[Georgelemental]

France's nuclear plants are failing to provide for the country's needs because incompetent politicians shut down perfectly functional plants like Fessenheim, and in general refused to invest to maintain the system and preserve expertise. French nuclear didn't fail on its own merits, it was sabotaged.

[hef19898]

Not sure how politicians are directly responsible for a Europe wide drought making it close to impissible to get enough cooling water to nuclear plants to producr anywhere near nominal capacity.

[Manuel_D]

It's not a question of enough cooling water. It's a problem of how much the plant is allowed to heat the river. Because apparently keeping a stretch of river below 28*C is more important than climate change.

[bobthepanda]

Not killing all the fish in a river is also generally something that should be aimed for, since that can have knock on effects on ecosystems. We’d rather not find out what happens and accidentally instigate some kind of environmental disaster that might lead to farm failures or something unexpected.

[Manuel_D]

The limit on the temperature is as low as 26C or 79F. It's not like the river is boiling. Furthermore this heat dissipates downstream, it's not affecting the entire waterway. This heat has the potential to harm fish in a segment of a few rivers. By comparison, throttling carbon-free energy production has the certain impact of producing more greenhouse gases, which will contribute to global climate change. I seriously don't see how someone makes this kind of tradeoff - it's like the same mentality that held up a solar farm to relocate tortoises.

[bobthepanda]

* many rivers have some kind of migratory fish integral to ecosystems in both the river and whatever the outlet is, so you can’t just mark rivers as discrete segments and say the effect is isolated

* the oceans haven’t warmed by all that much and we are already seeing the impacts, it’s not really that much of a stretch to say rivers would see similar effects

* given humanity’s track record with the question “how bad could this be?” and unintended consequences, erring on the side of caution seems warranted. In particular, humanity has a bad track record with river management

[Manuel_D]

Remember, though, the consequence of shutting the reactors down is an increase in global climate change. The consequence of running the reactors are increased river temperatures in a handful of rivers - which as you point out are also impacted by climate change!

[TheLoafOfBread]

They are by building power plants without cooling towers. Problem is not enough water, but because water discharged back to river is too hot.

[hef19898]

I always liked simple answers to comokex questions like, e.g, nuclear power plant cooling. Especially when they come with pre defined scape goats.

[Manuel_D]

It's not a complex question, and river temperature is not a scapegoat. It's the the explicit reason why the plants aren't operating at full capacity: https://www.powermag.com/nuclear-power-production-curtailed-....

[locallost]

That's a stretch considering how many of them are out currently. Things either work or they don't. There are always growing pains, but nuclear has had way over 50 years and it hasn't worked.

I listened to parts of the recent John Carmack interview, and he touched on nuclear and it was the first time I heard somebody pro nuclear say something sensible on the topic. He said, based on everything he knows, it shouldn't be as expensive as it is and there just needs to be someone like Musk with SpaceX to make a business case. I neither agree not disagree because I don't know, but at least the faith in it is based on something, it acknowledges it doesn't work right now, but here is what needs to happen. All the rest are pretty much like this article, nuclear is the only option because it is, and that's it, move along. That doesn't cut it.

[Georgelemental]

Nuclear works and has worked just fine where and when there has been a sane government/regulatory environment.

[makeitdouble]

Political incompetency should really be baked in any discussion about pushing more nuclear.

You can have miracle new reactor designs, but do you have a society that matches it and will properly manage the technology for the next 50 years ?

[choko]

You could have stopped after the word "discussion".

[makeitdouble]

I’m pretty optimistic a bout a lot of other things. I think political issues can be overcome, and we can achieve pretty incredible things on case by case basis, as long as it’s not expected to be a permanent state.

Flying rockets requires a lot, and we can manage it. But also the earth won’t be a burning hell if tomorrow some new guy comes in and decides to scrap all human flight plans.