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by smat 1086 days ago
At the same time France had to buy loads of electricity from Germany in the last year because several nuclear plants had to shut down due to a) maintenance problems and b) low rivers that could not provide sufficient cooling.
2 comments

Ironically, I hear the ones that were shut down in Germany were some of the best maintained in the world and had very high "capacity factors" even when compared with other nuclear (fraction of time delivering power to the grid). It seems like the solution to poor maintenance is better maintenance? Some of the causes of recent poor French maintenance are analyzed here: https://player.fm/series/decouple/somethings-rotten-with-fre...

I assume you wouldn't seriously argue that rivers are the limiting factor to deployment of nuclear energy.

It's not that ironic.

Germans tend to do stuff right when they do it.

The ironic thing to me is that Germany is so anti-nuclear.

Being “anti nuclear” made a lot of sense until a madman decided to attack Ukraine.

And with the world economy stabilizing after that mad man’s actions it’s again making a lot of sense as nuclear continues to be far more expensive than other renewable alternatives.

It's cheaper to run your 30 year old, perfectly fine, perfectly safe, well-functioning nuclear plant than to build and run a new natural gas plant - which is what Germany decided to do.
> Germans tend to do stuff right when they do it.

Berlin Brandenburg Airport enters the chat

And sometimes it's the opposite https://www.worldstopexports.com/electricity-exports-country...

True France's infrastructure is not resilient enough on climate, they are also a bit in denial over that. Everyone have their weaknesses.