Keep in mind that the presidential election is in 3 months.
Macron wants to show he is being pragmatic. Nuclear energy allows to reduce carbon emissions without sacrificing the economy. It's particularly smart in this moment of tension with Russia, as Europe depends a lot on Russian energy.
But whether this happens or not remains to be seen.
Also keep in mind, a lot of the cost of Hinkley Point is not so much the cost to build the reactors, but the financing. Speaking from memory, we are talking about borrowing at something like 10% over 35 years.
If France finances these new power plants, financing cost goes virtually to zero. So even if actually building the new reactors cost the same (unlikely, I hope they learnt a thing or two over the last 10 years...) they will end up a lot cheaper than Hinkley Point.
But that money could also be applied in other areas of the economy, that might have far better payback. And with France's current track record of nuclear construction, throwing more money at nuclear without fixing the fundamental problems first is serious misallocation of capital.
Just the latest news that is the same as the last decade of bad news:
> EDF now estimates the total cost of the project at 12.7 billion euros ($14.42 billion). Its expected cost has more than quadrupled from the first estimate made in 2004.
$15B of lithium ion battery factory would have far far greater carbon impact, dollar for dollar. $1B on early stage startups would similarly be more impactful.
The total cost (to date, as it isn't yet delivered) of the EPR was mid-2020 established by the "Cour des comptes" (Court of Audit) at 19,1 billions euros.
A recent official announcement added 300 millions euros.
well, with nuclear you're (and in this case, we're) still dependent on uranium mines and all the equipment that's require to build and maintain those power plants, some of which might not be manufactured in the countries
Uranium is also much easier to trasport than gas thanks to the ridiculously high energy density of uranium. Reactor grade uranium has an energy density of about 3,500,000 MJ/kg in a light water reactor, whereas natural gas is about 55 MJ/kg - so uranium is about 64,000 times more energy dense on a per kilo basis. You don't need pipelines or fancy LNG terminals, either - it's pretty easy to transport in relatively unexciting bulk containers.
So, once the security concerns are addressed, you can buy uranium from any country willing to sell it to you and ship it. The number two and number three producers of uranium worldwide are Canada and Australia, both of which France is very friendly with (a submarine kerfuffle with the latter notwithstanding).
Sure, and France reprocesses, too, which aids fuel security.
Of course, this doesn't mean they control the entire supply chain for needed parts for nuclear-- but if some critical piece broke they wouldn't have no energy immediately, either.
It is even in Russia's best interest to ne encouraged to diversify their economy before they simply run out of natural resources. If there is a steady decrease in the sale price of fossil fuels instead of a sudden one they will have more time to adapt right?
I don't think that's really a worry (running out of resources). Our deepest mines are a paltry 4km; forests can be managed. Oil, gas, and coal will eventually run out, but the prices will have by then have risen to the point that use at scale will be impractical.
The largest uranium fuel depot in the world is Chernobyl, Ukraine.
Russia nearly bankrupted itself when it contained the nuclear disaster and even Gorbachev thinks it was Chernobyl that ultimately destroyed the Soviet Union.
Now with this in mind, I wouldnt be surprised considering the sanctions on Russia, if they perhaps make a grab for the uranium in Chernobyl and sell it, to claw back some of the costs they incurred for cleaning up Chernobyl.
Strategically, it was useful for Russian politics to have something as risky as the Chernobyl nuke power station in the Ukraine during the soviet union era, ie different country if anything went wrong nothing to do with us sort of thing.
However thats how it remains until now where the Iranians need uranium after their enrichers were destroyed with Stuxnet, so you have one potential customer there, you also have India & Pakistan, Israel as well as the UK and France who will all be needing a bit more uranium as we get off fossil fuels to reduce greenhouse gases.
> Strategically, it was useful for Russian politics to have something as risky as the Chernobyl nuke power station in the Ukraine during the soviet union era, ie different country if anything went wrong nothing to do with us sort of thing.
The same type of reactor as Chernobyl is still in operation at the Leningrad NPP
> The same type of reactor as Chernobyl is still in operation at the Leningrad NPP
Along with three units each in Kursk and Smolensk NPPs. Plus I think a lot of people don't realize some of the other reactor units at Chernobyl continued operating until the last one finally shut down in 2000.
