Slashdot Mirror


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.

5 of 328 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The USA mocks you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    After Fukushima, everyone was announcing that they were abandoning nuclear power. Since then, everyone, including Japan, has quietly started going back to nuclear.

  2. Re:What Hollande says by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can't speak for France's trust (or lack thereof) of Hollande. But one thing the US could do in emulating France is to start replacing our coal plants with more nuclear, especially in areas where solar or wind aren't a good fit. It's not like it isn't a proven, feasible technology. I still can't understand how environmentalists could be opposed to it, if they truly believe what scientists are telling us about what's happening with AGW and what the long term effects may be. Yes, nuclear is a compromise. We have to extract ore, it's potentially dangerous, and it generates very nasty waste products. But wouldn't it be worth compromising on this point a bit to get to carbon neutrality faster? We have the rest of history to start phasing nuke power plants out with better technologies, and there are theoretical ways to deal with the waste products other than simply burying it in the ground.

    Maybe we should tell Trump that building a bunch of nuclear plants would really piss off the wacko environmentalists, create a bunch of new 'murican jobs, and help lessen oil dependency from all those foreign commies and terrorists. Sometimes, you just have to sell these things with your target audience in mind.

    --
    Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  3. Re:What Hollande says by Uberbah · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Your stupidity. There is no amount of reprocessing that will make nuclear power cost effective. Disagree, name the nuclear power plant that charges its customers for the full cost from cradle to grave: everything from mining & refining, to plant construction & maintenance, to waste disposal/recycling/reuse.

    You can't do that because that nuclear power plant doesn't exist. Because nuclear power is corporate welfare masking ongoing nuclear weapons programs.

  4. Re:What Hollande says by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Chernobyl was not localized.
    In south germany and south sweden you still can not eat mushrooms harvested from the woods and game is unsafe to eat.

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  5. Re:Marrakech, Morocco by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It was popularised by anti-feminists, "neomasculinists" and Men Going Their Own Way who like to portray "beta" males as cuckolds, doomed to keep giving their resources to and even marrying women who have sex with many other men. They call it the "cock carousel", and think women primarily gain resources by exchanging them for access to their vaginas.

    That soon evolved into calling everyone that they didn't perceive as a manly man alpha male as a "cuck".

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC