Just as an example, the best performing company this year is Total with 15B and which is happily feeding the government with petrodollars and the other people with lies about "Net Zero " etc.
"Énergie Nucléaire" as they call it is a thing there because De Gaulle wanted a bomb after WW2, so they pushed the industry (which is btw in pretty bad shape).
There is exactly ONE person in France who is pro nuclear and say accurate things about climate and it's Jancovici. All the rest of the crowd is like in most countries corrupt by petrodollars or other polluting industry, and is saying crap about climate. and the rare times they are not saying crap they are lying about their intentions.
No, France is nowhere near serious about climate, like most countries they bet on a +5 degree futur. I think i have read enough papers to tell you that 5 degrees will be very very hot and a very very sad point in human history.
He deserves to be better known by international audiences. Here are some of his talks in english:
Énergie Nucléaire was a thing of De Gaulle, but not for these reasons. France needed independence and needed to provide electricity, and the only way was nuclear (at the time).
Given the current situation, I think France didn't do too bad. Only one candidate in France on par with Jancovici tho, Fabien Roussel.
I live in France, never heard of this "Net Zero" you're talking about.
seems like an extraordinary number
French government is not a shareholder of Total at any meaningful level, less than 30% of Total shareholders are French and Total is a multinational paying taxes in multiple countries, so I don't know from where your petrodollars are coming from.
There is a lot that can be say about French energy policy but mentioning Total is really the less relevant one...
While you call non-nuclear options "virtue signaling," the attempts at building it in France and the US have been virtue signaling. We don't have the industrial capacity to build nuclear.
Meanwhile, we are deploying GW of solar, wind, and storage on time, on budget, ar ever decreasing costs.
Locking in the high costs of nuclear, for the 60 year lifetime of a nuclear reactor, after a 15 year delay for building, is not a serious solution for climate change.
That is the easier part, show me the battery deployments please , the ones that can backup the country/state for a week.
In my eyes, this is a very indecent way to express ones own position. The discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear energy is not conducted lightly. Nuclear energy has a long list of casualties and severe environmental damage. Nevertheless, I do not imply a priori that anyone who argues in favor of nuclear energy is frivolous; and I expect the same respect in reverse.
I think it is unserious to call every other solution other than nuclear energy unserious in a climate discussion. Germany, for instance, has very serious discussions on climate neutrality without nuclear energy.
What a great green strategy that was
You're claiming entire governments are proposing and committing to expensive and sweeping actions, but because they've not done X (for possibly several different reasons) you are openly accusing them of not wanting to solve the problem. Why wouldn't they want to solve it? We are spending that money to avoid paying more later aren't we? It is a real problem, right? You think that, and you think they think that, correct? Because if you didn't this would just be climate change denial.
Why can't you just say, "I think X is an important part of solving the problem of climate change". Why does the conversation have to revolve around attacking other people who are trying to solve a problem you appear (on the surface) to agree is a problem?
Oh, just noticed the scare quotes around "climate emergency" in your comment so I guess you don't think its a real problem, you just really want them to use nuclear to solve the problem you don't think exists, which seems odd, but at the same time not unexpected.
Because they're rich as fuck and will never have to care about finding clean water to drink? Because they're profiting directly from destroying our planet, being part of the capitalist establishment? Because the hundred of millions of climate refugees will mostly be from poorer countries, and France will only have to relocate a few coastal cities and deal with more hurricanes? Because they're hopeful their descendants will go pollute Mars thanks to assholes like Bezos/Musk after they're done fucking up Earth?
I'm not defending nuclear energy, far from it. But pretending governments around the planet (except for a few smaller ones) care at all about planet change when all they've done since the 70's (the time we've know this is the most massive/pressing issue for humanity as a whole) is giving away money to the people who destroyed the planet in the first place (green new deal kind of stuff)... that's political denial if you'd like to call it that ;)
We need degrowth immediately. Heavily criminalize planned obsolescence. Outlaw industrial farming. Tax concrete industry 1000% and legalize eco-housing (illegal in France due to housing regulations). Reduce energy/resource waste on all levels and all fronts. That's the only way you can fight climate change. Keeping the same capitalist recipe that produced the disaster and hoping for a different outcome is either naive or manipulative.
