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France To Close Four Coal-Fired Power Plants By 2022, 14 Nuclear Reactors By 2035 (cleantechnica.com)
Socguy shares a report from CleanTechnica: French President Emmanuel Macron gave a speech on Tuesday in which he announced a raft of new energy policies, including a promise to close the country's remaining four coal-fired power plants by 2022 and 14 of the country's 900 MW first-generation nuclear reactors by 2035. "The generation capacity will be replaced with wind and solar," adds Slashdot reader Socguy. The closure of the 14 nuclear reactors will reduce nuclear's contribution to the energy mix from its current level of 75% to 50% by 2035.
"I would have liked to be able to do it as early as 2025, as provided for by the Energy Transition Law," Macron added, "but it turned out, after pragmatic expertise, that this figure brandished as a political totem was in fact unattainable. We therefore decided to maintain this 50% cap, but by postponing the deadline to 2035."
"I would have liked to be able to do it as early as 2025, as provided for by the Energy Transition Law," Macron added, "but it turned out, after pragmatic expertise, that this figure brandished as a political totem was in fact unattainable. We therefore decided to maintain this 50% cap, but by postponing the deadline to 2035."
Less energy and more efficient usage is the key to real environmentally savvy policies.
Renewables and lower prices can lead to higher energy use.
And maybe we'd be less people on the planet. But this is another story.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
It might be more useful to point out that 'gut feeling = cognitive bias' whenever someone mentions they feel something to be true.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Macron tries to justify himself staying in to power despite deceiving the population.
He ran for office as a moderate reformer, and he has governed as a moderate reformer. So where is the deception?
Being a reformer means going against entrenched interest groups. So of course he has made some enemies. If he deserves any criticism, it is for being too timid. But France is not an easy place to fix.
Good thing they're delaying the nuclear plant closures
They are not delaying them. They are reaching the end of their service life, and are being closed on schedule.
What has changed is that they will not be replaced with new nukes.
This makes sense, since nukes are no longer economical. While the cost of renewables has plummeted, the cost of nukes has steadily gone UP. There are, of course, reasons why nuclear power is so expensive, and those reasons might not be valid in an alternative universe, but that doesn't change our reality.
Quite literally: https://www.npr.org/2018/11/27...
Refusing to cave in to the demands of a mob is not a threat to democracy.
It is more accurate to say the mob is the threat. The protesters should take their demands to the voters, rather than rioting in the streets.
Cognitivie bias develops because a person's experience detects a pattern of things happening. It is a good type of bias, which helps us stay alive because it's correct more often than it's not. There is nothing wrong with going with your gut instincts when you have nothing else to go on.
The problem is sticking to your gut instincts when faced with contradictory evidence.
It's a political move, not a pragmatic one. France is bottom of Europe when it comes to CO2 emissions per generated energy specifically because of proliferation of nuclear power across the country. Their eastern neighbour is a great example of what happens when you try to close nuclear plants for wind and solar. You get more fossil fuel burning, and your trend of reducing emissions goes straight toward "miss all the CO2 emissions targets you were previously on track to meet".
One has to remember what is the political environment in which these calls are made. Macron is extremely unpopular in France across the board, after being elected as essentially "that bankster that managed to get to run-off against the woman media called every nasty name they can think of for decades". He was fairly unpopular when he was elected, and since he conducted his policies as would be expected out of a man who's essentially a full on elitist throughout his career, his popularity is worse than Hollande's.
So he's going from scandal to scandal, protest to protest. These loud announcements are just the next step in his game of "make loud declarations to deflect attention from current issues".
Important factor being "when you have nothing else to go on" not "in the face of overwhelming data and science" :).
Sometimes they're due to experience, as with phobias, although it should be clear why that isn't always a good thing.
Many cognitive biases (like anchoring) are due to the way the human brain thinks, and are innately present from birth.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
The cost of nukes has not gone up. The cost of legal and bureaucratic issues related to nukes, due to irrational hysteria, has gone up.
Just dig out the blueprints from a 1960s nuke design and use them as is. The resulting power plant will be safer and better for the environment than wind and solar (because energy production per unit of materials is so much lower for wind and solar).
Oh, but I do have something to go on. I speak both French and Bullshit fluently, and thus am able to translate what Macron said. Yes, from the English summary, why do you ask?
" would have liked to be able to do it as early as 2025, as provided for by the Energy Transition Law," Macron added, "but it turned out, after pragmatic expertise, that this figure brandished as a political totem was in fact unattainable. We therefore decided to maintain this 50% cap, but by postponing the deadline to 2035."
