The upside is they found it. They didn't try to cover it up, it didn't blow up or anything. There will be issues in any complex installation even with the best of planning, what matters is how you deal with those.
> They didn't try to cover it up, it didn't blow up or anything.
Most nuclear incidents do not involve stuff blowing up, but rather stuff leaking. As for covering things up, that's a specialty of this field, as any former nuclear insider will tell you.
> As for covering things up, that's a specialty of this field, as any former nuclear insider will tell you.
We do not know the same "insiders in the field" then.
As a former electrical engineer, many of my friends works for EDF in Nuclear. And none of them ever talk about covering things up.
It is quite the opposite, any minor incident generally trigger a ton of process and often a partial shutdown "just in case".
Every possible interaction with the installation is documented, planned and part of a process with X layers of human verification before any intervention.
I do not know how the nuclear industry run in other countries but that is not the culture for EDF to cover things up. For politicians with their own agenda, it's an other story....
So first it's not just EDF. It's also AREVA and ANDRA. All three of those entities had major scandals in the past decades and seem to have taken exactly zero lesson from them. I'm really not the person most knowledgeable/aware on this topic, this is just from 5 minutes of searching the web.
2008: Greens/EFA report says official "energy independance" stat of 50% of a lie; when calculated on final energy not primal energy, it falls down to 24%, and down to just 8.5% when you take into account that uranium is in fact imported; it also touches on engineering issues, staffing problems...
Who would be better sources? Other entities don't care or are already bought for by this mafia. Also, i encourage you to take a read at the actual material: it's solid despite what you may think of such organizations.
If it can reassure you, i'm also very skeptical of greens and greenpeace because they've been corrupted/coopted by big business over the years and don't stand for actual ecology (degrowth/anticapitalism) anymore. Such reports is one of the few instances of them still doing a good job on specific issues, so i thought taking these serious sources instead of more radical material would take us closer to an understanding.
There are no reports for leaks I could find, so while you can point at other bad actors in the field, why don't you celebrate the little wins of some company being transparent enough for once?
Sure that's happened sometimes, but that's the worst case scenario. Most leaks don't go that spectacular and are either detected by irradiated workers or by civil society taking radioactivity measurements in the vicinity of nuclear facilities where no particular radioactivity should be measurable.
They communicated about it. What else do you want?
> True but the nature of the project and the potential dangers of the project materials also matter.
What are you trying to say? They found a problem, used the protocols they had in place to stop the reactors and they'll take care of it. Looks like they knew the nature of the project and potential dangers and had an appropriate response.
That tells us nothing about what they did or tried to do before they finally did reveal some possibly partial information. So it doesn’t answer the question. How could we possibly know that they didn’t try to cover it up? For all we know, they tried very hard and failed.
>What else do you want?
Less naïveté when dealing with the topic of how the people running such projects tend to operate.
That's one serious downside of nuclear, when there's an issue, you lose a lot of power generation ( on the other hand if you have a lot of wind turbines from the same model, in such a scenario you'd still have the same type of impact).
However, nuclear is still more stable than renewables without massive amounts of storage which are currently infeasible, and the future French energy mix will continue to have a heavy nuclear component ( a few variants, including ditching all nuclear, were proposed and studied, and one of the most nuclear heavy ones was chosen).
> ( on the other hand if you have a lot of wind turbines from the same model, in such a scenario you'd still have the same type of impact)
In such a scenario, with wind turbines, you could take the risk and keep them running; even if a few end up breaking up as a consequence, it's no big deal. You cannot do that with nuclear.
Presidential election is next year and some candidates want to completely get rid of nuclear as fast as possible, so this can change. Not sure these candidates understand this means more CO2, bigger dependency on Russia for gaz and more expensive electricity in the end.
> this means more CO2, bigger dependency on Russia
That's arguable, but certainly not definitive. This is based on the assumption that energy usage will only ever rise (until the final collapse of industrial civilization), generating an ever-increasing abundance of waste (food, electronics and other supplies) and empty buildings (3 million empty dwellings and counting).
Some of us do want to build a lowtech society in which we don't have to choose between killing millions of species due to capitalist activity or living under a rock.
> more expensive electricity in the end
This part though goes against all current studies. When public subsidies for building/deconstructing nuclear plants are taken into account, nuclear is by far the most expensive energy source.
This is of course assuming that they even know how to deconstruct those. It's not like like a site they stopped in 1985 and claimed would be a showcase ("vitrine") of how to dismantle nuclear plants had its plans go 20 times over budget and the estimation kept climbing along the due date currently scheduled for 2040. Or is it in fact just like that?! [0]
Our energy usage will definitely decrease and I'm all for it, I just hope it's in a controlled way and not a brutal collapse.
