Macron says France will build new nuclear energy reactors (opens in new tab)

2025 is a pipedream -- they'd be lucky to break ground by 2025.

> Median construction time required for nuclear reactors worldwide oscillated from around 84 months to 117 months, from 1981 to 2019 respectively.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/712841/median-constructi...

If you create hydrocarbon fuels with sequestered CO_2, driven by nuclear electricity, you have a clean, energy-dense battery. Plus, you don’t have to retrofit the entire automobile fleet.

France already has 80-90% of electricity supply being supplied by nuclear. It also exports an enormous amount of power to other European countries.

I don't know exactly how true this is but I believe gas usage for heating is much rarer in France than other countries. They have a lot of electrical storage heating due to the cheap off peak baseload that nuclear gives.

uranium may not be a fossil fuel but it shares all the problems of them

- pollution and waste - it's limited

At the current consumption, uranium would only last 80 years, if all the countries start to build new power plants, won't last more than 2 decades before it's depleted, and we will have the same problem again.

nuclear power is not a solution, is just a small patch.

Maybe they and China will create a little power envy in the USA, and we can get back on track for some real change and improvements in CO2 pollution containment.

I can try to answer your questions. (Disclaimer, I'm a masters student studying systems with a focus on energy systems. Obviously not an expert, and am somewhat biased pro-nuclear.)

1. Net online time for nuclear isn't particularly bad, especially when you consider that other alternatives too go down. [1] Of course you'll need some extra capacity/more plants, but that was anyway the case.

2. I feel this is probably the strongest point that can be held against nuclear. Short-term fuel management is not an issue/already figured out, and climate change is a much quicker risk in the next 50 years, so I'd argue it's still better to go 0-carbon instead of finding a perfect solution right now.

3. I'm not sure if you're referring to proliferation of the fuel or technologies, but both are reasonably well-developed fields that France should not have major problems.

4. Similar to point one - nuclear accidents vs risks/deaths from coal is like comparing flight safety with cars. Sure, airplanes feel unsafe but are statistically MUCH safer than cars. Chernobyl and Fukushima were both avoidable (though that can admitably be said for a lot of accidents). Deaths from pollution itself are in the millions instead. [2]

1. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliab... 2. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

France has been running on 75%+ nuclear power mix for the past 50 years and is doing better energy/emissions-wise than almost every other country in the world. Your questions have already been answered, it seems. They seem to have bet on the right horse, and went full steam ahead with it (no pun intended). And now they are supplying all their neighbours with surplus clean energy.

1 - During my study, I visited a nuclear plant. They explained to us the plant is designed around 4 quadrants, each one capable of turning on and off independently of each other. So when one needs maintenance, you just put this one offline, and the others keep running. This way the reactor is never totally shut off, as I understand that starting it from scratch is an expensive operation.

2 - For the spent fuel, France has plenty of strategically maintained relationships in what used to be West African colonies with uranium mines. Why do you think we sent the army during the Mali war ? We cultivate those alliances because they bring a lot on the table, from resources to routes and bases. Nuclear is doubly interesting for us, because we can source it even if Russia or China decide to tell us to go to hell. In case of a conflict, this is priceless.

3 - I don't know anything about proliferation, so can't answer this one.

4 - Accident mitigation is the big problem, IMO. I've seen how they operate inside, and let's just say I'm glad the people that designed the thing were very, very, _very_ good at their job. Because the ones maintaining it have a very relaxed attitude. And the plants are pushed to produce way past their initial expected life span. But I insist, I'm amazed at how good engineers of the 70' were. Those plants are old tech, but they are incredible. However, even if the probability of an accident is low (there are triple safety mechanisms everywhere), the severity of a potential accident is such that I consider nuclear disasters a huge risk that we don't take seriously enough. What's more, it nourishes the growing anti-nuclear sentiment, so we should really get our act together.

None of those questions are new, nor show stoppers for existing plants. Why do you think the existing procedures may not be satisfactory? (I'm assuming you think so based on the way you ask the question)

EDIT: to be clear, I'm not asking this as a backhanded question. I'm genuinely curious why this is not seen as a "solved problem", at least in a country with relatively strong government institutions

France has significantly less spent fuel to deal with since they allow civilian energy production to reprocess spent fuel back into usable fuel.

