[izacus]

Having a continent-wide draught (or cold winter or other weather effect) is rather common though. Just a few years back Europe had a massive issue where draught caused both drop of hydro production and cooling for French nukes, causing energy prices to spike.

[Moldoteck]

No. Cooling french nukes was never a problem. In that period France was net exporting 14GW. Cooling in general isn't a problem - some modulation is done just to save fish.

Maybe you are confusing with 2022 when half of french fleet was shut down to check for potential pipe cracks/corrosion esp in one of their reactor designs due to poor geometry. But that's unrelated to droughts

[derriz]

Happens regularly. Last year’s heatwave caused a bunch of reactor shutdown across Switzerland and France - https://www.euronews.com/2025/07/02/france-and-switzerland-s...

[Moldoteck]

And during that time France was net exporting 14GW to neighbors at dirt cheap prices. There's no reason to fix this. It's a nothing burger pushed by 'concerned' people

[hunterpayne]

All thermal plants have this same issue, not just nuclear. And if you lose the natural gas peakers (which are also thermal and thus has this issue), you lose your baseload renewables too. Not that it matters, renewables used for baseload make more CO2 than just using FFs. Variability is a terrible quality in an energy source.

[sehansen]

No, natural gas _peakers_ don't need water for cooling, since they don't have steam turbines like combined cycle gas plants. Cooling is only necessary in thermal plants to condense the steam on the low-pressure side of the steam turbine.

And excessive stability is also a terrible quality in an energy source. The only reason we used to put up with base-load power plants was because they were cheap; if they weren't we might as well have used peaker plants all the time.

[tialaramex]

Right, so rather than "We should have more thermal plants" what you want is a non-thermal electrical generator, and what do you know all the major renewable sources qualify, whether that's a wind turbine, hydro-electric or PV.

Do you know what else you'd get a lot of if it's so hot in the summer that you can't use lake and river water for cooling? Sunlight to run your PV. Because that's exactly why the water was heating up.

[Moldoteck]

you can in fact use water for cooling. It's that sometimes you may be concerned about fish and not hurt it, esp with passthrough systems. But there are even more adv solutions (wastewater, dry cooling combo)

[izacus]

No, I'm not - https://www.euronews.com/2025/07/02/france-and-switzerland-s...

A lot of NPPs in France are cooled with river water and they need to be kept at low output if the rivers are too warm.

[Moldoteck]

Are you? It impacts 0.02% of annual production and during this time EDF is net exporting 14GW. Does this sound as an issue to you?

[mayama]

Problem isn't nuclear cooling per se. It's the designs of these nuclear reactors which expected to work with mild European weather. India and China have nuclear reactors working in desert without any cooling issues. Of course, as most of EU and west atrophied in building nuclear reactors in general, building new reactors or modifications won't be economical.

[Moldoteck]

it's not economical because in the same period summer prices are dirt cheap. EDF is already maxing export in that period, where do you want to squeeze some extra GW? why would you?

[psychoslave]

That said, cooling does have an effect on ecosystems. Not the worst energy plant impact on that regard, but still not like it's all environmental friendly.

And of course, there is the what to do with the waste dilemma. And at least with current French park, there is a dependence on the rarer kind of uranium.

[Moldoteck]

Waste dilemma? You either bury it (Onkalo, Cigeo, Fosmark, etc...) like any other waste that must be isolated forever (herfa neurode) or you do some recycling one way or another, or both.

Impact on environment from nuclear is minimal per UNECE. And cooling impact is minimal too, esp with towers. Uranium can be sourced from a variety of countries and enriched locally. Nuclear in general needs least amount of mining and materials per kwh

[Tepix]

Cooling for French nuclear reactors, yes. More than once since 2020. But nukes?