The other reactors at Chernobyl continued to operate for years after the incident at reactor 4. The last reactor there closed in 2000, and only as a result of being strongly incentivized by the international community. All the RBMK reactors were retrofitted with additional safeties after the incident. They're not really a risk.
"The very architecture of the Chernobyl reactor was faulty", often repeated in some media, is a lie, and therefore the more-or-less implicit "our architecture cannot lead to such a disaster" falls flat.
On the wiki page, a weakness was powergrid failure and the minute or two it took for the diesel generators to come online. They looked at whether any of the energy from the reactor turbines could be used to keep the water pumps going in this 1-2minute window until the diesel generators were up to full speed.
It needed a massive amount of water to pumped around which explains why many nuke power stations are positioned on the coast.
Of course, wiki is wiki, but is no more or less valid or invalid, than other reports when being mindful of bias.
In terms of Chernobyl and radiation leaks, an airburst instead of ground burst would spread more radiation and could parts of the Ukraine become radioactive wasteland to prevent Nato pushing right upto Russia border?
Russia hasnt moved an inch, but NATO has so could NATO end up on the wrong side of history with this one? Wars are always good distractions for domestic failures.
There's tons of uranium everywhere. You certainly don't have to put on the lead underpants and root around in Pripyat for it. Canada and Australia have massive amounts.
I know, I can pull uranium nodules out of the cliffs along the Jurassic Coast in Dorset UK. They are like blobs of clay, its the enrichment process which requires lots of it, so with all that enriched uranium in Chernobyl, why not flog it?
Do you really think there's any just lying around? The other reactors continued operating at Chernobyl after the accident - the last one didn't close until 2000. I seriously doubt there's piles of usable ready to go enriched uranium just lying there for the exclusion zone visitors to trip over.
Reactor grade: more than 19% 240Pu and less than 80% 239Pu
If the irradiation period has been short then the plutonium is weapons-grade (more than 93%).
Chernobyl's life span was cut short, so do we really know what things are like?
Edit.
Lets not forget being a member of NATO means nuclear weapon sharing, so is Russia not justified if it made a grab or made Ukraine a radioactive buffer zone?
Where does China come into all this with their new missiles after backing Russia?
Edit 2
Nato has become unpopular in Europe since the middle east wars and the ensuing migrant crisis. How do you know there isnt a concertive effort to rein in the Americans who spend the most on their military, not just within EU NATO members but within the wider global community? In other words are the Americans walking into a trap?
If a nuclear 'renaissance' arises, strategy will be at play: Russia and the US will obtain uranium from their 'partners', in Africa China will probably gain new partnerships, and other nations may encounter some difficulties.
Moreover (source: UNECE): "mining impacts are technically highly dependent on ore grade, as the efforts required to extract a fixed quantity of ore is proportional to the amount of rock to be extracted, therefore inversely proportional to the grade. This is true at the individual mine level, for which such a model could be derived; more importantly, this assumption is valid for open pit and underground mines. Warner and Heath test this relationship and its
influence over the full life cycle of the technology, showing that a lowering ore grade may lead to tripling life-cycle GHG emissions by 2050 in case of a sustained growth of installed nuclear capacity"
In general, whatever a politician's motivation is for any particular bill may or may not be aligned to yours, even though you may both agree on the outcome of that bill. And that's ok.
> Keep in mind that the presidential election is in 3 months.
Exactly, Macron has a very long history of changing of advice, sometimes after just a few days. In 2017 he campaigned to stop most nuclear plants in France (which are really old anyway) [0]. I think here those statements were more to sooth the "CGT" and the big companies in the field after the government last statements on EDF. [1]
He was the guy who dismantle Alstom to GE's and EDF's profits, then made Alstom buy what it just sold. It's hard to see any consistent strategy in any of his actions, except from a political point of view. He probably don't care of anything on any subject, it's just a matter of having the best posture to win elections.
> Nuclear energy allows to reduce carbon emissions without sacrificing the economy.
Only over the course of many decades do they net reduce carbon emissions, at the cost of much higher carbon emissions during the construction phase. Right now we need to be implementing the fastest carbon reductions possible and this does the exact opposite; for the next fifteen years, these plants will be a massive carbon emissions increase, and then it will take many years of operation to "pay that back." By then it will be far too late.
