Comment by seec
5 months ago
Investing in the futur when you have a hard time creating more value than you consume is exactly what you need to do. Reducing investment is precisely the way to reinforce the downward feedback loop. If they want to keep taxing the common man, they need them to create more value otherwise to are just taking larger and larger share of vanishing small value.
France does have money; it's just all concentrated in the boomer generation who is fighting hard to keep control. A large share of the debt is generated to keep this gerontocracy confortable at the expense of the youth and future.
Which means you need a return on the investment for it to work. Creating self sustaining industries that don’t need subsidies.
Tossing an absolutely mindbogglingly large subsidy to the 70 year old nuclear industry which never has delivered competitive products is not a good use of money. It is like saying we create value by going around breaking windows and paying people to fix it.
France’s problem is that if they don’t fix the spending issue on their own the bond market will do it for them. Maintaining the debt will be a larger and larger portion of the budget until the only option is solving the issue.
Cutting spending will lower GDP and push up debt as a percent of GDP. But it wasn’t real income when the debt you took on did not lead to productive outcomes. Just polishing a pig.
You views on economy and value are very simplistic. It's all based on the false notion that everything we do has to turn a profit. I mean it's the dominant exploitative ideology from the US so I'm not surprised, but this is complete nonsense.
Generating electricity for your country/citizen does not need to turn a profit whatsoever. It generates value in itself, by allowing people to have a more confortable life and enabling industries that can make use of the power.
If you contest that renewable makes even less sense. They only generate less externalities locally that is beneficial to the world equally while exporting a large part of the value creation (and the externalities associated, the major reason china dominate).
On top of that, nuclear was actually profitable and has already paid for itself nicely. Germany knows that very well, which is exactly why they have worked very hard on political sabotage since the 90s. There is a bunch of EU rulings where EDF is forced to sell its electricty at a set price only to be resold later at a higher price by private actors for a "competitive" market. Germany required that because the way it was going, with the opening of homogenized market in the EU, there was no way neighboring country could be price competitive with the cheap french electricity.
China is currently building 10 reactors per year and not only they successfully reducing the construction cost, they are also successfully reducing the build time.
It would serve you well you let go of your ideology just a bit and make some serious research.
> You views on economy and value are very simplistic. It's all based on the false notion that everything we do has to turn a profit. I mean it's the dominant exploitative ideology from the US so I'm not surprised, but this is complete nonsense.
Just pay for it with your taxes. Ask the French how that went with a debt at 114% of GDP.
You know, any day now they will get finalizing the absolutely bonkers insanely large subsidy package for the EPR2 fleet.
The next government surely will! You know, after the current one collapsed due to out of control spending.
> Generating electricity for your country/citizen does not need to turn a profit whatsoever. It generates value in itself, by allowing people to have a more confortable life and enabling industries that can make use of the power.
Which means you are paying for it with your taxes. The costs doesn't dissappear simply because you can't accept how horrifyingly expensive new built nuclear power is and are trying to shift the narrative.
I love how deep into pure waste you need to go to justify endless handouts to the dead-end nuclear industry.
Or we can you know, just build renewables and storage. Which in 2025 was expected to make up 92% of all grid additions in the US.
But new built nuclear coming online in the mid 2040s! That is what is needed!
> On top of that, nuclear was actually profitable and has already paid for itself nicely. Germany knows that very well, which is exactly why they have worked very hard on political sabotage since the 90s.
Which is of course why the French nuclear program needed absolutely insane subsidies to get built.
Nuclear power has never been economical and for example in the US it was collapsing already before Three Mile Island happened. Just too expensive.
> China is currently building 10 reactors per year and not only they successfully reducing the construction cost, they are also successfully reducing the build time.
Please stop with the misinformation? Not sure why you need to lie while telling me to do "serious research".
Reactors finished in China:
2025: 0
2024: 3
2023: 1
2022: 2
2021: 3
2020: 2
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Er...nuclear is already self sustaining and has a great ROI for the French (and pretty much everyone else).
Even the most catastrophic nuclear construction project the French ever had, Flamanville 3, will have better ROI than intermittent renewable projects.
What doesn't make sense is throwing more good money after 25 years of subsidies at intermittent renewables that have yet to show a positive ROI.
I’m not sure where to begin. Please stop straight up lying? Nothing in this comment is correct.
In France the battle is over how large the subsidies needs to be to even get started on the EPR2 program. Driven by EDF is too financially weak to take on more projects after the recent boondoggles and that new built nuclear power simply does not deliver electricity at a price the market accepts.
That does not sound very self sustaining.
Regarding Flamanville 3 you are likely citing the report with a discount rate lower than the inflation and a 40 year pay back time, while comparing to the first ever off shore wind farm in France. You know, a prototype as regards to working with French industry and bureaucracy.
For anyone even having a slight economic understanding the writers of that report are shouting from the rooftops that investing in nuclear power is pure lunacy. But shrouded in a language allowing lobbyists and blindingly biased people to cite it.
I also love how the fastest growing energy source in human history, for which subsidies are being phased out as we speak, haven’t shown a positive ROI.
What do I now. All that private money going into renewables are calculated in making a loss.
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