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France To Reduce Reliance On Nuclear Power
AmiMoJo writes: French lawmakers have approved a bill to reduce the country's reliance on nuclear power from 75% to 50% by 2025. The policy was one of President Francois Hollande's campaign pledges. The legislation also includes a target of reducing the country's greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030, compared to the level in 1990. The new law aims to eventually halve France's energy consumption by 2050 from the 2012 level. The ambitious goal came in the lead-up to the COP 21 climate change conference in Paris later this year. France will chair the meeting.
They can keep the plants going, build more capacity and export the rest, reducing the "reliance" on nuclear power.
A cynical way to fulfill a keepable promise.
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... Poland will be building more coal power plants to export more electricty to western europe so that idiot evironementalists can be duped by corrupt politicians into thinking that CO2 consumption has been reduced when all that happened was they started importing electricity instead of directly producing it themselves.
The same thing is going on all over europe and it is very common in the US as well. California for example has dramatically lowered their statistical carbon foot print by shutting down power plants in the state and then importing the power from Arizona and I think even mexico. I'm not sure about mexico... I vaguely remember something about that but I'm not sure.
Point is the whole carbon thing is supposed to be global so where it is actually emitted is not relevant. And thus they really need to do proper third party accounting on the carbon emissions of imported electricity.
The germans have some statistics on that but they're not third party and thus given all the gaslighting and obfuscation on the issue its not credible to accept the statistics from the people that are already on record cooking the books.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Also note that reducing domestic consumption by 50% means that France can sell more electricity with the same installed capacity. It's all about GDP.
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Nuclear power is one of the most efficient sources of energy that we use, what is the reason for lowering the dependency on it if the plants are properly maintained? What kind of alternative energy source are they planning on relying on? These are legitimate questions, I'm sincerely confused about this.
not difficult since the EU have already legislated maximum wattage ratings for vacuum cleaners, kettles, space heaters, boilers, immersion heaters and shower units.
Which makes not a lick of sense since you just end up using the appliance for longer to get the same fuckin' result. Carbon footprint remains the same.
These would be the same tools who mandated the use of CCFL lights which contain mercury and white phosphorous, over incandescants which contain a chemically inert gas and a chemically inert filament inside a chemically inert container.
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What about the quote from TFA:
"During the parliamentary debate, some opposition lawmakers criticized the legislation. They said it would be unrealistic to close more than 20 of 58 reactors now in operation in the next 10 years."
Doesn't this imply that they are anticipating that nuclear will in fact shrink?
So we are reaching a point where fossil fuels are becoming harder to harvest, climate change is becoming more evident, and people are using more electricity than ever. Instead of researching safer nuclear, which would provide us enough energy to last us millennia even with increasing usage, they are simply turning their backs on the idea, and reaching for what? Solar? Windfarms? I'm as hardcore left as one can get, I support alternative energy, and whatnot, and yet I feel like I'm one of the few rational ones that look at things like verifiable science, statistics, and research to direct my views rather than blind ideology and common opinion.
From what I've read, the only viable alternative that is right now available that can fulfill our needs is primarily nuclear with other alternatives merely supplementing those needs. If I'm wrong I'd like to see some evidence, preferably from less biased sources.
There are also things like design efficiency in the rest of the unit as well as in the electric motor itself. How much energy the product uses versus how much of that energy actual is expressed in it's useful function. Placing limits on energy consumption forces better design to make better use of that energy limit, why, because FUCKING GREED. Lazy greedy fuckers will just up the engine energy consumption to make up for poor design but hey its FUCKING CHEAPER that way. Also up the warranty requirements to substantially reduce energy used to produce goods that fail shortly after the 90 fucking day warranty. How about mandated 10 YEAR warranties, a decade of product reliability, it will certainly cost more but the energy used to replace a product 40 fucking times versus one product that lasts a decade will be substantially reduced. Why does it have to be legislated because of psychopathic corporate greed.
So how much energy would be saved with mandated decade long warranties on all applicable products. Boy could you imagine the complaints from psychopathic corporations who would demand the right to produce crap products that would be replaced 40 fucking times in that decade long time period. You want a real look at psychopathic planet destroying greed, look no further than a 90 fucking day warranty.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
It makes a lot of sense if you are ignorant of physics. Or just plain dumb.
reduce the country's reliance on nuclear power from 75% to 50% by 2025.
- ok, stupid but doable.
reducing the country's greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030, compared to the level in 1990.
- ok, by itself it does not mean anything, as it doesn't say how that is supposed to be done. But together with the first statement (reducing nuclear power) looks suspiciously contradictory.
The new law aims to eventually halve France's energy consumption by 2050 from the 2012 level.
- WHAT?????
Ok, unless the goal is to half the population and production by 2050 from the 2012 levels while simultaneously switching to non-nuclear power, that's one thing. But if the goal is also to reduce 'green house gas emissions'...
Explain this to me: half the energy consumption, reduce reliance on nuclear power and at the same time reduce green house emissions.
Unless the real goal there is to reduce population then I have a bridge to sell you.
I also may want a unicorn and a tooth fairy and I can even enact legislation about it but legislation that requires unicorns and tooth fairies to become available to me upon the request by the authorities cannot in fact magically produce unicorns and tooth fairies!
You can't handle the truth.
If a lot of people switched to central heating the country could probably be more energetically efficient.
Why central? Retro-fitting to old buildings would be unnecessarily expensive. (except perhaps single-storey homes, but they are not common.)
Just replace the electric radiators with split-system reverse-cycle air-conditioners. Modern systems can use a quarter the energy, or less.
And the next time a summer heatwave hits, the French won't be dying en-masse from heat exhaustion.
I live in Australia, we have had drought for many years at one stage prompting our government to change all the water saving ratings making all the best devices 1 star to promote even further water reduction, and restricting water usage to 120L /person /day. We have water free chemical urinals, water saving devices on all faucets and the local council even reduced the mains water pressure.
I have never had to flush the ceramic throne more than once.
Get yourself a better toilet.