1. if a real effort is put in, 10 years or so

2. Solved problem. Spent fuel is not really an issue, we have solutions and areas to put it in both Europe and the USA. Only green Luddites hold it back. Storage really does not take up a lot of space.

3. Next to none if the right type of fuel stock and reactor is chosen. Obviously security comes in, but that is also a solved issue

4. Lots of modern designs literally cannot go critical, I suggest we use those, instead of old designs just because they're "a known known".

5. don't build reactors that can go critical near known tsunami shorlines.

6. At worst we'll surely have fusion by the end of the century and can then retire the nuclear plants. Solar and wind without a 100x improvement in battery storage tech do not make sense right now as the sole producer of energy like a lot of unrealistic "environmental" groups claim.

> 1. What will the net online time be?

Hard to say tbh. But these reactors probably aren't offline as much as you think. They shut down for 1 month every 18-24 months for refueling.

> 2. Spent fuel?

France is the world leader in this regard. Remember that 17% of France's entire power comes from _recycled_ nuclear. But if you want to see what their entire nuclear waste. This is _decades_ worth, and I'm betting much smaller than you expected.[0] (coal is doing this on a a daily or weekly basis). Just for fun, let's look at Russia's too.[1] We're literally just talking a warehouse. People vastly overestimate the waste and what to do with it. It is fine where it is for hundreds of years. The only "problem" that we have with "long term storage" is how to store it somewhere where if somehow all knowledge was lost that future humans with no radiation detecting equipment could accidentally release waste (quite a high bar, and not one we're concerned with other long lasting waste like lead or heavy metals). We have a few hundred years to figure that out.

> 3. Proliferation risk?

None? It is France. They already have nuclear weapons. But while we're talking about it, Megatons to Megawatts[2] has been the best deproliferation project in history, reducing the number of nuclear warheads by over 20,000.

> 4. Accident mitigation?

Very low. This is also over estimated. We have a very early reactor which no other country besides Russia built because it had the ability to explode. And we have another event where we didn't know earthquakes could happen of that size until basically right before said earthquake happened. These are major disasters, but the two should not be conflated. Even including these, they are far less environmentally damaging than the fossil fuels we've been using. The major problem with nuclear is that disasters are both temporally and spatially localized. There's advantages and disadvantages to this in terms of dealing with the consequences. On one hand, it is a lot to clean up. On the other hand the country that created the disaster is the one that suffers the most (as opposed to what we're seeing with oil spills and the entire climate crisis, which is not temporally localized and thus the danger is not weighted properly).

[0] https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5uN0bZBOic&t=105s

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program

1. What will the net online time be? (Lots of these plants go in maintenance for long stretches of time)

The term you're referring to is capacity factor. Nuclear power typically has the highest capacity factor of any energy source. [1] [2] For reference, nuclear is 92%, while wind is 35% and photovoltaic solar at 25%.

> 2. Spent fuel?

It can be reprocessed, reclaiming over 90% of fuel. Even without reprocessing, nuclear fuel's energy density is such that a tiny amount of waste is produced per unit of energy. For comparison, the sum total of all of the USA's nuclear electricity production occupies a volume the footprint of a football field, and 10 yards high. [3]

> 3. Proliferation risk?

Nuclear fuel is refined to about ~20% fissile material. Nuclear weapons typically need over 80% or 90%. Countries would need to build their own enrichment facilities to bring nuclear fuel to weapons grade uranium, and then further refine that to plutonium. If they had such facilities they'd be able to refine natural uranium to weapons grade anyway.

> 4. Accident mitigation?

First of all, even if you include Chernobyl nuclear power (which didn't even have secondary storage) has the lowest fatalities per unit of energy produced [4]. People often neglect the fact that fossil fuels kill millions each year due to air pollution. Renewables like hydroelectricity have had accidents far more devastating that nuclear power [5]. Nuclear plants are expensive because a lot of effort is made to make them safe, and to contain a potential failure. People often forget that the USA had a reactor meltdown analogous to Chernobyl during the Three Mile Island incident. Except nobody died and there was no widespread contamination because the reactor had a big concrete condom over it, unlike Chernobyl.

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/183680/us-average-capaci...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor#Worldwide

3. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...

