France To Shut Down All Coal-Fired Power Plants By 2023 (independent.co.uk)

French president Francois Hollande announced at an annual UN climate change conference on Wednesday that France will shut down all its coal-fired power plants by 2023. He also "vowed to beat by two years the UK's commitment to stop using fossil fuels to generate power by 2025," reports The Independent: Mr Hollande, a keynote speaker at the event in Marrakech, Morocco, also praised his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama for his work on climate change, and then appeared to snub president-elect Donald Trump. "The role played by Barack Obama was crucial in achieving the Paris agreement," Mr Hollande said, before adding, in what has been perceived as a dig at Mr Trump, that becoming a signatory to the treaty is "irreversible." "We need carbon neutrality by 2050," the French President continued, promising that coal will no longer form part of France's energy mix in six to seven years' time. France is already a world leader in low-carbon energy. The country has invested heavily in nuclear power over the past few decades and now derives more than 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear fission. It produces so much nuclear energy, in fact, that it exports much of it to nearby nations, making around $2.66 billion each year.

Comments

What Hollande says

[manu0601]

Anyone still believe what president Hollande says? At least in France he does not have much trust left.

Re:What Hollande says

[dcollins]

"theoretical ways to deal with the waste products" = "no actual ways to deal with the waste products"

Re:What Hollande says

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that many European countries have successfully dealt with it. Only the fucking stupid Americans have decided to not reprocess fuel rods, and consequently are generating stupid quantities of radioactive waste. Get over your 1970's Jimmy Carter stupidity, start reprocessing fuel rods, and deal with two issues at once.

Re:What Hollande says

[CapOblivious2010]

"theoretical ways to deal with the waste products" = "no actual ways to deal with the waste products"

As opposed to coal and other fossil fuels, where we have a very effective way of dealing with the waste products: just let them go up the smokestack!

P.S. You do know that coal mining releases more radiation into the air, and kills more people, than nuclear power - right?

Re:What Hollande says

[bzipitidoo]

Seems that mistake in Scientific American will never be lived down:

In response to some concerns raised by readers, a change has been made to this story. The sentence marked with an asterisk was changed from "In fact, fly ash—a by-product from burning coal for power—and other coal waste contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste" to "In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy." Our source for this statistic is Dana Christensen, an associate lab director for energy and engineering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as well as 1978 paper in Science authored by J. P. McBride and colleagues, also of ORNL.

Coal waste is NOT more radioactive than nuclear waste. The difference is that nuclear waste is not dumped into the environment, while waste from coal burning is. Nuclear waste is stored, and storage space is limited. Permanent dumps for nuclear waste are difficult to engineer. They must be designed to hold nuclear waste for millennia.

The big problem with nuclear power is that accidents are extremely dangerous and costly. That wouldn't be a problem if accidents were extremely unlikely. We know how to design and operate nuclear power plants safely, the problem is that we won't. Fukushima showed that. That accident was entirely avoidable. They needed only to build the walls higher. They had good information on how high the walls needed to be, and the recommended height was not a strain on our engineering capabilities. But management chose to ignore the recommendations and build a lower wall, to save a little money. The fools in those management positions did not understand that the risk they were taking was very high, they chose instead to ignore the warnings. Disaster could still have been averted had they not also cut another corner to save a little money, and the backup generators had been in working order and not located in the basement.

Re:What Hollande says

[aberglas]

Are you agreeing or disagreeing?

The claim was that coal dumps more radiation *into the air*. Would make sense given that their is very little nuclear radiation leak into the air.

As to accidents, with the notable exception of Cherbynol, there have been very few and most of the cost has been due to the hysteria. Very few people died in Fukushima compared to those killed by the tidal wave itself.

Re:What Hollande says

[Dutch Gun]

This is what happens when something turns into an -ism. I think opposition to nuclear is based more on dogma and irrational fear than anything else at this point.

Here's a thought: maybe we should listen to specialists (say, nuclear scientists and engineers, and throw in some statisticians to tally up safety records) about whether modern nuclear power is safe and effective enough to use. Because, I'm pretty sure the science is settled at this point. Should we also should start calling opponents "nuclear deniers"?

Re:What Hollande says

[Dorianny]

If Climate Change was not a concern I would say shut down all Nuclear Plants, but it is not only a concern it is a HUGE one. Compared to the global catastrophe that will be brought on by Rising sea levels, droughts and extreme weather phenomena, the Localized Chernobys/Fukushima Nuclear disasters seem like Small Fries

Re:What Hollande says

[SvnLyrBrto]

Easy solution: Give regulatory control of the nuclear power industry to the navy. No joke. The US Navy has been operating nuclear reactors... hundreds of them... for nearly as long as there's been such a thing. And they have a perfect operational safety record. That is: zero nuclear accidents in the 62 years since the USS Nautilus was launched in 1954. (They *have* lost two nuclear submarines at sea. But neither the Thresher nor Scorpion were lost due to reactor accidents.)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...

They do it by standardizing on a small number of reactor designs (Generally one per ship/sub class. Though the S5W persisted from the Skipjack class until it was replaced by the S6G with the Los Angeles.), training the sweet holy hell out of their people (There are stories of standing desks at power school, so trainees don't fall asleep while sitting and studying... and of the occasional *thump* when someone standing falls asleep anyway.), and holding them strictly accountable to operations and safety standards throughout their careers.