I'm talking "short" term, if you shutdown nuclear plant for political reasons, you just burn more fossil fuel, Germany was nice enough to do the experiment for us, invest massively in renewables but shutdown nuclear plant so they can burn coal and emit 3x more CO2 per kWh than France ... (https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/FR)
Thanks for the link. That's an interesting material even though i disagree with some of the principles laid in the study. It takes for granted that electricity usage will continue to rise and that's a good thing. Personally i would argue electricity as a layer of abstraction is really good at hiding pollution, but is not energy-efficient for many tasks.
It also assumes that we keep a giant interconnected grid (with huge losses) and that we need to centralize production just like we do with fuel/nuclear plants. That's what the "artificialisation des sols" line is about, and does not account for the possibility to produce energy more locally if we consume less of it.
For example, what's more ecological:
- a solar farm produced from high-waste silicon wafers that take many Watt-hours to build, deeply anchored in tons of concrete, running electricity for kilometers until it reaches an electric stove that itself comprises complex/polluting materials?
- or a simple gaz stove made of simple metal, running gaz recycled from your cooking waters by bacteria (yes that's a thing) or from methanization of your local compost?
Even these two scenarios i'm laying don't cut it if we want to investigate actual degrowth: what's the environmental cost that everybody has their own kitchen (stove/fridge/pans) and cooks for themselves? There's economies of scale to be made by reinstating communal kitchens.
Even their scenario advocating for "sobriety" is very naive. It's focused on personal actions (or lack thereof), when the biggest energy/resources waste we have as a society is due to big business not individual actions. For example, they mention "digital sobriety" for users, when we tech people know the biggest resources used are because of surveillance/tracking companies (Google/Amazon/CloudFlare..) keeping huge datacenters filled with data that does not provide any value to the users: what does it matter if you trash 100KB of emails every day from your Gmail if Google keeps 500KB of data points about you in that timeframe (numbers from the top of my hat)?
All in all, there's a lot to account for, and this RTE study unsurprisingly only accounts for what's related to their profiting of the situation. In such a biased setup, not surprising that green alternatives doesn't seem economically viable. I haven't finished reading the study, but if it claims nuclear is cheaper, that warrants serious proof: all studies so far point to the opposite as true.
None of those presidential candidates has a chance to win, at least as of now. French presidential elections have a habit of sudden scandals changing the landscape.
"It said the French utility could need to spend about 2 billion-3 billion euros ($2.3 billion-$3.4 billion) in 2022 to buy back some of its power to cover outages at the nuclear reactors."
More money after bad money. The cost of solar 1GW farm with storage is well under $2B. The power transmission cable from Alger to France would still leave it under $2B/1GW. Instead France is doubling down on nuclear.
France is currently occupying a bit of a baseload supplier for its renewable energy neighbours. It may make strategic and economic sense for them to double down: they have the expertise, installed base, friendly environment and market.
And they have the (supposedly former) colonies providing nuclear fuel at the cost of protecting their environment and population. And abundant rivers with to cool down the reactors and destroy their local ecosystems. And very collaborative national media outlets who mostly don't cover the nuclear scandals due to being owned by Bouygues (french multinational well-known for telecoms but who also does a fair share of public construction including on the famous EPR) or by the french State.
The whole reason France went nuclear is to have energy independence, because you can source uranium from pretty much anywhere (unlike fossil fuels).
The largest exporters of uranium in the world are Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia. Those aren't former French colonies. But, yes, there are also countries in Africa that export uranium, but that's the point; if you look at a map of uranium reserves you'll find it's pretty much all over the world (and not really that much in Africa, actually).
To my (limited) knowledge 100% of nuclear fuel used by French nuclear facilities comes from former french colonies in Africa, although french companies (Areva) are involved in uranium exploitation in other parts of the world as well.
I'm not saying french (neo-)colonies are the only place to get uranium from. I'm saying it's very cozy to have the dictators your colonial secret services set up over the years provide you with cheap resources.
And they have the (supposedly former) colonies providing nuclear fuel at the cost of protecting their environment and population. [0]
And abundant rivers with to cool down the reactors and destroy their local ecosystems. [1]
And very collaborative national media outlets who mostly don't cover the nuclear scandals due to being owned by Bouygues [2] (french multinational well-known for telecoms but who also does a fair share of public construction including on the famous EPR [3]) or by the french State [4].
Some additions:
- misleading/missing news reports on nuclear topics was covered by the 2012 documentary "Les nouveaux chiens de garde" [5] (the new watchdogs) about media corruption and disinformation: they went through two days worth of news broadcast on two TV channels to compare how was presented (or not) the fact that Bouygues had major engineering failures on the EPR construction
- the french government has a history of repression against ecological/anti-nuclear movements, ranging from the murder in 1977 of Vital Michalon by police forces [6] during an anti-nuclear protest, to the harassment and military (gendarmerie) occupation of Bure (Meuse) and surrounding villages, including dozens of house searches, a bunch of prison sentences, and an ongoing investigation of eco-anarchists for "criminal association" [7]
- and don't even get me started on how to (not) deconstruct those facilities [8]
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9visions - no specific source about "censorship" of nuclear incidents, however there is a strong and documented history of firing journalists and humorists who are too critical of the french State and corporations, and of self-censorship ; see also acrimed.org (french only sorry)
You are nitpicking examples thats follow what you think, and is typical for someone highly biaised.