4. https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

It's not a comeback until you push the first kwh to the grid for the price you said you'd build the new generator for. Japan turning back on mothballed reactors is a Big Deal (and a quick win for avoiding CO2 emissions), but getting new reactors built in less than a decade or for less than billons of dollars is where the proof lies. Talk and promises are cheap, action has a cost and can't be faked.

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-... (Lazard’s latest annual Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis (LCOE 15.0) shows the continued cost-competitiveness of certain renewable energy technologies on a subsidized basis and the marginal cost of coal, nuclear and combined cycle gas generation.)

That announcement of 150 reactors in China is no real change to the long term plans either. Still simply keeping the option barely open which is very sensible to do when you're such a huge economy, even if it comes from subsidies.

In 2019, China had a new target of 200 GWe of nuclear generating capacity by 2035, which is 7.7% out of predicted total electricity generating capacity of 2600 GWe.

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

So with about 50 GWe from 50 reactors today adding another 150 gives you the same goal of about 200 GWe. Unless we're talking SMRs because then the goal just got reduced to a fraction of the original.

> The Chinese have committed

This may be more complicated than that, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29159944

> Japan reactivating nuclear reactors:

Japan invested on nuclear then nowadays don't want it anymore but now needs energy. One has to see them canceling their planned phase-out, as "in March 2021, only 11 percent of Japanese said they wanted that nuclear energy generation be discontinued immediately. Another 49 percent was asking for a gradual exit from nuclear energy" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan#Post-Fu... )

> UK. Rolls-Royce gets funding

"£195m cash injection from private firms and a £210m grant" are ridiculous sums. In France Macron announced 1 billion €: given that nuclear research already burnt ~900 millions € per year (public research), a fair part of the 2.2 billions allocated to the CEA's civilian programs, this isn't decisive.

> The Chinese have committed to building over 150 new nuclear reactors.

Hang on, China also announced a couple of months ago to build 43 new coal-fired power plants.

It's not that long ago - perhaps a decade - that China was building a new coal-fired power plant every 10 days or so. Not small ones, but on the same scale as the largest coal-fired power plant we had in Australia at the time.

I mention this as a counterpoint to any 'If China's doing it, it must make sense' fallacy.

It's only good news if they aren't PWR/LWR meltdown-possible 70 year old designs.

I do like there is a large market to this startup. Hopefully that will result in a somewhat price-competitive reactor design. But I doubt that will happen for another 10 years.

I think solar/wind/battery will eat the lunch of any new nuclear plant in cost once it goes online.

Hoping for the best!

"The comeback of nuclear energy" At last, I would say. We have magic energy source in our hands but, no, better spend milliards on wind turbines and solar panels, although we know they sometimes work and sometimes don't, so they can't provide predictable input for a grid without batteries that we don't have and will not have in foreseeable future.

I am wondering what Germany is going to do. They have bet heavily on wind & solar (apparently they haven't check how many sunny days Germany has...) with the backup from Russian gas from Nord Stream 1/2 (for some reason this gas is "clean" although burning it produces CO2). If everyone around will switch to nuclear, what I hope will happen, they can end up with the very expensive setup that is still producing a lot of CO2.

I am afraid that Germany will try to enforce ban on nuclear by European Union (what they can do, since Brexit Germany is in fact ruling UE), as the wrong investment might hurt their economy. I hope France will oppose.

I interpret your sarcasm with amusement, but also depression. it's really sad to see how Germany turned away from nuclear evergy. It seems like the 3 main soures are now:

1. Coal,

2. Renewables (Solar, wind, perhaps ocean currents),

3. imported oil.

Coal should be deprecated already. Renewables are dependent on environmental effects, in particular solar doesn't work in emergency situations such as volcano eruptions rendering the sky dark. For oil, we depend on third parties, of which we know that they do not have our best interests at heart.

It is depressing to see the political situations on these metrics, especially the idea which gets pushed now, which claims that everything will be alright if we just optimize our energy consumption. It ain't gonna happen. People won't meaningfully reduce their energy-consumption, at least not in a way that would justify the use of fossil fuels.

So what are we left with? Nuclear is the only good bet you could make right now, while waiting out on fusion.

edit: I often think of this meme which goes around, talking about the fact that people are much more willing to donate to a single child in need, rather than a group of children who equally need help. People are prone to take action when they feel like their individual action makes an impact.

