You realize that World Nuclear News is not an unbiased source, right?
The UK is doing fine with a renewables-heavy powergrid, as are Spain and Portugal. 40% of their electricity comes from this, and the share is rising steadily.
The above source is quoting a bill written by the French government:
> However, the bill also calls for "realistic goals to transform our energy model by increasing the timeframe for reducing nuclear power to 50% by 2035 instead of 2025, which would have required the construction of new gas-fired plants, and would have involved an increase in our greenhouse gas emissions."
I'm sure World Nuclear News is more favorable to nuclear power, but I don't see how that is relevant. Do you believe that this article fabricated the contents of the French bill?
This comes off more as a cheap jab than a substantive claim of bias.
Nothing in there actually refutes my point that France wants to REDUCE its dependence on nuclear energy overall. France is the poster-child for a nuclear-focused powergrid. If they want to move away from nuclear, that suggests it is not working out as well as people claim.
Legislation gets written and rewritten as timelines get tweaked. That's a reality. The core goal is unchanged.
The point is, they make lip service towards moving away from nuclear but don't actually make any strides towards doing so. The claim that France wants to reduce its share of nuclear would hold more water once they actually start doing so. Talk is cheap, actions are not.
They literally are, and have formally said so. They're not shutting down all their reactors right away or anything. But for a country that took pride in betting big on nuclear, officially planning to go from 70% nuclear to 50% is a pretty huge drop. They've already shut down the first two reactors at Fessenheim as part of this.
Yes, they're kicking the can down the road slightly at last news. That's not surprising since many of the reactors may be possible to life-extend to 50 years, and renewable energy costs are dropping quickly. Delaying a few years saves some money. But that does not change the fact that many of the reactors will not be replaced when they hit end-of-life.
>> you're implying "nuclear = bad because France is moving away from it" which is not what France is doing.
> They literally are, and have formally said so
Citation needed.
As I stated in another reply to you, reducing dependence on nuclear has a lot of advantages unrelated to "nuclear is bad" or "nuclear is not clean" or etc. Like I said before, no matter what your energy source is, 75% of your power being produced from a singular source is not a good idea. You may be familiar with the old saying "don't put all your eggs in one basket." This is the same reason we don't invest in a single stock. Dropping to 50% is far from getting rid of nuclear and it is an absurd claim.
> But that does not change the fact that many of the reactors will not be replaced when they hit end-of-life.
Many, but many are planed to be replaced. You're focusing too much on the reduction aspect. Reduction is not elimination. France has no plans on eliminating nuclear in the foreseeable future. The only way this would happen is if ITER was a major success and small versions could reliably be developed and deployed. I'm not counting on that.
The UK is doing fine with a renewables-heavy powergrid, as are Spain and Portugal. 40% of their electricity comes from this, and the share is rising steadily.