[numbers_guy]

Why is the sourcing of nuclear fuel never talked about as a problem? France needs to maintain boots on the ground in Africa to protect their uranium mines. The German public, amongst others would be extremely against that level of direct imperialism.

[defrost]

Niger has been on the wane for some time as two of the three Orano (formerly Areva) group mines hit near exhaustion.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2023/08/04/h...

( Or, if you prefer, the Nuclear Energy "Red Book":

https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/pl_79960/uranium-2022-resource...

    In France, although no domestic uranium exploration and mine development activities have been carried out since 1999, majority government-owned Orano (formerly Areva) and its subsidiaries remain active abroad.

    As of 2020, Orano S.A. has been working outside France, focusing on discovery of exploitable resources in Canada, Gabon, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Namibia and Niger. In Canada, Kazakhstan and Niger, Orano is also involved in uranium mining operations.

    In addition, as a non-operator, Orano holds shares in several mining operations and research projects in different countries. In 2020, Orano started exploration in Uzbekistan.

    Total nondomestic exploration expenditures remained relatively steady from 2017 to 2018 at about USD 30 million per year, before declining by 17% to around USD 25 million in 2019 and 2020.

)

[Kolja]

Also, I can't find any mention of the French having problems cooling down their reactors last year due to drying out rivers.

Nuclear might have been an option fifty years ago, but now it's too late to start, and we should focus on storage and renewables instead, if you ask me.

[edit]: fixed a typo

[seanmcdirmid]

If you are doing a huge nuclear build out, you should also focus on storage. Nuclear plants are economic to run at peak all the time, even at night when the demand isn’t there. Renewables except reservoir based hydro have the same problem (the reservoir counts as storage for hydro, and anything else if you have can run pumps back up).

[seszett]

> France needs to maintain boots on the ground in Africa to protect their uranium mines

It seems rather coincidental to me that one of the countries where France has military presence happens to be a minor uranium producer (we're talking about Niger here I assume).

France has military presence in many more countries, and Niger is (or was, since there was a coup there recently) only a supplier for 1/5th of France's supply, and easy replaced with other sources. None of the other suppliers have French military bases.

Uranium is also very easy to stockpile since it takes little space, which makes it much easier to switch suppliers if needed.

[morsch]

It's not easy to switch suppliers. Harder than natgas even: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-france-global-trad...

Beyond the mere Uranium, power plants need specific fuel rods, and afaik only Russia is currently capable of manufacturing the fuel rods for the remaining old soviet bloc power plants in Eastern Europe.

[hathchip]

You might think it is 'coincidental' but it's actually a well stated and understood part of France's energy security policy.

[spacebanana7]

A non-sanctioned country can buy uranium on the open market relatively easily. Production happens in many places [1], including Canada and Australia.

French power plants don't need to worry much about African politics, at worst they'll have pay Canada or Kazakstan a little extra for short notice delivery. And even then, Uranium is a small part of the overall cost of nuclear energy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_p...

[Jon_Lowtek]

France is also outsourcing parts of the fuel reenrichment process to Tomsk in Russia