My translation:
We will close the coal plants. We will start building wind and solar, realize that it is not enough to cover the coal plants' output, and quietly 'reschedule' the closing of any nuclear plants. The next government will probably revoke the totally random 50% cap, continue closing old reactors, and replacing them with newer, safer, more powerful ones, as we have been doing for ages.
But fear not! I am green, I am looking to the future, I am relevant!
Vive la France!
No good deed goes unpunished...
Could someone explain to me why wind and solar are better than *MODERN* nuclear plants, particularly fast breeder reactors, that output very little waste and are relatively safe? Nuclear plants don't vary with the sun and wind and so have no need for expensive/complex energy storage solutions to go along with them. Is the replacement of nuclear purely down to the green lobby not liking the word "nuclear" or is there any justification that has a scientific basis?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Actually, emissions from burning coal and gas to generate electricity in Germany are falling steadily since 2013.
I too speak both French and bullshit.
Which means i have heard of this declaration elsewhere and in other contexts. In short, nobody in the energy sector takes it seriously. France in not Germany and their administration is a more efficient counterweight in face of the public opinion. And nobody there wants to end up like Germany in regard to energy.
They know they are close to their optimum with roughly 80% nuke and 20% hydroelectric. One part of the hydroelectric power being in fact nuke electricity pumped in reversible hydro plants. The Cour Des Comptes, their equivalent of the general accounting office is screaming when they see the economics of subsidies towards wind and solar, especially wind.
So, all those public schedules are probably unrealisable bullshit to win the votes of the uneducated. And Macron probably knows explaining that, if that ever happens, will be the problem of someone else.
When i talk with researchers in the non-scam energy sector, i often have the impression they wait for the hippy generation to croak so more rational policies can be enacted.
It's true; we just need to kill off enough of the world's population, and move the remaining fraction to places where hydro power is plentiful. Problem solved!
OMG. I guess nobody ever thought of that. What WILL we do? The suspence is killing me.
This is why we need coal. Because it causes huricanes and that means wind and thus free energy. That means no need for oil, so no need to fight wars over it.
I have solved it. Worldpeace!
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Also a rather expensive one. About 0.15 euro = 0.17 USD per kwh. That is not so high by EU standards, but hurts them globally, leading to trade deficits and chronically high unemployment. France needs to be more competitive.
Solar and wind can generate power for about 0.03 euro per kwh.
You're hilarious. France, with about 70% nuclear and very little renewable energy, has by far the cheapest electricity prices in Europe. Meanwhile Germany - with the largest uptake for wind and solar - has some of the most expensive electricity in Europe. But yeah, wind and solar can like totally make electricity cheaper ... they just don't ... because reasons.
Then why Finland or the UK, which are all strong nuclear proponents, don't manage to get a nuclear reactor online on time, and on price? The Hinkley Point C nuclear plant will cost about 30 billion pounds to operate, and it will probably never recover its construction costs. The government of the UK had to warrant a fixed energy price to AREVA and TVO to even motivate them to finish the construction. The finnish Oikiluoto Units 3 and 4 have doubled in construction time and tripled in costs sofar, and none of them is online yet, despite Unit 3 being planned to be ready by 2010. Unit 4 now has been cancelled alltogether.
Quite literally: https://www.npr.org/2018/11/27...
You don't understand the difference between democracy and tyranny of the minority. Quite Literally.
So what about the widespread opposition to further subsidies to nuclear power companies like EDF? The French electorate are kind of fed up of bailing them out when their nuclear plants fail to be profitable or experience expensive problems that need fixing. Worse still a lot of that money is flowing overseas with vague promises that there will be some ROI one day maybe, thanks to multiple failing construction projects around the EU.
Commercial nuclear in France is a basket case, reliant on government support just to survive and keep the lights on. Too big to fail, continually writing off assets and downgrading valuations.
If the Cors Des Comptes is screaming about renewable subsidies they must being having a heart attack over the nuclear ones.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It helps that I've spent a lot of time there. Where in hell would France put enough solar and wind to replace such a large amount of its power generation? It doesn't have an Outback or a Mojave that it can pave over with solar collectors, unless it teams up with the energy-short Germans to get help reconquering Algeria.
In countries where there are large sprawls of new residential and industrial development, you can put a lot of photovoltaic capacity on rooftops. To avoid chewing up too much land, France builds higher than in the sunny countries, which means less collector space per user. And when you contemplate bolting solar panels onto all those ancestral rooftops in farms and villages, suddenly the Greens are going to find NIMBY working against them rather than with them.
When you sail the Rhône you see nuclear plants nestled among the vineyards. How many wind turbines would it take to replace even one of them, and where?
Which means i have heard of this declaration elsewhere and in other contexts. In short, nobody in the energy sector takes it seriously. France in not Germany and their administration is a more efficient counterweight in face of the public opinion. And nobody there wants to end up like Germany in regard to energy.