I feel like this is similar to the fossil fuels - vs - nuclear debate. We know, that about 20mil ppl die every single year due to air pollution. We also know, that a very small, countable number of people died of nuclear accidents, in the complete history of humanity, ever, in total.

Yet we seem to think that the few nuclear accident's fatalities are worse than the ones caused by air pollution. Why? Because we are in some way biased to give more meaning to individual events, rather than rates of change that are around us. And it'll break our backs if we don't carefully examine the problem at hand.

In recent years, the collaboration between France and Germany in energy production was very beneficial. There are times, when Germany does import electricity from France, this is increasing the profitability of the nuclear reactors, as they can be run at a higher percentage of their capacity, which generally is larger than the French requirements. To be able to follow the varying requirements of the grid, they usually run at 75% load on average. Selling surplus capacity is very attractive then. On the other side, there are times when surplus renewable energy is very welcome in France, when the reactory are struggling to keep up with demand, e.g. when they are low on cooling capacity due to low waters. Germany is still a net electricity exporter.

I have been watching https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE?wind=true&solar=false for past 2 days... Winds weak, yet even when electricity was expensive yesterday around 6PM, Germany was pushing to France, mostly coal generated electricity... Someone cares to explain?

Nah it's cool they got Nord Stream 2, so they good.

Russia will provide them all the energy they need, and the US will provide them defense against Russia. Perfect!

- edit -

Is it still morally sound if you outsource the immorality elsewhere?

Please someone help Spain as well

Actually, it is not so clear nuclear is the solution in Europe (e.g. France) at this point. You still have to mine lots of uranium ore, because compared to coal, you actually only seek a small fraction of it, where with coal you can burn almost all of what you mine. The enrichment facilities have dual use for war and the uranium mostly comes from Russia which is geopolitically problematic (for Europe, somewhat similar to coal/ oil/ gas mostly). With nuclear fission, we basically don't recycle much if at all. You have to take care of the waste. With coal of course, you have ash and all the CO_2 you have to do something about (again in Europe at least) if you don't want to pay too much on emission allowances.

The last point, we just don't know how to build nuclear economically anymore. The process is so bureaucratic and slow it becomes infeasible to finance without major interventions. Letting Chinese or Russian companies build it from the standpoint of Europe is a geopolitical challenge and a security risk.

All this time and money would be perhaps spent better elsewhere. In Europe, we are not able to build a nuclear powerplant in 15 years, so that is lots of time for research and development and even building something useable. It is very likely, most of the renewable sources will become more economical and nuclear less even less. We might devise a scheme to store energy by e.g. splitting salt (NaOH) into sodium metal, hydrogen and oxygen and later combining sodium with water to NaOH again, while getting hydrogen as a byproduct and lots of electrical current. It is a simple process, we "just" have to scale it and develop it further. The first half of it is well known for 100 years and was used at industrial scale. Currently, we just split NaCl directly to obtain sodium... The second half is described in patents by Lockheed-Martin that are long expired. You can read more in this diagram: https://www.orgpad.com/s/iV3vbi

Btw. Slowakia has a lot of nuclear too and here in Czechia, we have a conversation about building new reactors in Dukovany too. For Czechia, the approach seems to be misguided as you can read here (Google Translated from Czech): https://denikreferendum-cz.translate.goog/clanek/32812-cesky...

Of course China as more than enough land for renewables. Ever heard of the Gobi desert?

I’m no fan of the Chinese regime, but maybe they just concluded that the preening do-nothingness that goes on at these summits isn’t worth getting mixed up with. From last week:

“China has reported overnight to be planning 150 new nuclear reactors over the next 15 years — more than have been built around the world since 1980 — a signal that uranium production needs to be stepped up, fast and soon.”

That’s a reported planned investment of $440B.

https://smallcaps.com.au/china-supercharge-uranium-race-150-...

Why do you say that China does not have the land for renewables? Population denstity in China (145/km2) is less than for example Germany (232/km2).

FWIW, China is building nuclear power plants like crazy.

And actually doing that as we speak, instead of "planning".

Aren't reactors like that typically a proliferation risk? That might not be an issue as long as France doesn't decide to start selling its nuclear power plants to questionable countries again.

This may be the one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8ApH-0YHkA

After Superphenix I don't think they are in any hurry to develop the LMFBR.

Yes, look at traveling wave reactors.