On [0], you take one example, while forgotting to says thats the majority of nuclear fuel come from developed country (Canada, Russia, Australia).
On [1] you take an Americain study, and you somehow forget to says that french nuclear reactor have a heating limit of the water to avoid these issues.
[8] Yes it looks like you don't know what you are talking about, so let's not talk about it. There has been multiple dismantled nuclear plants, and you love forgetting about it.
That fact is indisputable. The history of France is that of colonization, military repression, political police and suppression of local cultures.
> controls Africa and is responsible for everything going bad there
Not all of Africa, and large swaths of the french Empire are currently "threatened" by Chinese neocolonialism. Since the death of "Monsieur Afrique" [0] and the many Bolloré scandals, France's ability to corrupt and murder african officials has arguably diminished.
Also worth noting that the new generations in French-dominated Africa are growing a revolt against neocolonial exploitation. For example, the money France prints to keep a dozen countries in check economically has been at the center of widespread protests these past years, to the point Macron had to abandon it... to announce in the same sentence that from his throne he'll replace it with a new money called Eco (how ironic). [2]
[0] Jacques Foccart famously oversaw African exploitation under all governments from De Gaulle to Chiraq over several decades.
the cost of 1GW nuclear these days is starting at $6B. For that amount of money you can double/triple diversify between solar and wind, so you'll always have that 1GW baseload and with much lesser hassle and damage than nuclear.
>its renewable energy neighbours
And nuclear is bad investment from that POV too - 10-20 years down the road after building reliable renewable energy system Germany for example will ask itself "Why we're still supporting the nuclear next door?" France isn't Lithuania of course and will be much harder to force to shut down nuclear, yet i think that neighbors pressure is coming.
At this stage I expect Lithuania would be very against the EU forcing any other countries to shutdown nuclear power plants in the future. The Belarusian Astravets problem and soaring energy prices mean they are in a very tough place compared to 20 years ago, when they were a net energy exporter. The EU has actually made them much more dependent on Russia, not less.
Get the Electric Vehicles to 'stock up' on kWh prior to the cloudy/no-wind period. And then induce them not to charge during the cloudy/no-wind period with a 'renewable hiatus' premium, of, say, 50-100% of the normal price of a kWh.
A Tesla model S seems to be able to store 100kWh.
France seems to have ~30M cars.
So, 100e330e63600~=1e16 J storage assuming all those cars switch to being Tesla S, and are somehow kept unused.
So, not completely unreasonable, but it still seems on the low side (only two days), and I am not sure what the impact would be on car batteries to be continuously charged/discharged. This also assumes cars are left at home to serve the grid.
This also assumes electricity consumption does not increase, which seems unlikely (since transportation and heating must switch to electricity at some point).
> The cost of solar 1GW farm with storage is well under $2B.
Can you be more specific about that? I'm seeing prices like one dollar per watt just for panels, and that's the peak output. So multiply that by at least 4 for 4 billion, and then a likely-not-enough 14GWh of storage at a lowballed $300/kWh is another 4 billion. If I was sending in a quote I'd put $20B on the sheet, not $2B.
The writing is on the wall. The nuclear with its supposed "baseload" goes the way of Big Iron with its high reliability/etc. which got replaced by distributed clusters of cheap Linux boxes.
That's peak power. It can only supply that for a few hours each day. And the battery can only supply 350MW for 4 hours.
5x the solar and 10x the battery and you will approach a constant 1GW of power, then add more if you don't want to be knocked out as soon as you have a bad weather day.
> $20B for 10GW
That's also peak power, and it doesn't say anything about a battery.
Sahara solar panel project is a good idea, the problem is the location. There is no way that France can rely on Algeria, algerian leaders are still today blaming France for the problems they are facing now, it is so tiresome.
Marocco or Tunisia are better candidate for such projects.
And even if algerian leaders where not a problem, they would still need to stay clear from all the area where France had nuclear tests, especially places where the rate of thyroid and pulmonary cancer is higher than average. Not sure the locals would be happy about it.
And (I'll reuse your phrasing) since french leaders are still today blaming muslims for the problems they are facing now, I wonder how these projects would be led, whether in Algeria, Tunisia or Morocco.
What do you mean by "with storage"? How much of it? If you want to cover for an 8-hour windless night, at 1 GW, you will need 8 GWh of storage, and you will need to generate a surplus of 8 GWh of electricity during the remaining 16 hours of the (previous) day, every day (windy or not, sunny or not).
Comparing solar/wind to nuclear requires more elaboration than just slapping a "with storage."