France gridpower-related emissions are low, however there was no progress for quite a while: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/court-rules-france...
Macron wants to show he is being pragmatic. Nuclear energy allows to reduce carbon emissions without sacrificing the economy. It's particularly smart in this moment of tension with Russia, as Europe depends a lot on Russian energy.
But whether this happens or not remains to be seen.
It may be particularly smart for this moment in internal French politics, but energy independence is a smart move for any sovereign.
And how is this clever since the EDF cannot sell their nuclear power without making losses?
In general, whatever a politician's motivation is for any particular bill may or may not be aligned to yours, even though you may both agree on the outcome of that bill. And that's ok.
Exactly, Macron has a very long history of changing of advice, sometimes after just a few days. In 2017 he campaigned to stop most nuclear plants in France (which are really old anyway) [0]. I think here those statements were more to sooth the "CGT" and the big companies in the field after the government last statements on EDF. [1]
He was the guy who dismantle Alstom to GE's and EDF's profits, then made Alstom buy what it just sold. It's hard to see any consistent strategy in any of his actions, except from a political point of view. He probably don't care of anything on any subject, it's just a matter of having the best posture to win elections.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-energy-strike-idUS...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/power-group-edfs-sha...
Only over the course of many decades do they net reduce carbon emissions, at the cost of much higher carbon emissions during the construction phase. Right now we need to be implementing the fastest carbon reductions possible and this does the exact opposite; for the next fifteen years, these plants will be a massive carbon emissions increase, and then it will take many years of operation to "pay that back." By then it will be far too late.
Nuclear is one of the most expensive electricity generating technologies and it has only gotten more expensive, while solar, wind, and battery technologies are following expected plunging cost paths. Nuclear power plants are difficult to site geologically, difficult to site grid-wise (because the only way they are economical is through massive scale, and you can't just drop 5, 10, or more gigawatts onto the grid just anywhere), there is no need for base load which is the only thing nuke can provide (either in terms of capability, or economically), they don't like fussy climates/extreme weather (and if they use natural bodies of water, are vulnerable to invasive species, increasingly a problem around the world), they have very deep and exacting supply chains when countries have experienced significant supply chain problems for numerous different reasons, and you can't just snap your fingers and have qualified staff to run the plant. They require significant socio-political stability (functioning education, security, accountable political leadership_, and generate material that is extremely dangerous to life for generations, and have the potential to render entire geographical regions uninhabitable, again for generations.
Guess what has none of these problems? Solar. Wind. Hydro. Energy storage.
Nuclear power also doesn't solve the fundamental problems: the environmental impact of staggeringly large militaries, the amount of 'disposable' packaging used in almost everything, the cross-planet shipping of consumer goods most of which are, frankly, useless, heavy use of low occupancy vehicle travel, poor building efficiency, and proof-of-work cryptocurrency schemes.
Right. Because all of those grow naturally in the wild and do not require fiberglass, concrete, various metals, digging for ore, diesel for transport, and on and on and on...
This may help lowering the reliance of France on Russia but its energy production will still be reliant on other countries, as 100% of the required fuel (uranium) is imported.
Uranium producing countries include Australia and Canada, who are a bit less crazy with their international politics and military movements.
Of course, that's why it says first reactor will go live in 2035, not in a day
There's was no future where power got built without the stunt, so... It's still a move closer to extra energy production. Even though it's a political one.
French citizens have never been put in a position to vote between a pronuclear candidate and an antinuclear one.