Nuclear is one of the most expensive electricity generating technologies and it has only gotten more expensive, while solar, wind, and battery technologies are following expected plunging cost paths. Nuclear power plants are difficult to site geologically, difficult to site grid-wise (because the only way they are economical is through massive scale, and you can't just drop 5, 10, or more gigawatts onto the grid just anywhere), there is no need for base load which is the only thing nuke can provide (either in terms of capability, or economically), they don't like fussy climates/extreme weather (and if they use natural bodies of water, are vulnerable to invasive species, increasingly a problem around the world), they have very deep and exacting supply chains when countries have experienced significant supply chain problems for numerous different reasons, and you can't just snap your fingers and have qualified staff to run the plant. They require significant socio-political stability (functioning education, security, accountable political leadership_, and generate material that is extremely dangerous to life for generations, and have the potential to render entire geographical regions uninhabitable, again for generations.
Guess what has none of these problems? Solar. Wind. Hydro. Energy storage.
Nuclear power also doesn't solve the fundamental problems: the environmental impact of staggeringly large militaries, the amount of 'disposable' packaging used in almost everything, the cross-planet shipping of consumer goods most of which are, frankly, useless, heavy use of low occupancy vehicle travel, poor building efficiency, and proof-of-work cryptocurrency schemes.
> Guess what has none of these problems? Solar. Wind. Hydro. Energy storage.
Right. Because all of those grow naturally in the wild and do not require fiberglass, concrete, various metals, digging for ore, diesel for transport, and on and on and on...
Look at almost any chart online comparing estimates of carbon footprint and you'll see wind and PV are well below nuclear, and they pay back within months.
Nuclear takes a decade to even start operating and by some estimates is worse than natural gas in carbon footprint. Uranium refinement and waste fuel processing take up a massive amount of resources.
Solar pays back its carbon footprint within months, whereas nuclear may very well have a footprint much larger than natural gas.
Look around. Do you see any utilities or investors building nuclear plants? No? Meanwhile wind and solar deployments are skyrocketing, both grid and small scale.
Do you think maybe the people running power grids and investing in power plants know a little bit more about this than HNers like yourself do?
I'd love some sources comparing the carbon emissions from building them, because otherwise I'm a big supporter of nuclear energy. I'd rather go solar/wind/hydro but I think they have some (not all) of the issues you've noted as well.
Google image search on "energy source carbon footprint" and see that even the charts with very low carbon impact estimates for nuclear still place it at roughly twice wind, and more than solar.
Look at what power companies, investors, grid operators, and most countries are putting money into. Not nuclear. If you think it's just because the public finds it unpalatable, well, the public finds a lot of things unpalatable and that doesn't stop industry and investors from doing whatever they want.
Solar and wind deployment in the US is growing massively as the price of solar panels and wind turbines plunge, especially solar. Battery storage is also plunging in price and rapidly maturing into grid-scale solutions like flow batteries.
Nuclear hasn't gotten cheaper over many, many decades and it provides a kind of power we don't need - base load. In many countries there's an excess of renewable power on many days.
Solar is highly distributed which helps decentralize the grid and localize power generation, lowering losses. It's a lot more efficient for your EV to get power from your neighbor's rooftop panels than from a power plant hundreds of miles away.
How many of those countries rapidly building new green planta are actually below France's GHG emissions? Germany definitely isn't, much of Europe isn't (and where they are, they typically also use nuclear). The USA is laughanly far off.
So, it seems to me that while many grids are switching to renewables, they are still far away from matching Nuclear's emissions.
The carbon cost of extraction and transportation of fuel should also be added to the spreadsheet, both for nuclear and for fossil fuel generation.
Finally, if we're accounting for the cost decommissioning old nuclear stations and long-term storage of nuclear fuel, we should also account for the externalities of fossil fuel power, such as health consequences of pollution, the existential risk from global warming, and turmoil due to geopolitical tensions.
> It's particularly smart in this moment of tension with Russia, as Europe depends a lot on Russian energy.
