Comment by joe_the_user
17 hours ago
Yes, France is pretty much alone in making nuclear work. It's impressive. That said, it is alone.
IE, I don't see other nations reproducing the French institutions and culture that allowed this. Will France itself even continue them?
What about Sweden?
South Sweden, with most of Sweden's population is at 20 gC02eq/kWh and at 36% nuclear
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/SE-SE3/yearly
Also Ontario?
Finland?
Sweden has been phasing out nuclear for 40 years, after a referendum where the people had the choice of "No nuclear!", "No nuclear", and "No nuclear". There was no "yes".
It's been phasing out nuclear since then.
Nowadays the Green party and the (formerly named) Communist party are the only ones against nuclear power, but thanks to the left block winning the recent election, they may push that one issue enough that they get to continue the destruction of our planet.
Green party and the (formerly named) Communist party are against nuclear because: ‘Peaceful’ Sweden once sought nuclear weapons. They conflate civilian and military use of nuclear energy
https://theconversation.com/peaceful-sweden-once-sought-nucl...
Sweden is currently using almost none natural gas for electricity production. How could the replace the current 25% of nuclear electricity? wind+natural gas? New hydro dams?
https://lowcarbonpower.org/region/Sweden
1 reply →
It's a strange affair when swedish leftists are the economically responsible parties and the right wing wants to use government subsidies to prop up an industry which is not economically viable compared to all the other electricity generating methods are cheaper and easier to implement.
3 replies →
> Yes, France is pretty much alone in making nuclear work. It's impressive. That said, it is alone.
Ontario, Canada may have something to say about that:
* https://www.ieso.ca/power-data?type=supply
For some definition of "work". They don't seem to be able to build new nuclear plants now without massive cost overruns.
I am pretty sure anyone could make nuclear work by throwing lots of money around
The only money thrown around in French nuclear is handed out to EDF's competitors by EDF themselves as a compromise with the European Commission who didn't want EDF to reap to massive profits of the nuclear plants for itself (EDF has handed out around €100B over the past 15 years and still made a profit pretty much every year, despite massive forced investments in reaction to Fukushima).
Considering how much money is extracted from edf through dividends and in the past through arenh, it's the opposite - edf is subsidizing french state.
I'm sure edf would be happy to get 18bn/y in govt handouts like ren get in Germany through EEG
> I don't see other nations reproducing the French institutions
Gaullism and strong governments are not in fashion these days. The main thing that made Messmer plan work was Messmer himself, a strong leader with the power to tell everyone to stfu and do it.
One can argue that Switzerland is doing a good job too. Also, it is profitable for existing plants for the next 60 years or so.