Well, of course, there are ecologists on the first round of the vote, but on the second rounds, both candidates are always pronuclear. Of course, they all started ten years to include electoral promises to balance the energy mix with more renewables but none delivered: France has recently been recognized as being at the worst country in the European Union with only 19% of renewables in our mix - despite having signed to reach 23% this year.
The left is deeply divided on the matter ; in fact, the left is divided on all ecological issues: agriculture, industry, energy ... The right is pro-big-polluting agriculture in the name of our commercial deficit (we export a.lot), anti-regulation of industry on ecological grounds because our industry is weak (which is true but not a reason), and pronuclear in the name of sovereignty - on the energy issue but also for military reasons. The fact that the nuclear energy enables France to emit far less CO2 is just a welcome argument. But if we had petrol like Norway, it would be "drill, baby, drill !".
The nuclear energy has nothing to do historically in France with ecology and the climate issue will reinforce that totally nondemocratic decision taken by the General De Gaulle in the name of our Grandeur. A policy that our technostructure follows without any true democratic supervision. Check and balances exist only on safety matters, but absolutely none of the French energy mix.
Nowadays it has become a political subject of course. But it's really just theater and will stay so for quite a while. The public opinion had been leaning on the right more and more for the last 20 years. When elected, self-called Socialists acted clearly on a center-right: really more like Manchin than Biden (in a daring transposition of very different political landscapes).
Funny detail: the French scientists had stalled in the research of the atomic bomb. That was a problem for the US in the context of the Cold War. So the US told the British to tip us in the right direction. That direction had already been deeply worked on but dismissed by the French scientists.
That was very discrete, not even officially recognized by some secret treaty. A prominent English nuclear scientist had a good friend among the French team. He visited him for lunch a Sunday. They talked physics. The UK has already its bomb, so the French noticed when his friend wondered aloud if that path come be "another way" to reach fission. But the British moved on another subject immediately. Friends don't need many words.
To thank the US, France later helped Israel - a lot - to build their own atomic bomb faster.
Then France made a 180º turn in its foreign policy and sided with the Arab countries on the Israël/Palestine issue. When Arafat and his troops were besieged in Beyruth by Tsahal, France evacuated them to Tunisia.
One of the challenges that moves to get away from nuclear generation have caused is the prospect of hurting the French industrial base more than it's already been undermined by offshoring.
(The other concern is keeping an independent nuclear arsenal, which is completely coupled to having reactors.)
That isn’t to say either model is better, just that you can’t look at wholesale prices and see the underlying economic realities. Time is running out on early German subsides where France still needs to pay for decommissioning.
France has a great track record with nuclear and I hope they can continue to leverage that excellence. Doing so cost effectively is more difficult especially when adding ever more inexpensive wind/solar generation to the EU grid.
Environmentalists really are their own worst enemies. When I was in high school near San Diego about 15 years ago, there was a huge amount of opposition to a solar power project. From environmentalists. There was a solar power plant out in Imperial County and the environmentalists were protesting the high voltage lines that would bring the power into San Diego. Something about them going through an area full of endangered tortoises or something like that if I recall correctly.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/french-wind-ene...
At this point, even if solar panels in the desert kill off a few species of lizards, seriously, what's the alternative? More damage will occur if we don't. It needs to be about minimizing total damage, even if it means damaging isolated areas intentionally.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f...
Doesn't almost everyone see themselves as an environmentalist these days? The problem is - the average "environmentalist" is not trying to maximize for anything.
It's a broad bucket that almost everyone is falling into and there's almost zero common ground, no organization, etc.
Of course there are going to be people that oppose almost everything that label themselves as "environmentalists". There's always people that oppose everything! And most people consider themselves "environmentalists".
New York keeps shutting down nuclear reactors... and then offsetting the power losses with natural gas. No one could have possibly predicted this?
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=47776
Congrats!
If they could all agree on one thing just for once.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor#Commercial...
Building one MSR sounds like a good way to prove the design, but I wouldn't want to see them build 6 at the same time. The EPR design that they are building is well tested.
