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by LastTrain 1284 days ago
Those exist for a reason, care to say why they aren’t necessary before dismissing them outright? Surely you agree some amount of regulation is necessary?
2 comments

Any set of nuclear regulations that aren't just a copy of France's nuclear regulations are probably too restrictive. France gets 3/4 of their electricity from nuclear without any major incidents.

(Obviously this is overly simplistic, there is a set of natural disasters that France isn't subject to that other countries are, so France is just a starting point. But every addition should be justified by answer the question "What about our circumstances makes us different from France here?")

Half of France's nuclear fleet is offline due to maintenance issues. They've gone from an electricity exporter to importer when it is most needed.

Have a look at Flamanville 3 and try to sell another 50 of those to the public.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

And yet... no major safety events and still generating a significant amount of electricity.

Obviously, as you point out, it could be better. But I'll take France, issues and all, over coal plants every day of the week.

I expect France will get their act together.

Re: net importer, their amount of import is basically a rounding error, on the order of 0.1% of their energy usage. They are energy neutral.

The great thing is that the alternative is not coal plants anymore, it is renewables.

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...

LCOE is unrelated to systems costs of large decarbonized grid because it leaves out the costs of long-term backup, increased transmission, overcapacity needed to fill the night batteries, and more.
You've made two arguments here, all are necessary and some are necessary. There's a record of anti-nuclear sentiment being stoked by fossil fuel industry[0]

[0]https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f...