Wasn't many of the reactors shut down in Europe in need of being decommissioned anyway? You shouldn't run a nuclear reactor forever and ever, and most of the reactors in Europe are quite old.

I know there are cases of decommissioning too early, or even a reactor that was fully built but not even started operation (I think Tom Scott had a video on that?), but I don't think that's the common case.

Nuclear has been in a holding pattern for years in France while they waited to see if the EPR unit being built at Flamanville 3 would work out.

There was also a scandal a few years ago when the state-owned nuclear construction company Areva acquired Le Creusot Forge. It turned out that there had been a decades long coverup of weaknesses in the steel forged there for nuclears plants, and falsification of documents.

I completely fail to understand why some think France didn't try to build new reactors for decades. This is not true! We tried , however it is a running disaster.

The problem here isn't "political will".

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

The political will didn't fail. The EPR reactor in Flamanville is a work-in-progress since 2007. Albeit it was scheduled to start in 2012 it isn't yet. It will cost at least 19.1 billions euros (initial budget: 3.4 billions euros). No governments pulled the plug on this disaster. How exactly isn't it "political will"?

Is the _underscores_ around words supposed to signify something? Or am I just using the wrong browser to view HN and it's not rendering or something. Sorry if this is an obtuse question I'm new here.

I believe the Flamanville EPR is considered as some sort of prototype. It was planned to be years in the making and difficulties were expected.

However, they were not expecting this much. The reasons that they are pushing are:

1. Lack of proper trained personnel

2. More constraints imposed during the projects due to Fukushima

3. First design of that kind

And as you said, the last nuclear reactor to be finished in France was 20 years ago[0]. The people who worked on that last plant were probably the one who worked on plants during the 70s, 80s and 90s and retired right after. It fits with reason 1.

[0]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrale_nucl%C3%A9aire_en_Fra...

The major drawback of nuclear seems to be their large power output and long durability. Once you built the few plants you need (France and Sweden for example) you don't have to build any more for 50 or so years and then the manufacturing capability dies.

Hoping for companies like NuScale, maybe they can get a continuous operation going and churn out cheaper and cheaper plants.

Context needed. This is the cost to get the tools and craftsmenship to build it, thats we lost.

Remind us again where he stored nuclear waste ?

Whats the word for backing cartoonish monsters because they're on your team?

For those interested here's the thesis written out by someone at the start of this year.

https://josephcollinsul.medium.com/the-uranium-bull-thesis-c...

Any investment that you caught wind of a few months ago would be doing well

Maybe the green party elector finally realised that the battle against CO2 doesn't need to be 100% renewable?

Regarding the closing of Fessenheim, it seems like a sensible decision. The central was designed to last 40 years and long exceeded its expiration date. In the last 10 years it had roughly one incident per year with graver and graver consequences. And in any case, France would have started lose a lot of money because, due to the geographical position and the risk it pose, its neighbours, Switzerland and Germany were not really happy with it and had started to repetedly attack the decision to maintain it open in courts.

The fact that a politician had to take this decision (and not engineers) is in my opinion the most shocking part. It shows that the ANS probably became complacent with the state of security of centrals. Probably similar to finanicial markets or aviation regulators. And generally when that happens it's the begining of catastrophes.

To promise to reduce the share of nuclear in itself means nothing. If you increase the production with renewable, automatically, nuclear will have a smaller share. It does not mean that you do not plan ahead.

Fessenheim had been a thorn in the back of previous governments for years. Sometimes political move are not logical from a technical standpoint but can be seen as intermediate step in a larger plan. I don't blame him for that.

Astrid though seems to be the real mistake. The new CEA boss at the time said that[0] we don't need that kind of reactor because uranium is cheap as nobody wants nuclear anymore since Fukushima. This is such a stupid reason that I cannot believe to be the real one.

[0] https://www.lefigaro.fr/sciences/nucleaire-le-patron-du-cea-...

Oh stop with the "it's too slow" already: https://twitter.com/steeve/status/1426103525050814464?s=20

The best time to invest in nuclear was 40 years ago. The second best time is now.

Why would France, which has specifically built its civilian nuclear fleet for independence from the US, want to rely on the American company Westinghouse?

Or is the nuclear cartel astroturfing hard because they know they are circling the drain with regard to cheaper, safer renewables?

