Moammar Gadhafi) they have to resort to attempting *both* forms of assassination.

Re:They will make a fortune

[Lunix Nutcase]

So basically you're just a nutter ignoring the fact that he has previous sexual assault charges made against him long before he was ever going to be part of IMF and has a history of shady womanizing. No, clearly he couldn't possibly have done anything wrong despite his history. No, it's all a US government plot! IT HAS TO BE!!!

Re:They will make a fortune

[gorgonite]

Except that reprocessing does not solve the waste disposal problem. You need to dispoese the waste from your reprocessing facility. You may spend lots of money (one billion won't be enough) to solve this too, but then some other problem with show up. Even worse, given the probabilities that we see right now then France is due for a big accident sooner or later. That accident will be a surprise to everyone, this seems to me like the only constant in nuclear energy.

Re:Vote right wing.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.

Got any words for this, MDSOLAR?

[TrisexualPuppy]

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!

Re:In the mean time...

[iiiears]

Privatize profits socialize costs.