Instead of pumping radioactive molten salt between a reactor and heat exchanger, they plan to leave it sitting in stainless steel tubes, and use simple convection to extract the heat.
Oak Ridge rejected this idea in the 1950s because they were trying to power an aircraft, but convection makes more sense when the reactor isn't moving.
[1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Flamanvi...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...
> According to January 2021 estimates, the expected operational start date is June 2026 with a build cost of £22–23 billion
That seems like a... fairly modest overrun for a megaproject?
Flamanville and Olkiluoto were the first two of a new design. Historically, that rarely goes well. Taishan went a lot better, and Hinkley Point is basically on track.
If we could just build 500MW smaller Molten Salt cooled reactors we could literally build them like gas plants.
I am more exited about this then almost anything else. If these can work its a literal game changer.
What does that means?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Messme...
[0] https://then24.com/2022/02/08/three-nuclear-reactors-shut-do...
[1] https://www.edf.fr/sites/default/files/epresspack/2447/5c9aa...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-announces-new-de...
But til then, blow more money into insurable and as much green as coal and gas power plants :(
(And that calculations done by real experts didn't even include all the other uneconomic issues from getting that stuff from somewhere til storing the waste - but yeah I know, all these waste will be taken by those new shiny molten reactors that have no problem at all on paper and will eat all the waste - both things just so far from reality in practice, which almost does not exist even).
The common stance and knowledge here at HN about all this is consternating :(
I wonder whether any will change their minds based on this news.
Nuclear power plants are vast construction project. The construction and large-engineering industries combined are vastly corrupt in the US (look at the 3 billion dollars planning costs of the unbuilt high speed rail project in California, look at the Big Dig in Boston, etc). In an ideal world, nuclear might be great. In the existing US world, it seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
Edit: found this text on the problems of standardization of nuclear power in the US. http://www.strategicstandards.com/files/NuclearEnergy.pdf
When the United States built nuclear plants at scale, in serial production, plant costs were also much lower.
Point being that multiple countries and companies had very successful nuclear power programs, and they didn't collapse because of intrinsic failure of the industry but lack of political will. And as you note, overall large-scale construction in the US in general has turned into a dumpster fire regardless of what is being built due to stupid policies and no small amount of graft.
Hello from Ontario, Canada! Have a look at the 'supply' tab of this page: https://www.ieso.ca/power-data. Most of our energy production is from nuclear. It works well, and is relative inexpensive and consistent (I mean, look at that graph, it's INSANELY consistent).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Nuclear_Generating_Stati...
Only water cooled reactors really have that problem. Nuclear plants could be much smaller. But innovation has just done very badly.
Nuclear scale, regulation is its own worst enemy and the social movements against it didn't help.
In the US for a while they did nuclear right as well. Nuclear always does well if you actually build many in a row. Learning effects are massive in large projects. Look at any countries that build many nuclear plants, it always works.
We could literally have had 100% green energy 40 years ago no problem. It was cheap coal that prevented that. We would be way better of having built nuclear.
And Switzerland, Sweden and others have successful networks with nuclear that are very green. Also parts of Canada.
That really depends on your definition of "making it work". France's current nuclear fleet is already underfunded by several tens of billions [0]
Now we have Marcon announcing "tens of billions" for new reactors, the first of which is supposed to go online over a decade from now, with presidential election coming up soon.
Which begs the question; If France has so many spare tens of billions lying around to invest in nuclear, why don't they use those to cover already underfunded nuclear positions?
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-nuclear-idUKKCN0VP...
Nuclear from a cost perspective continues to be expensive; also for the French. And they will in any case continue to build out solar and wind as well. So, there's that.
And finally, building nuclear plants is something the French do abroad too. So, it's actually something they export that generates jobs and revenue in that way. So, they would want to at least build a few plants to keep that going. And of course they also have military interests tied up with uranium enrichment. France is fiercely protective of its status as a nuclear power.
