[pydry]

France has nuclear plants because in the 1970s it decided it didnt want to be dependent on middle eastern oil.

It was very very expensive. It was also nothing to do with global warming.

Those plants are fully paid off but nearly all close to death. Replacing them will still be very very expensive. Extending their lives will be dangerous. France isnt quite sure what to do.

If there's unlimited money and patience for years long delays then yes nuclear power is just fine.

If you want it reasonably priced it either wont happen at all or you're risking catastrophe.

[sofixa]

> France isnt quite sure what to do.

Yes it is ( big nuclear buildout to replace most of the current fleet, while also doing lots of renewables and experimenting with small modular reactors):

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220210-announcing-new-r...

[tcfhgj]

So they're reducing nuclear power production in the long term?

[sofixa]

By a small percentage, yes, going down from something like 75% to 55-60% IIRC, with the difference going to renewables.

[ncmncm]

The usual outcome lately is to cancel construction after billions of euros are spent, as it is realized the result will be unable to be competitive.

Occasionally, ratepayers are forced to pay far above market rates in order to keep the plants in operation.

Coercing users does not make nukes look more viable.

[ohgodplsno]

>Those plants are nearly all close to death.

No, these plants are close to the end of their original grant for exploitation. Many of them get renewed for 10, 20 years easily. The US has had plants renewed for 40 years and are still running just fine.

> France isnt quite sure what to do.

We know what to do, every single scientist from the ASN knows what to do, every economist knows what to do. The non-renewal of nuclear plants is purely a political play to gain votes.

Stop spreading your ignorant, fearmongering, unsubstantiated opinions.

[phh]

> We know what to do, every single scientist from the ASN knows what to do, every economist knows what to do.

The ones who underestimated Flamanville's cost by 80%? (and it's still not in production)

Let's maybe not trust them completely, and have our eggs in other baskets as well.

[ohgodplsno]

No, you don't know what you are talking about. The budget, that's EDF. EDF builds things, the ASN ensures the safety is up to standards. Hell, the ASN _is_ responsible for these costs because they are the ones ensuring everything is up to par. There are many EPRs running, in Finland, in China, but none of these have safety requirements as drastic as the Flamanville EPR.

Additionally, EDF offered multiple estimates at the time of construction, from "everything goes well" to "oh dear god so many delays". Many of these estimates were perfectly in line with the current costs. It is, once again, political decisions that only allocated the minimal budget, while knowing full well that it would go over (but that EDF would take the blame, and not the government).

And once again, this is also a result of letting our nuclear industry decay for 40 years, losing every single person that has the knowledge on how to build nuclear plants either to retirement or other countries.

[ncmncm]

Anything that results in fewer nukes at minimal cost is a net good.

In the US, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission employs 2000 people to reject nuke construction plans. They are cheap at the price.

[sofixa]

> The ones who underestimated Flamanville's cost by 80%? (and it's still not in production)

It's an entirely new design of a complicated piece of technology, of course it will be over budget and delayed. Grand Paris Express and the Paris Philharmonic were also over budget and delayed, does that invalidate the opinion of all experts involved in both projects?

[ncmncm]

Being over budget and off schedule is most of the purpose. Once a plant is delivered, the gravy train stops. No one actually involved wants that.

The Finns recognized the gravy train would stop soon, anyway, and elected to deliver a (more-or-less) working reactor, after consuming 5B euros beyond the 3B quoted cost, more than a decade late. In the US, corruption is secure enough to go far, far beyond that price, with no demand to deliver.

[moogly]

> does that invalidate the opinion of all experts involved in both projects

demonstrably, yes?

[sofixa]

Because the most important thing about a project as complex as a big acoustic-friendly building or multiple hundreds of kms of automated metros or a nuclear power plant is that the predictions about budget and time are perfect?

I wonder what that means for software developers who notoriously struggle to predict basically the same stuff, only on much less drastic scales (if an engineer underestimates how much time and effort a feature will take, usually people don't die. If a building crumbles or a nuclear power plant has an accident or a train crashes people do die).

[cycomanic]

> >Those plants are nearly all close to death.

> No, these plants are close to the end of their original grant for exploitation. Many of them get renewed for 10, 20 years easily. The US has had plants renewed for 40 years and are still running just fine.

The moving goal post by nuclear proponents never cease to amaze. When we talk about safety the argument is always: "don't look at these old designs, all these modern designs are 100% safe". Then when we talk about cost it is: "don't look at the cost of building new plants, just extend the operation of these 40 year old plants by another 40 years". And the they complain about regulations for nuclear, while at the same time arguing that regulations about decommissioning a plant after its regulated lifetime ran out should not apply to nuclear plants.

Why should the rules about safe operation lifetimes not apply to nuclear plants?

> > France isnt quite sure what to do.

> We know what to do, every single scientist from the ASN knows what to do, every economist knows what to do. The non-renewal of nuclear plants is purely a political play to gain votes.

> Stop spreading your ignorant, fearmongering, unsubstantiated opinions.

They are not fear mongering or unsubstantiated. Plants were build/commissioned with an expected lifetime. There are reasons for this, aging of components and materials especially under exposure to radiation, aging of computer systems...

[sofixa]

> don't look at these old designs, all these modern designs are 100% safe

This is only said as an answer to all the people screaming "but Chernobyl was horrible". Old designs are pretty safe too ( especially when terrible bugs like the one that caused Chernobyl are fixed), precisely because they keep getting updated to newer norms during refreshes and refits. There are nuclear power plants out there that were constructed in the 1950s that still work.

OP's point is that most nuclear power plants can have their life extended, at some cost, which is negligible compared to the cost of a new plant, and there's rarely a case where that doesn't make sense ( usually when for some reason the retrofit to update to new standards is too expensive). Why waste that? Prolong the life of existing plants, and build new ones to expand production and eventually replace the old ones.

[cycomanic]

Yes and the reasons that they don't get extended indefinitely is because it gets increasingly expensive to modernise and follow the new rules. On top of that is that regulators are becoming more reluctant to extend the lifetime, because the unknown factors increase (cue complaints about regulation). The reason they don't get extended that it is not economical compared to using wind/solar instead. Why do you think coal plants don't get operated indefinitely?

[ohgodplsno]

The only way plants are extended is if they meet current nuclear safety rules, not the rules from 40 years ago. Please do literally five minutes of research.