Re:What Hollande says

[Uberbah]

P.S. You do know that coal mining releases more radiation into the air, and kills more people, than nuclear power - right?

You know that's clever idiocy - right? Opposition to nuclear does not mean support for coal. Now, here's a buttplug you can use to fill that hole in your head:

Your logical fallacy is...false dichotomy.

Re:What Hollande says

[AmiMoJo]

Nuclear plants can't charge the customer the full cost, because they can't get insurance for their full liability. No insurer will cover the potential losses in full. Governments have to cover the risk, which is kinda insane because if the worst happens it could easily bankrupt them. I guess the implication is that if that did happen, the government would do something to avoid paying out in full.

Re:What Hollande says

[AmiMoJo]

If by "dealt with it" you mean "lobbed spent fuel in an open pool frequented by birds and other wildlife" then yeah, we dealt with it quite successfully.

In fact a lot of our waste is being shipped to China for burial. We really need to stop using China as landfill.

Re:What Hollande says

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You're making the wrong comparison, on three different levels. First, wildlife as a population can be fine even if some individuals suffer. The safety precautions (regarding eating mushrooms etc.) protect individuals. We know that many individuals fare badly around Chernobyl. Second, humans are much more long-lived that your wildlife, so there's more room for deleterious long-term effects in humans. Third, the reason why wildlife around Chernobyl thrives is much less because of the induced increase in mortality due to contamination being small and much more because of the decrease in mortality due to removal of humans being large.

Re:Marrakech, Morocco

[imidan]

They thought about what they would find to be most insulting to themselves. They find 'cuck' to be so demeaning because it plays upon their own deep insecurities, and they project those insecurities onto those around them and therefore assume that trying to undermine their opponents' masculinity will be maximally hurtful. It would be emasculating to them to have a woman president who would 'dominate' them in the sense that she holds the highest office in the country. In their minds, then, men who voted for Hillary would be 'cuckolded' because we chose submission to a woman. Fortunately, most of us are secure enough in our masculinity that the attempted insult completely fails to connect.

Re:Are they insane?

[dcollins]

"Trump's Plan for Coal Industry Revival Means Big EPA Changes" (Nov-14)

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/trump-coal-industry-revival-plan/2016/11/14/id/758745/

Re:Nothing to brag about

[Solandri]

Actually, most of that "waste" can be reused as fuel. Modern light water nuclear plants only use about 3% of the energy in uranium. That's why the waste is "hot" for so long - it's like burning 3% of a gallon of gas and declaring the rest of it waste which has to be buried. A breeder reactor can use the "waste" as fuel, and in the process convert it into a form which can be sent back to light water reactors for use as fuel. Done properly, about 90%-95% of the energy from the uranium can be extracted, and the remaining waste is only "hot" for a few hundred years.

France uses breeder reactors, so they don't have anywhere near the nuclear waste problem that we do. (Jimmy Carter banned the commercial use of breeder reactors in the U.S. because they can be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium.)

Also, nuclear in the U.S. produces about 800 TWh of electricity per year. The amount of spent fuel that's created to produce that much energy is about a single tractor trailer's worth (the entire volume of nuclear waste produced since we began using nuclear power would about fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool). Contrast that with coal. A ton of coal produces about 2000 kWh of electricity. So to produce 800 TWh would require about 400 million tons of coal, or about 300 million cubic meters - enough to fill a thousand oil tankers. It also produces 1.14 billion tons of CO2.

So compare that single tractor trailer of nuclear waste (which still contains 97% of the energy in the uranium because we don't reprocess) to a thousand oil tankers full of coal. Still think nuclear is such a bad idea?

Re:Marrakech, Morocco

[PopeRatzo]

The alt-right started calling moderate conservatives 'Cuckservatives', claiming that there were like the Cuckoo, sitting in the 'nest' of the Republican party and feigning conservatism to win votes, but voting for progressive policies while in office.

That's simply not true. That story is just the alt-Right trying to lie about the fact that they started on 4chan, where the word, "cuck", short for "cuckold" has been a popular insult for a while. It is a mythical origin story that was concocted long after the term "cuck" and "cuckservative" were widely used.

It' never had anything to do with a cuckoo bird. It has to do with 4chan's seemingly very intimate knowledge of p0rn videos that show black men having sex with married white women.

So really, you could say that "cuck" is a term used by men who have a fascination with black penises. I hope that clears up your confusion.

Re: irreversible

[skids]

Explain to me how nationalism valuing America first is anti American

Because it is counterproductive and leaves the country in a worse place than being a responsible member of the international community does. Also, it is too easily leveraged into white nationalism.

For them to put the interests of foreign nations or even the international community above the interests of the US seems treasonous on its face.

We have many conflicting interests as a nation, many of which are the same interests as the international community (like defeating ISIS.) In order to make progress on some of our national interests, it is necessary to compromise on others.

In other words, you can wish really hard that America exists in a vacuum, but wishing does not make it so.

I know you are but what am I

[rsilvergun]

seriously though. Coal and Gas are much, much more expensive than nuclear when you can't _externalize_your_costs_. The pollution gets into the air, water and land. It causes massive health problems to anyone living anywhere near the plant. You also need to risk miner's lives to mine it cheaply or you need to do fracking (which has it's own unique problems: earthquakes, water you can light on fire, etc).

All of this either gets paid for by the taxpayer or you let the people hurt by it suffer and die (google "Cancer Villages"). Sorry, but you really have no idea wtf you're going on about...