This may help lowering the reliance of France on Russia but its energy production will still be reliant on other countries, as 100% of the required fuel (uranium) is imported.
Can't tell if you're joking, but I think they mean that the positive effects of making the promise are immediate for Macron, but he won't have to deal with the actual cost, logistics, political maneuvering, etc., until after he's re-elected, if at all. Cynically, he could make promises he has no intention of keeping.
It goes both way, isn’t it? Whoever in power in 2035 who will get to cut the ribbon of the reactors will make it like their own victory. Macron’s name and whatever he would do to make it happen will be conveniently forgotten.
It's a pity that we should be completely carbon neutral around 2040 give or take a couple of years and power plants that go online in ten to fifteen years (if they are actually done by that time) save zero emissions until then.
Unfortunately, there's no way of telling if it's JUST a political move. However, a political move is required before actual implementation. I can't imagine France building nuclear power without someone taking credit for it.
There's was no future where power got built without the stunt, so... It's still a move closer to extra energy production. Even though it's a political one.
I respectfully disagree on that. It"s on the contrary a decision made a few months before the elections - so that the French energy policy won't be a matter of debate on the voting day.
French citizens have never been put in a position to vote between a pronuclear candidate and an antinuclear one.
Well, of course, there are ecologists on the first round of the vote, but on the second rounds, both candidates are always pronuclear. Of course, they all started ten years to include electoral promises to balance the energy mix with more renewables but none delivered: France has recently been recognized as being at the worst country in the European Union with only 19% of renewables in our mix - despite having signed to reach 23% this year.
The left is deeply divided on the matter ; in fact, the left is divided on all ecological issues: agriculture, industry, energy ... The right is pro-big-polluting agriculture in the name of our commercial deficit (we export a.lot), anti-regulation of industry on ecological grounds because our industry is weak (which is true but not a reason), and pronuclear in the name of sovereignty - on the energy issue but also for military reasons. The fact that the nuclear energy enables France to emit far less CO2 is just a welcome argument. But if we had petrol like Norway, it would be "drill, baby, drill !".
The nuclear energy has nothing to do historically in France with ecology and the climate issue will reinforce that totally nondemocratic decision taken by the General De Gaulle in the name of our Grandeur. A policy that our technostructure follows without any true democratic supervision. Check and balances exist only on safety matters, but absolutely none of the French energy mix.
Nowadays it has become a political subject of course. But it's really just theater and will stay so for quite a while. The public opinion had been leaning on the right more and more for the last 20 years. When elected, self-called Socialists acted clearly on a center-right: really more like Manchin than Biden (in a daring transposition of very different political landscapes).
Funny detail: the French scientists had stalled in the research of the atomic bomb. That was a problem for the US in the context of the Cold War. So the US told the British to tip us in the right direction. That direction had already been deeply worked on but dismissed by the French scientists.
That was very discrete, not even officially recognized by some secret treaty. A prominent English nuclear scientist had a good friend among the French team. He visited him for lunch a Sunday. They talked physics. The UK has already its bomb, so the French noticed when his friend wondered aloud if that path come be "another way" to reach fission. But the British moved on another subject immediately. Friends don't need many words.
To thank the US, France later helped Israel - a lot - to build their own atomic bomb faster.
Then France made a 180º turn in its foreign policy and sided with the Arab countries on the Israël/Palestine issue. When Arafat and his troops were besieged in Beyruth by Tsahal, France evacuated them to Tunisia.
> French citizens have never been put in a position to vote between a pronuclear candidate and an antinuclear one.
> Well, of course, there are ecologists on the first round of the vote, but on the second rounds, both candidates are always pronuclear.
Well, since nuclear power is such an important part of the Greens political platform (for better or for worse), you might argue that the fact all second-round candidates have been pro-nuclear sor far _is_ the result of the population voting on the topic.
And the fact that it happens _before_ the elections is, on the contrary, a way to trigger the debate.
The process to build plants take years - if the population is strongly opposed to, they can vote Macron out, elect Jadot or Melenchon, and the process will be canceled.
(The sad thing about French democracy is that the Presidential Election is virtually the only moment to have all debates)
Other countries (Germany, Belgium, etc...) decided _not_ to use nuclear energy without asking there population any more directly.
