[mxvzr]

France has 56 reactors, of which 29 are currently shutdown.

My understanding is that they are closed for maintenance rather than due to the on-going heatwave.

It has been described as the perfect storm: some reactors have reached the 10yr mark (so extensive maintenance is to be done on these), lockdowns have slowed the progress of regular maintenance (possibly introducing a backlog?), and finally corrosion was found in secondary cooling systems used during emergencies leading to further (12) shutdowns.

[rjzzleep]

This is basically what happens when the entirety of western governments is run by lawyers, teachers, and BA consultants. There is a massive lack of critical infrastructure engineers that should be welcome in government or at least close advisors of the government but no longer are. Note that for all the terrible parts about China they have a lot of engineers in their government, leading to a lot of critical investments in infrastructure.

[lesuorac]

Yeah all those people with their degrees in constitutional law should be banned from congress! /s

To make a claim that lawyers can't be useful at all at running a country really requires a citation at least... Large associations of people are going to have a lot of different skills so to say that there aren't ~500,000 competent teachers / lawyers / consultants in a population of ~3 billion (claim is about the entire west) seems a bit of a stretch.

There are at least some engineers in China that aren't competent [1] so _just_ because somebody is an engineer doesn't mean you'll have a good outcome.

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/05/1096810346/survivor-found-alm...

[roenxi]

How much of an influence does constitutional law really have on the government? There is a minor-moderate crisis in US politics at the moment about whether the constitution protects abortion based on a tortured reading of the text, so it doesn't seem like the physical documents are an important factor. I respect all the positions in that debate, but if that is a serious point of contention then there is a real question as to why a constitutional scholar would have any advantage at all in Congress. For anyone.

Not saying they'd necessarily be bad, but a good cross section of community members would be better than a good cross section of the legal fraternity.

[lesuorac]

> How much of an influence does constitutional law really have on the government?

Well, ideally it would matter a little bit. Kind of like you want a contractor to be well versed in local building codes you'd want a politician to be well versed in the local laws.But considering most of the law isn't actually in the constitution the use of knowing the constitution very well isn't that useful.

> Not saying they'd necessarily be bad, but a good cross section of community members would be better than a good cross section of the legal fraternity.

For an elected congress critters I think there should be a bias towards lawyers and other law-adjacent professions considering they're going to create laws that that field needs to use. However, for appointed officials I think is when the cross section would need to start coming up. I suspect a random teacher is a much better pick for DoE than a loan officer. I think it would be more important that their staff is a cross section of the community than the actual figurehead.

----

> There is a minor-moderate crisis in US politics at the moment about whether the constitution protects abortion based on a tortured reading of the text

Quick aside, we got to this point because one party (Democratic) has ran previously on passing laws that would protect abortions and never did while another party (Republicans) have ran previously on passing laws that would restrict it and never did. Which leaves the two branches of government that can weigh in and they both have. Of course they will weigh in how they can and for the Supreme Court that's via Constitutionality.

[rjzzleep]

It's nice that you brought up constitutional law, since Bill Barr, Ted Cruz, and many others were in fact constitutional lawyers.

That's why you have a self made failed coup d'etat in the US. Crazy nutjob granpas that are threatening chemical weapon attacks, collapsing governments in Europe with what seems to be a looming energy and food crisis as well as failing transportation in Canada. Just the other day the Netherlands decided on a "climate" policy that looks very similar to the policies that caused Sri Lankas food supply to collapse.

I don't know if these people are just incompetent or just domestic terrorists, but either way it's not good. Nobody will care about your constitution when you have neither food or energy. It will just be anger and law enforcement. Already you have clashes in a lot of European cities and more than 5 times as much gun deaths in the US a year than civilians died in the Ukraine war.

[lesuorac]

Ted Cruz has a Mathematics [1] degree so probably should count him as an engineer. (Engineering is just applied math after all). There doesn't seem to be much on Bill Barr so I'm not too sure where you've gotten that he's a constitutional lawyer as opposed to any other one [2].

The USA has been "falling apart" for centuries now, just look at its history. Race riots, oil shocks, stagflation, world war 2, pandemic, world 1, civil war, etc. The idea that anything happening now is "novel" is unfounded.

> 5 times as much gun deaths in the US a year than civilians died in the Ukraine war.

Yeah because Ukraine has like a 1/10 the people as the US. If we assume that there should be 1x as many gun deaths as civilians deaths then its actually good that its only 5x. However I'm pretty sure this is just not something you can compare in any meaningful matter.

People do track deaths in the Ukraine war (4889 as of July 4th [3]), Ukraine has a population of roughly 44 million, and its been 130 days (Feb 24 -> July 4) so that's a rate of 31.1 / 100k. Every US state has a death rate below 31.1 / 100k [4].

---

Perhaps do a little research before making claims as there's a lot of misinformation out there.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Barr [3]: https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2022/07/ukraine-civilian-casua... [4]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/homicide_mortality...

[rjzzleep]

HIS MOTHER has undergrad in mathematics. "Engineering is just applied math after all" I guess he's also a theoretical physicist cause that's also just applied math after all.

You're a wonderful example of a menace to discussions, because you didn't even bother reading the first Wikipedia paragraph you quoted properly. Ted Cruz himself studied policy at Princeton and then got a Juris Doctoris from Harvard Law. You know, the same place Obama went to.

Your math is funky by the way, I'm not sure if you're an engineer, but if you were, it would definitely prove that Software Engineering is definitely NOT applied mathematics.

[namdnay]

You know the French prime minister is an engineer right? As well as the minister for industry and another couple.

And the top of the French civil service is jam packed with engineers

“The dictatorship of the technocratic elites” is a common taking point of the populist parties here

[rjzzleep]

Since march yes, previous one was a lawyer, so was the before that, and the one before studied politics ;)

[BenoitP]

> has been described as the perfect storm

The conspiracist in me thinks the French state actually finds it very convenient. Just when it needed to announce new reactors to be built it finds the perfect justification. To me it might even had had a heavy hand in setting the threshold of corrosion for these shutdowns.

[_ph_]

Quite a few are down for maintenance, but every hot summer, the French nuclear capacity is reduced further, due to limited cooling. They could, of course, just boil the rivers.