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French Nuclear Industry In Turmoil As Manufacturer Buckles
mdsolar writes with bad news for France and its nuclear industry. "France's nuclear industry is in turmoil after the country's main reactor manufacturer, Areva, reported a loss for 2014 of 4.8 billion euros ($5.3 billion) — more than its entire market value. The government of France, the world's most nuclear dependent country, has a 29% stake in Areva, which is among the biggest global nuclear technology companies. The loss puts its future — and that of France as a leader in nuclear technology — at risk. Energy and Environment Minister Segolene Royal said Wednesday she asked Areva and utility giant Electricite de France to work together on finding solutions, amid reports of a possible merger or other link-up. The government said in a statement that it's working closely with Areva to restructure and secure financing, and would 'take its responsibility as a shareholder' in future decisions about its direction. Areva reported Wednesday 1 billion euros in losses on three major nuclear projects in Finland and France, among other hits. Areva has lost money for years, in part linked to delays on those projects and to a global pullback from nuclear energy since the 2011 Fukushima accident."
Almost one fifth of that loss is due to a reactor in Finland which they seem to be unable to complete. The prototype sort of reactor is almost a decade behind schedule and has sucked around ten billion dollars of Finnish tax payers money. The French are incompetent and the Finns just plain silly for going on with this.
Right. Having the government cover all of your major liabilities, getting to write off massive debts, pass all of your cost overruns onto local consumers without them having a say in the manner, and so on, that's all "paying their own way", right? In nuclear power, the gains have always been privatized while the costs and risks socialized. And it's *still* been very difficult to find investors. Nuclear has always been more popular on K-Street than Wall Street.
Here's a paper going into the various massive ways nuclear has been subsidies. And they still can't bloody manage to stay afloat. It's one of the few industries with a negative growth curve - where technology gets more expensive with time, not cheaper.
You know when it's okay to shout fire in a crowded theatre? When it's on fire.
"The government of France, the world's most nuclear dependent country, has a 29% stake in Areva"
Not according to Areva it hasn't.
http://www.areva.com/EN/financ...
"Today, public sector holdings (CEA, the French state and CDC) of group capital has risen close to 87%. 4% of AREVA’s share capital is float."
The French have a peculiar way of privatizing stuff. It sort of looks like the companies are private, but the state still ultimately owns them. And all these "private" companies are acting like global players. The problem is whose money are they playing with?
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Face it: nuclear is expensive.
It requires an upfront investment AND an ending investment (after closing the old plants) that's higher than all the upfront investments combined!
Nothing to see here. Move along.
So, tell me about the number of fatalities associated with coal power. Include coal-mining deaths, since that's the only reason for them.
I note that there was a coal-mining accident in Ukraine the other day. It killed 30 people. Just that one accident.
Chernobyl killed about 60. Over the period since the accident, since that includes thyroid cancer deaths that are estimated to have happened due to the accident.
Oh, and since Chernobyl, the USA alone has suffered in excess of 830 coal mining deaths (in excess because I don't want to find a breakdown of 1986 coal mining deaths by month/day to allow a more exact number. But 1987 to 2014 add up to more than 830 by themselves).
So, coal is definitely safer. It pollutes, it does the CO2 thing, and it kills more people in normal operations that the worst nuclear disaster in history. Yeah, definitely safer...
Oh, and did you know that wildlife in the Chernobyl area is in much better shape than outside the exclusion zone?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The Ukraine mine had 32 this month. 101 died there in November 2007, 57 more the next month.
I grew up near a nuclear plant. We didn't know it was there except that the restricted building zone near the plant was full of baseball diamonds, beaches and nature trails. No, really.
> Generally, modern small reactors for power generation are expected to have
> greater simplicity of design, economy of mass production, and reduced siting costs
All of these statements are likely true, except that they assume, as the quote notes, "mass production".
Nuclear power economy scales *very* strongly with reactor size. That's why almost all modern reactor designs are around 1 GWe. There are somewhat smaller designs, like CANDU6, but they have been unable to compete with the larger designs in the market.
The *very* small designs, the SMR's that you're referring to, attempt to address this through a modular scale-out. But in order for this to work, you need mass production, hundreds or thousands of modules. Until that time, the price/performance appears to be *terrible*. So everyone's sitting on their hands waiting for someone else to pull the trigger. After decades, no one has.
Are people living in the Chernobyl area? No? THAT is my point.
so? It's rendered a tract of land uninhabitable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K...
I'm not sure anyone's living on top of that mess either, and it's by far the only one. OOh here's a better one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Fun fact: not only is nuclear best in terms of death per kWh, it also renders the least land unusable per kWh generated. And yes that includes all the nuclear accidents.
Basically you're falling into the classic irrationality suffered by lots of people when dealing with nuclear. The events are very, very VERY rare and generally large. That makes them unpredictable (and therefore scary) and large (therefore newsworthy). If a nuclear accident happens anywhere in the world you hear about it.
Humans are generally bad at assessing the risks of rare events. Nuclear events are rare, very newsworthy and "scary" because radation is something out of most people's experience.
That doesn't make your gut feeling correct. Anf for every chernobyl you can point out (which is precisely one), there are hundreds of mining accidents, fly ash accidents, coal seam fires, and so on.
Like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
Have you ever heard about it? Say what you like about Chernobyl, but that accident you've probably not heard of unless you're (a) British and (b) over about 30 killed nearly 3x the number of people as Chernobyl (including cancer deaths).
and anything might happen now.
Well technically yes, but this illustrates my point. You're letting fear of the unknown completely dominate your risk assessments. Just because all the atoms in a box of gas might rush to one end (theoretically possible, statistically unlikely) doesn't mean it is ever likely to happen. So while "anything" might happen, it might still not be likely to happen before the heat death of the universe.
In order for the materials to reach a critical mass, there would have to be something to concentrate them. After that, what would happen is it would get hot (it almost certainly wouldn't even be prompt critical), melt, mix with some molten rock, become diluted and go subcritical again in short order.
As I suggested above - I grew up in coal country.
Yep. Score another one for poor risk assessment on the part of humans. We down-rate risks which are know to us over ones we don't understand. You're used to coal based risks and unused to nuclear based ones, so your assessment of them is way off.
The concerns you bring up are serious, but they are manageable. Chernobyl - not so manageable, huh?
Chernobyl is now pretty much managed. It's sitting there glowing away slowly and otherwise doing very little. They're currently building a new cover to go over it precisely to manage any remaining risks.
Fukishima? That has polluted cubic miles of ocean already, much of it headed toward America's west coast.
Yes we can detect the Fukishima radiation on the West coast. Sounds terrible, eh? Well, no. That actually says more about the astonishing sensitivity of nuclear detectors than it does about Fukishima.
The radation level is 8 disintergrations per cubic meter per second. That's 10 atoms per cubic meter! That amount is phenomenally small and is a testament to the sensitivity of the instruments. It's also far below (about 1%) of the natural background radation of seawater, and far FAR below the level of background radation if you either live at altitude or live on granite or other volcanic substances.
SJW n. One who posts facts.