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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.
We will continue to operate our kitten-fuelled power stations.
Anyone still believe what president Hollande says? At least in France he does not have much trust left.
Since when has ANY treaty been irreversible. I think Trump is borderline insane but their is no such thing as an irreversible treaty as Trump can simply ignore it.
Who cares if becoming a signatory to the treaty is "irreversible."
It is also not binding on anyone, with absolutely no enforcement clauses in it (Of course if it had been enforceable, Obama could not have unilaterally ratified the agreement - as it would have needed to be ratified by the Senate.)
LOL please cuck harder for islam, fools
Until LePen becomes Marine PM!
In terms of years it will take for waste to be broken down, you can't do much worse than nuclear power.
Yes their design is one of the best, but they still have to bury waste.
Yea, because they produce something like 75% of their electricity with nuclear. I can't figure out why people who want to go carbon neutral are not strong advocates of nuclear, unless they are so dogmatically tied to "green" issues that they just can't accept that the cure to their problem is in the form of big bad nuclear. We should be building modern gen 3/4 breeder reactors on the sites of current plants and reprocessing all the waste that we don't know what to do with into fuel.
Quick, mdsolar, find some anti-nuclear FUD stories to post to counteract this one, before we get consensus opinion to get us carbon-neutral on nuclear power in the US!
The Earth releases it into the air. Humans do too. Therefore, petroleum use is carbon neutral.
Once again displaying the marvels of nuclear power done right.
Good luck getting nukes back in United States with the neoenvironmentalists.
Try pushing anything like that in Australia and the country would most likely go dark.
-k
Let's see, they plan to replace coal with nuclear power. So, not insane.
Good job, France. I wish we'd do the same in the USA. With Trump it might happen.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
coal stops being profitable when you can't get somebody else to pay for the clean up and the health problems caused by the pollution. Said it before, say it again. If you can't externalize costs it's not economical.
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The US should scrap it's entire energy policy and steal France's. They are 40 years more advanced than us. Literally. Check out their nuclear fleet.
They already have like 4 of them. Shutting them down is no big deal for France. They're mostly nuclear and hydro at this point.
The reason environmentalists can't embrace nuclear is that it is against the overall green dogma. It is heresy. You can talk all day about how we are continuing to use old outdated nuclear technology when much better, safer, proven designs exist. All they do is scream about Fukishima and Chernobyl instead of breeder reactors, waste reprocessing and passive safety systems.
What's the French to do?
What can the French do?
Surrender!
It is in the corporate board rooms that nuclear fails in the US.
They can't keep gouging us if nuclear power works cheaply, so they find ways to screw it up.
Are they closing the plants in France (makes sense, they have no coal), or, say, in Poland or Ukraine? Especially Ukraine with its Chernobyl would be happy to close their coal plants. Local nuking is so much better than global warming.
He can't single handedly ratify the Paris Accord anymore than I can.
As far as the US is concerned the accord has absolutely no meaning or value unless you need to wipe your ass or wrap a fish.
Read some of the recent articles by the elder statesmen of the environmentalist movement, such as one of the founders of Greenpeace. They are now acknowledging that they spread a lot of FUD about waste. Here are the two biggest lies:
Intentionally conflating alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. They really hyped things up, through out a lot of numbers and such, about "radiation", carefully cherry-picking things about completely different types of radiation, while making it sound like all the statements went together. Of course you know there are different types of radiation - light from a light bulb is radiation, warmth radiating from a fireplace is radiation. When discussing nuclear waste, the two main types are alpha and beta. Here's the funny thing - alpha is stopped by almost anything - tissue paper, a few centimeters of air, moisture in the air, etc. Unless you press the uranium against your skin, the alpha can't get to you. So when any old 1980s article talks about radiation, ask "are they taking about ALPHA radiation, the kind that's blocked by even tissue paper?" Often they are.
The even bigger lie is intentionally conflating short half-life with long half-life. You know a candle radiates visible light, heat, uv, etc. Gunpowder radiates the same wavelengths - light, heat, etc. The difference between a candle and a bomb is that the candle releases the energy slowly, a little bit a time, while gunpowder releases it's energy quickly. So quickly, in fact, that there's a dangerous amount of energy, for about 50 milliseconds. Nuclear materials are the same. Some release their energy quickly, so there's a dangerous amount of radiation for a short time. Roughly 14 days, in one common case. Other nuclear materials release their energy incredibly slowly, over thousands of years. At any given time, the slow ones are releasing such a small amount of energy you could WEAR the waste on your head all day and it would have absolutely zero effect. In fact I, and many others, DO wear tritium on our belts.