Nuclear is the most expensive form of energy on the market. If you fast forward two decades, countries will be producing power at vastly different cost levels that will dictate their economic success. Those relying on nuclear will be piling on debt for getting power way above market prices.

Germany never had a substantial nuclear deployment. It peaked around 20GW. About 8 remains. The disappearance of 16GW from the grid was a complete non event. No blackouts. No instability. It just happened gradually and now its gone. The remaining 8 are tiny compared to daily fluctuations in wind and solar that are also not an issue. In terms of base load it is completely irrelevant whether it stays or goes. It's certainly not worth paying a lot for. If you replace 20GW with a few hundred GW of wind and solar, you end up with plenty of capacity and baseload. That's more or less what happened in the last few decades. The French already import excess power from Germany and elsewhere below the price they are selling their own nuclear power quite often.

Nuclear never mattered in Germany other than for military strategic reasons that stopped being relevant when Russia withdrew their tanks from the DDR 30 years ago. All that remains is cold war era obsolete plants that are expensive to keep going. Shutting them down was going to happen no matter what (because they are obsolete and near end of life) and the decision to not build replacement plants was pretty much a constant. The debate around that was pretty much over before Fukushima already. All that did was fast track some of the decision making. It remains a popular and uncontroversial decision in Germany.

Macron is announcing intentions and plans in the middle of an election season where Macron is under a lot of pressure from right wing populist parties. This nuclear push is very much motivated by nationalist sentiments and Macron is in damage control mode as he's losing voters to several right wing parties; some of which you might classify as far right or even neo fascist.

We'll see what remains of those intentions and plans after the elections. Election time posturing is not to be confused with actually policy to spend many billions on nuclear. Assuming he actually wins, he might find himself once more forming a government with a few other parties that will have strong opinions on this topic and not a lot of budget to allocate to a wide range of topics competing for attention. Until that government is a reality, all you have is a politician trying to stay in power trying to appeal to voters currently entertaining the thought to vote for someone else. Even with these announcements, we're still talking a net decline in nuclear capacity over time. It's just slowing it down slightly.

Personally, I think it is wise for the French to keep the knowledge to build reactors going for another generation. Additionally, exporting that knowledge to e.g. the UK is good for their economy. Hinkley Point C is being built by French EDF. Of course, there are plenty of scandals surrounding that particular setup related to cost overruns, delays, etc. That seems to be a constant with nuclear. One thing is certain, it won't be cheap power. Gas is cheaper, even with the recent price increases. Saving money is not a reason to go nuclear. It never was. Whether the UK ends up buying more is very much up in the air. The drama around Hinkley Point C is probably not helping the nuclear case currently. And having to send the money to France is probably not helping that case.

That's not true. We can use breeder reactors to produce more fissile material. Also, the "80 years" estimate does not include uranium reserves that are not currently being exploited. There is plenty of uranium in the ocean and it is constantly being replanished from the ground.

Alstom hasn’t been purchased by a US company AFAIK.

Are you talking about the sale of its power sector to GE in 2014? It is mostly about turbines, not the nuclear aspect, which is more typically under the expertise of Areva NC / Orano Cycle <https://www.orano.group/en>.

Janco on HN, finally !

> This will be the only way to keep our standards of living and keep an habitable home.

Jancovici uses physics and maths to prove we definitely won't have western standard of living for 8B people. Even for 2, not for long.

France nuclear innovation was very linked to military force and bombs. Over the decades, skills where lost and biggest players in the field are failing companies deep in dept. The enregetical status quo looks good but there is absolutely no research in the field except fusion which is very far away. France lost his nuclear leadership times ago and there is absolutely no reason to wait for innovation here. The risk of a nuclear disaster in the center of e Europe is not to dismiss, with 55 aging reactors across the territory. Wasted genius ressources by politics 101.

EDIT: Huh, this was supposed to be a response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29168027 but apparently it got attached to the wrong parent when the articles were merged.

There was ASTRID, another sodium cooled fast reactor design, that was cancelled a couple of years ago before it got off the drawing board.

Yes: https://international.andra.fr/solutions-long-lived-waste/ci...

What are you referring to? The list of industrial accidents? I don’t think it’s fair to criticize this without comparing to the record of a non nuclear facility of similar scale.

Injuries and death are sadly a part of life at all large industrial plants.

Perhaps the submitter thought it was clickbait. I can see the argument either way, but have restored the fuller title now.