But I think overall nuclear will be slowly declining proportionally in France; just like almost everywhere else. Unless something changes on the cost front. Which does not seem to be happening
A cynical person might even imagine French infiltrators behind the scenes supporting anti-nuclear sentiments in neighboring countries in order to eventually sell them electricity. Energy independence and energy costs have started wars before, so it would just be pocket change spent for a future "investment".
The former German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder is now chairman of Russian energy company Rosneft, and was a strong advocate of the Nord Stream pipeline project.
France just had to turn off 3 of their rotting reactors[0] and they lowered their estimates for this year to 295-315 TWh[1]. They're desperate, it's election year and they failed to come up with a diversified energy plan for the future. Luckily the recent taxonomy decision may help to avoid sharp tax rises to finance this backward and hilariously expensive[2] strategy but those EU funds won't run forever. Expensive times coming up for the French taxpayers.
Why would you need conspiracies when the failure is so clear in front of you?
[0] https://then24.com/2022/02/08/three-nuclear-reactors-shut-do...
[1] https://www.edf.fr/sites/default/files/epresspack/2447/5c9aa...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-announces-new-de...
Reasonably, to drop CO2 emissions by 5% each year, ie. to have a change of keeping climate drift below 2°C avg, these reactors won't even be enough for French energy needs...
I mean, it's very relevant to the population of France, who are currently relying on a huge number of aging nuclear plants that will be retired in the coming few decades. I for one am hugely relieved to hear this news and hope it works out.
It is 6 by 2028, 14 by 2050
Related article:
- France to build up to 14 new nuclear reactors by 2050, says Macron https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/10/france-to-buil...
- Announcing new reactors, Macron bets on nuclear power in carbon-neutral push https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220210-announcing-new-r...
- France announces a major buildup of its nuclear power program. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/world/europe/france-macro...
Maybe they are right and France will make lots of money selling energy to its neighbors, or they are wrong, and France will be stuck with some of the highest energy prices in the euro region.
>In 2010, as part of the progressive liberalisation of the energy market under EU directives, France agreed the Accès régulé à l'électricité nucléaire historique (ARENH) regulations that allowed third party suppliers access up to about a quarter of France's pre-2011 nuclear generation capacity, at a fixed price of €42/MWh from 1 July 2011 until 31 December 2025.[47][48][49]
> As of 2015, France's household electricity price, excluding taxation, is the 12th cheapest amongst the 28 member European Union and the second-cheapest to industrial consumers.[50] The actual cost of generating electricity by nuclear power is not published by EDF or the French government but is estimated to be between €59/MWh and €83/MWh.[51]
I think nuclear doesn't make sense nowadays, but it's hard to disagree that there are many groups working hard to stop it. How you decided it's a conspiracy cabal somewhere eludes me, they are very visible and very loud.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lectricit%C3%A9_de_Franc...
Fresh water shortage due to drought? Desalinate ocean water.
Heat/cold wave? Announce that all electricity bills will be waived for the month. See popularity skyrocket.
Provide near unlimited compute budgets to universities etc on older hardware for their research and other work.
When shackles are taken off, innovation kicks off.
See eg this article telling how 14 (smaller, admittedly) reactors are due to decommission in the same timeframe. https://apnews.com/article/9db52eeef7ea47a76f64653c2a854b17
For decades, Europe (and admittedly the US) has sat back and moaned against using the single most powerful energy source known to man (measured in energy density). Germany actually proclaimed in 2011 that they would be turning away completely from nuclear energy.
This is a start, executed well . . it lays the foundation for a generational shift.
That said, it's still the only non-intermittent clean energy source that isn't geographically dependent like hydro and geothermal. Plans to decarbonize civilization invariably involve either nuclear power, or a magnificent yet-to-be-invented breakthrough in energy storage.
Second, Hinkley Point only went ahead when it was guaranteed an outrageously high strike price, for the electricity it will output.