Populations are not asked explicitly about plenty of very dangerous industries (I leave near Toulouse, yet I still have to see "Get out of fertilizers !" stickers on cars following AZF explosion.)
Is this the kind of topic where the rules of representative democracy is to "let the elected governement govern" ?
Or is there a right way to get the opinion of a country, knowing that, in those matters, the population that vote will not be the population that deals ?
I have no idea what would happen if we had a referendum about nuclear energy, as they had in Italy and Switerzland.
I'm also no so sure what I would vote for !
Every time I ponder those questions, I open this [1] or [2], and I wonder: who's ready to switch off their lights first ?
> French citizens have never been put in a position to vote between a pronuclear candidate and an antinuclear one.
What about the fallout from the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior? It was my understanding that nuclear technology was a source of national pride at the time, which emboldened the French government. Public support for nuclear power seems much less enthusiastic these days. Still, I'm curious if there was ever an election where candidates' positions on the event were at issue.
A point which may not be well-understood by people unfamiliar with French economic history is that for much of post-WW II period, France's power prices have been dramatically lower that other Western European countries (for industry, anyway).
One of the challenges that moves to get away from nuclear generation have caused is the prospect of hurting the French industrial base more than it's already been undermined by offshoring.
(The other concern is keeping an independent nuclear arsenal, which is completely coupled to having reactors.)
Those where low wholesale prices via government subsides. Germany “subsidized” very early wind/solar adoption by forcing electricity consumers to pay through the nose for it.
That isn’t to say either model is better, just that you can’t look at wholesale prices and see the underlying economic realities. Time is running out on early German subsides where France still needs to pay for decommissioning.
France has a great track record with nuclear and I hope they can continue to leverage that excellence. Doing so cost effectively is more difficult especially when adding ever more inexpensive wind/solar generation to the EU grid.
Wind/solar generation have fundamental availability constraints that require supplementing with on-demand generation capacity. Nuclear is not exactly an answer for on-demand capacity because it is not possible to rapidly spin up and down, but having additional nuclear availability should allow France to have greater clean, stable energy capacity. It additionally introduces the possibility of broader energy exports to other European nations.
Nuclear can spin up and down rapidly, it’s simply really expensive to do so. In the mid term heavily subsidized Nuclear is the fastest way for most countries to reach a 90+% clean grid. The risk is ever cheaper grid storage can quickly render such investments obsolete.
A nuclear power plant that comes online in 5 years and operates for another 40-50 is going to be part of an extremely different grid in 25-55 years from now. That’s why private investors are so hesitant, but governments have more flexibility.
It could be that subsidized grid storage is a more cost effective solution, but that’s also limited by manufacturing capacity.
> A nuclear power plant that comes online in 5 years
The article says 6 facilities, of which just one is expected to be operational in 15 years. I think this is the reason nobody except France is pushing nuclear. Starting today, by the time your first nuclear plant comes online, you will have been forced to deploy an alternative making it redundant. People make the case for nuclear being cost effective today, but I don't see any predictions about it being cost effective in 15+ years either.
> Starting today, by the time your first nuclear plant comes online, you will have been forced to deploy an alternative making it redundant.
The delay is because these power plants are supposed to replace existing power plants that will be taken offline in 13+ years. What’s notable is they aren’t 1:1 replacements so they are going to end up with a lower percentage of nuclear power.
PS: I reference the a 5 year delay because that’s roughly when you’re spending real money. France could easily back out of this plan in ~7 years having spent less than 1% of what it would cost to actually build a reactor.
"Starting today, by the time your first nuclear plant comes online, you will have been forced to deploy an alternative making it redundant."
If only we had the ability to plan energy policy decades ahead, because we know how long each powerplant will last, and when it will need to be replaced! If only we had energy consumption and CO2 emissions predictions going forwards and backward almost a century!
Not with fusion: the fusion reactors we aim at building eventually will have no relationship with our submarine fleet roaming the ocean pointing nukes at everyone.
Macron wants to show he is being pragmatic. Nuclear energy allows to reduce carbon emissions without sacrificing the economy. It's particularly smart in this moment of tension with Russia, as Europe depends a lot on Russian energy.
But whether this happens or not remains to be seen.