One part of the hydroelectric power being in fact nuke electricity pumped in reversible hydro plants.
You seem to be taking a swipe at Germany and their renewables policy in favour of your preference for nuclear. However, it does not in any way add to your argument that renewables are crap and nuclear is king to say that this water is being pumped into the reservoir by nuclear energy because pumped hydro is just another way of saying 'energy storage'. It is completely irrelevant to the pumped hydro energy storage facility operator whether the energy for pumping is excess energy from nuclear plants or excess energy from renewables since the whole point of building the pumped hydro facility in the first place was to store excess energy for later use regardless of where it comes from. Fun fact: Germany has similar pumped hydro facilities it uses to store excess energy from wind and solar plants.
How about offshore wind farms?
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
You don't have to conquer Algeria to invest in solar power there. I think exporting solar power to Europe would be an excellent industry for North-African countries.
But France still has plenty of rooftops that haven't yet been covered with solar panels, and France has plenty of coastline for wind turbines.
All in all, this plan sounds pretty much perfect: replace coal as soon as possible, keep nuclear around for now but see if you can replace it in the future. Whether that's feasible by 2033 remains to be seen, but setting it as a goal requires a lot of investment in solar and wind, and that's definitely good.
You are talking about countries where anti-nuclear hysteria is rampant and affects every stage of design, construction, and operation. In South Korea, where the hysteria level is much lower, nuclear costs are several times lower.
The headline is BS. It's the opposite of the announcement. Here's what the announcement actually said:
We had planned on getting to 50% by 2025, but our new target is 2035.
In other words, they announced that wind and solar are NOT. going to work out like they had previously said. By 2035 Macron will be long out of office and it will be somebody else's problem to explain why the new target is 2055.
And no, I'm not angelosphere. Maybe, just maybe you are wrong, and you just got some numbers between 2011 and 2012 (when there was a nuclear moratorium in Germany, and indeed, the output of coal plants increased), and you thought that trend would continue to infinity?
In fact, most German coal plant operators are currently considering either closing shop or trying to sell off their coal plants to others (e.g. Vattenfall selling their lignite operations in 2016 to Czech company EPH)?
Be sure he did not go against interest groups. He gave a lot to those who put him where he is. Yes, in France too, money can buy you an election.
:
... Those who are poor need to take their car for many reason (job, children, groceries). They have no choice. They will cut more and more on health spendings and so on.
Explain how moderate this his
- tax on big fortunes : removed. "You'll see, money will fall back down to the poors". Still waiting.
- CICE : free money given without anything but a promise in exchange. Employment should be the counterpart. Here are the figures : it was 20 B€, it's going to be 40 B€. How many jobs created ? Do the math : each job created with the help of this free money should be payed between 100 000€ and 200 000€ per year. Never heard of somebody suddenly getting paid that lot.
- flat tax : I don't know a lot about this one, but rich also said thank you
The reason of the demonstration of late : an increase of diesel taxes, in the name of ecology, for the planet ! Quel faux cul, quel menteur
People are not stupid : this is obvious that he is taking from the poor to give to the rich. He is called a reversed Robin Wood for a reason.
But these diesel taxes are just the thing too much. Macron looks down on people. His language is arrogant. "les gens qui ne sont rien", "les fénéants", "les premiers de cordées". There are many like these.
Remember that he was elected against the far right candidate.
This is not the first time this is happening in my country. But this is the first time a president is so badly elected, with only about 65% of the votes, and many many abstentions.
The problem is : how will look the next election ? Many European countries went far right. Next time in France, is it's right against far right again, I'm afraid far right wins. Smells so bad, smells so 30s.
Totof
Yeah, basically the regressive left hates nukes (because they want people to use less power, from what I can tell, and nukes tend to hurt their arguments) so they legally fight every new nuke plant incessantly. Then, the come on /. and other such forums and say "see, nukes are too expensive, can't have them". They don't have to be that expensive, and probably at some point governments need to make it illegal to file baseless lawsuits against power companies for stuff like this.
Do you have ESP?
Commercial nuclear in France is a basket case, reliant on government support just to survive and keep the lights on. Too big to fail, continually writing off assets and downgrading valuations.
This is the first I've heard of this. There's a lot of talk in the US about how France is the model for a successful nuclear energy program.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Well you could start by reading EDF's Wikipedia page. The French version is best but the English one catalogues their financial woes too.
Basically their nuclear stuff is so expensive and risky that they keep running out of money and having to delay to take more bail-outs from the government.
https://www.ft.com/content/04d...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk...
Of course the government has no choice, if EDF failed they would have to nationalize it anyway to keep the lights on.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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