In an ever growing power hungry world, nuclear shows the best promise in moving the world to a reliable power source that isn't reliant on geo-politically sensitive fossil fuels and eliminates greenhouse gas issues dramatically.
I'll add that wind and solar get a lot of hype, but being cyclic and weather dependent doesn't make it suitable as primary wide-spread grid power source.
Well, I'm biased but as an American I think US has been nothing but utter farce last few years in every way possible, so I'm happy to see other democracies thriving at least on paper. Excited to see shit actually happening.
On the other hand, there were announcements of rust in critical parts of a few nuclear plants.
> France, which operates Europe’s largest fleet of nuclear plants, is heavily underfunded. It has earmarked assets only worth 23 billion euros, less than a third of 74.1 billion euros in expected costs.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-nuclear-idUKKCN0VP...
https://www.power-technology.com/features/managing-nuclear-w...
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/10/opinion/fukushima-could-h...
Elevation of sea levels (and rivers), elevation of temperature lead to plants downtimes because either the plants can’t be cooled down or the water level is too high for safe operations. So it has its own intermittences.
The other issue is nuclear waste. A small one.
I would prefer them to put a higher effort on the Tokamak iter and develop orbital plants with microwave lenses.
Of course, then the nuclear stans will complain about the cost of excessive regulation.
Perhaps nuclear proponents should advocate investment in crystal balls, so we can know ahead of time which mistakes to avoid.
I think the cost argument is really an irrelevance. The electricity grid is probably the most important engineering system ever developed. Everything really relies on the electricity grid. Without it, we'd do so much less. (Think about everything that depends on it. Is anything else so significant?) For example, the National Academy of Engineering considers the grid the greatest engineering achievement since 1900. See https://www.nae.edu/19579/19582/21020/7326/7461/GreatAchieve...
In that regard, producing a stable electricity supply should be considered nearly the most cost-effective investment we can make. Arguing that nuclear is more costly than other forms is just arguing about a few pennies in the dollar. The dollar is the benefit we get from electrification. The pennies are the 'extra' cost of nuclear. (Tbh, I don't think nuclear is more costly. I think we can just _calculate_ the cost of nuclear better than alternatives. What's the cost of fossil fuels when you add in the external climate change impact? Who knows? What's the cost of renewables when you consider they don't always produce power/might not be able to meet demand/need significant grid reconstruction to work? Who knows?)
Regarding safety. This will always be a big consideration. But how safe is the world if the climate warms? I'd say not very. From what I've seen on nuclear engineering, it seems nowadays westerners really do understand how to run the nuclear plants safely. I don't believe there has been a really bad accident in the West. (5 Mile Island came close but was controlled. Fukushima was operator error compounded by cultural issues associated with Japanese management.) There will always be some risk of an accident. But, from what I've seen, actually it's pretty safe. The accidents I've heard of, can be explained as poor operation choices.
I think what really gets people in the energy debate is they are hoping for 'perfect' solutions which have no downsides. Unfortunately, there isn't one available right now.
The other thing that gets people is they consider choosing nuclear to be more risky than not choosing nuclear because they feel they know nuclear is dangerous. Whereas, from what I can see, _not_ choosing nuclear is a lot more dangerous than choosing nuclear. If we are to believe the climate change warnings, it seems that danger is much much greater than anything nuclear poses.
TLDR nuclear is risky but that risk is a lot less than climate change or bad electricity supplies. People weight nuclear risk too heavily because we understand it more and people perceive nuclear as dangerous to their person. They fail to properly account for risks they cannot easily perceive that are associated with the alternatives.
Go France!
How could this possibly be true? Cost is always relevant. Why would one want to solve a problem in an unnecessarily expensive way?