There is waste that releases enough radiation in a year to be dangerous, and there's other waste that releases so little as at a time that it takes a thousand years before most of it is used up. Dumping the energy fast is like a firecracker which burns metal powder very quickly - it's dangerous, for a very short period of time. Releasing it over a thousand years is like the heat generated as a bolt rusts - it's an almost indetectable, and completely safe, level of energy being released.
It's really it like showing somebody a firecracker and saying "this is metal oxydizing" (true) and "the metal in your car could oxydize at any moment" (also true, your car is oxydizing all the time).
The French used to provide us (The UK) with energy, that has recently stopped, I believe technically we are now providing them with power. Essentially the french nuclear plants are now suffering the same fate as the British nuclear plants have over the last few decades. They have aged, become too old, decommissioning has begun but with no new plants to replace.
I assume they will expand their renewables, but the certainly aren't ready to just drop any of their energy infrastructure.
The poor bastards will be freezing in the dark in 2024
While I am for Nuclear and keep pointing out to people that the coal industry is allowed to emit more radioactive material in the atmosphere than nuclear industry, it is worth to point out that they usually try to catch as much fly ash as possible. This is not 1850 anymore where there was no filter, nowadays in most country the fly ash is caught (and reused as building material , e.g. for road IIRC) and there are filter for sulfure among others.
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This post tends to imply that Nuclear industry is profitable in France which is absolutely not the case.
This is a speciality in France to split responsibilities between different entities to trick the results. For example EDF (selling electricity and profitable) and Areva, managing nuclear plants, and deeply indebted (billions) same as for example for the rail, with the SNCF (selling train tickets and profitable) and ERDF in charge of the railway network and deeply indebted...
Most French nuclear plants are out of age, with an end-of-service date constantly delayed and the next Chernobyl / Fukushima will unfortunately and definitely be French, although no-one seems to care... At least our neighbours should care.
Not even mentioning the legacy for our children as none of the real issues are addressed, ie waste reprocessing/storage and plants dismantling.
Germans are full of crap..
Boast that they are Europe's leaders in green energy and will be nuke free,all they have done is Vick the entire decision up,they now have to import lots of electricity from Frances nuke power system and their use of carbon fuels is going up at a massive rate,and Germany uses the dirtiest rubbish of any major nation,they have no coal,what they strip mine and burn on a massive scale is lignite,possibly the worst rubbish that you could pick for large power generation,and because they reckon they are going to generate everything from green sources they are not investing in lignite burning stations,so they are now burning more crap through older and dirtier plants than they did in the past !
Germany is an object lesson in how not to green an energy system...
> 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 [...]
I'll just pick on one: most of the uranium is *not* radioactive (U-238). What you do in a breeder is you control the neutron flux in a way that this harmless isotope is converted into plutonium. Granted, you can extract much more energy from your mined uranium this way (and weapon-ready material as well), but you *dramatically increase* the amount of highly radioactive by-products in the process.
Get your physics straight (or is that Trump physics already?)
Time to undo the damage Obama and his gang of thugs have done to the world by strong-arming their way into our coffers in the name of climate hoaxing. Regulation cripples innovation, and worse yet no other country is paying their fair share while the U.S. is at record high debt. You can take your refugees with TB back while your at it.
China, India, and other countries are still building them left and right. France closing theirs will have no effect.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
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...
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True, you shouldn't EAT nuclear waste, cleaning products, paint thinner, swimming pool chorine, nails, dirt, etc. I tell my two-year-old "we only put FOOD in our mouth."
Green reader: Oh, they're killing coal yippeee!
(reads about nuclear)
Green reader: but, nukular bad! Grrrrr! um,(head explodes)
Yes indeed. They'll close them all, _both_ of them
This is not a joke, they have only 2 of those. the rest are nukes.
Cordemais Power Station
Provence Power Station
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Looking out for self interests is not "stupid", people with delusions of Utopia are. You may consider drinking lots and lots of bleach to fix your illness.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Bad decisions made by the car-parker-n-chief are irreversible.