There is excellent reason to think nuclear is more costly. Just look at what most of the people with money are actually doing. For example, look at Exelon:
> “The cost of new nuclear is prohibitive for us to be investing in,” says Crane. Exelon considered building two new reactors in Texas in 2005, he says, when gas prices were $8/MMBtu and were projected to rise to $13/MMBtu. At that price, the project would have been viable with a CO2 tax of $25 per ton. “We’re sitting here trading 2019 gas at $2.90 per MMBtu,” he says; for new nuclear power to be competitive at that price, a CO2 tax “would be $300–$400.” Exelon currently is placing its bets instead on advances in energy storage and carbon sequestration technologies.
The trouble is that cost is mostly due to the need to service considerable upfront capital investment required to build a project, starting a decade before any power is produced. No one wants to be holding the bag for that when the market can still handle some smaller cheaper renewable or natural gas projects.
Cmd/ctrl+f "colonial penetration" for a brief overview of the subject.
Not sure why so many people here seem to think the historical source of much of France's uranium is irrelevant - people in Niger are still paying the cost of long-term uranium exposure.
In fact, this has been such a continuum that the prefix "neo" in the expression "neocolonialism" isn't really appropriate. It's rather business as usual without having to maintain order directly. Military agreements still link France and most of its ex-colonies: the French Army has many bases and has the duty to intervene in case of coups.
Or not, depending on which side will be the most beneficial to France. In general, France helps to maintain the powers already in place, very often authoritarian regimes. Quite a few truly democratically-elected African leaders have been either bought, jailed or assassinated with direct support of France.
Things have changed though after 1991 on the political part, with a French foreign policy pushing more often towards democracy. On the business side, very little. Each country is a specific situation.
In all cases, the African "elites" of those ex-colonies are as much responsible of this continuum. Let's not be naive nor Manichean: the people of these countries have been actively betrayed by their own elites and France has cynically profited of it.
To sum it up, France behaved and still behave with its African ex-colonies very much alike the USA have and still do in Central and South America.
NB: I have both the French and the American citizenships and vote in both.
So I get a double dose of shame.
But let's not look at these countries as passive victims from bad richer countries. They have been independent since 60 years. If the local elites had been focused on improving their people's life instead of amassing tens of billions $, French cynical influence would have receded.
So it's less "neocolonialism" than converging interests between the ethically and financially corrupted elites on both sides.
In our so-called "modern democracies", American and French citizens have little influence in the foreign policy of their own country. It's rarely a matter of debate since elections mostly focus on internal issues.
Well, some of us demonstrated and petitioned regularly on obvious wrong-doings ... with just no effect. I remember demonstrating in Boston against invasion of Irak ; a few thousands people, students mostly, just to watch many Democratic officials like... Hilary Clinton voting for it.
What can we do? I still had to vote for Hilary against Trump, knowing she knew that the intel for invading Irak had been bent. Because Trump was far worse.
The French political theater is totally different, but still: the French economic and political "elites" are on both aisles implicated in dubious relations with African elites, as well as Arabic elites from Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf, etc etc.
What can we do really, as citizens? Foreign policies are even further a reach that a true ecological transition. On which nothing is done despite polls showing that the matter is among the 3 priorities of French voters. Democracy as we know it is a just a show.
is 4 bases (Djibouti, Ivory Coast, Gabon & Senegal) many?
Though I agree that as a French voter I would like to be able to vote against the endless military interventions, especially in Africa.
I know which one I‘d choose.
Sure there are redundancies.
Sure there are threat models.
However, everything fails. Mistakes happen, black swan events occur. What is the calculus here? How can it ever be made in good faith?
Nuclear Reactors destroy the environment when they fail, oil and coal destroys it when it works.
Nothing is w/o a footprint. Solar and wind requires batteries which require rare earth metals which cause environmental and social inequalities.
Right now, however, the focus needs to be on decommissioning coal and oil as fast as we can, and nuclear has an important role to play in that.
We need to invest in carbon-free energy sources that won't cause blackouts at the whim of the weather. Reaching 100% decarbonization via wind/solar will be very difficult because it requires overbuilding, days to weeks of storage, and transmission upgrades.
Reward: energy that doesn't destroy the planet.
