Comment by selfhoster1312
8 hours ago
France is in that list (hello i'm from france too) because construction is heavily subsidized and decommission is overall not happening, not planned, and more or less not even approaching the planning stage. The few decommissions that are taking place are decades late and billions over budget.
It's not industry secret that if you count the entire life cycle, nuclear is the most expensive (in terms of euros) energy we have. Does that mean it's a bad investment? Not necessarily. If you're an ecologist, it's a bad investment because it takes us in the wrong direction (more energy consumption) instead of going the way of degrowth. Also, the nuclear industry is very much in bed with the military industrial complex, which is something you may be concerned about.
And that economic analysis does not even account for how "stolen" the uranium we use is. If France paid an actual fair price to the Françafrique countries pillaged for their uranium, it would probably be more expensive. TBH, i haven't followed developments in the last years in regards to french neocolonialism collapsing in sub-saharan africa, but here's a small article from 6 years ago: https://infokiosques.net/IMG/pdf/uranium_de_la_francafrique-...
Energy cannot be created nor destroyed, it can only be transformed. This is the first law of thermodynamics and as far as I'm aware nobody has managed to refute it.
Finding better ways of controlling where energy comes from and where it goes, and doing it in a controlled way that has minimal impact on the surroundings is good (from an ecological perspective)- it is the most pure good an ecologist can hope for.
"Reduce, Reuse" has its place, but that place has to be in-line with also finding a way to balance our human needs with the environment.
I don't think reducing our energy consumption is realistic, many things that have a long-tail reduction in energy consumption have a huge up front cost.
For example, electric vehicles are a bitch to manufacture but are less impactful for the environment over a long term; and this is amplified if the energy that is produced to be used in the electric car has a minimal impact on the environment (Solar, Wind, Nuclear) - but nuclear plants have a huge up-front energy cost too.
I'll be forthcoming and say that I have a concern that over-reliance on solar and wind may have negative consequences on the environment too- harvesting wind energy from the atmosphere that animals may rely on, will likely impact the environment in ways we haven't thought about. However it's significantly better than coal and gas, and that's the marker we're going for: not perfect.. better.
Everything is bad at a certain scale after all, we just haven't hit that scale with our renewables- and because of this, on a baseline, I agree with you.
> If you're an ecologist, it's a bad investment because it takes us in the wrong direction (more energy consumption) instead of going the way of degrowth.
Why would an ecologist have to be against more energy consumption? For climate change, what matters is energy from the sun hitting the earth vs. energy being radiated back into space. More energy consumption also doesn't necessarily cause more pollution of any kind.
You're redefining environmentalism with a very narrow and technical view. Goodhart's law does not only apply to computer science, but to ecology as well, and says that CO2 emission alone is not a good metrics.
I'm not saying energy consumption overall is a perfect metrics, but the degrowth movement is a philosophy / science that's not aligned on a specific metrics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth
The energy received is always the same as the energy radiated, its just the temperature increases to maintain that balance.
No. Temperature increases until balance is restored. Temperature is currently increasing, which means the planet is not radiating away as much energy as it is receiving.
The issue is not only climate change. More consumption means more consumer goods, more resource extraction, more transport, more waste
We have huge environmental problems ranging from ecosystem simplification, microplastics, etc. The answer is not to keep consuming as we are. We really have to stop the neoliberal system that's based on ever increasing growth and externalisation of environmental impact.
> We really have to stop the neoliberal system that's based on ever increasing growth and externalisation of environmental impact.
Like, I too would like a pony, but we gotta live in the real world. Ultimately we need more energy of basically every carbon neutral form.
I agree that the ideology of growth at all costs is problematic, but it's how our society is structured right now, so we need to fix our current energy problems rather than bet on transforming society.
To be fair, the declining fertility rate will probably solve a bunch of environmental issues over the next few generations.
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For France investment in nuclear is a big benefit, as you can see in the amounts of coal and gas burned to generate electricity in neighboring Germany in the last two decades, and still burning today.
Try to present the idea of "degrowth", to China, India, Indonesia, Brazil. They all on path of growth.
I agree that France, should be paying more to Françafrique countries, but raw uranium cost is only 50% of the finished nuclear reactor fuel. And nuclear reactor fuel is 5% to 10% of the operating costs of a nuclear power plant.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec...
Heinrich Böll Foundation and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, both funded from Germany, published many documents criticizing uranium mining in Africa:
" Addressing uranium-producing countries in particular, whom it seems to want to stop or at least reduce their activities, the report also focuses on the health hazards associated with extraction and the neo-colonial aspect of exploiting the resource. Particularly virulent regarding France, which is the subject of three articles and cited in several others, the Atlas targets head-on Paris's relationship with one of its main suppliers: Niger.
The Atlas likens the uranium mining model to a vestige of Françafrique and accuses the French government of enriching itself on Niger's behalf while orchestrating an ecological, human and social catastrophe in the country. The French company Orano - formerly Areva - which mines and produces uranium in Niger for French power plants, is a particular target."
https://www.docdroid.net/y7NENZB/comment-lallemagne-finance-...
https://www.ege.fr/sites/ege.fr/files/media_files/German_Int...
Thank you for this post. It is informative and nuanced about a complex topic.
I was born and raised in several countries that are a part of the NATO alliance. Without getting too preachy here, I want to say that I deeply value the nuclear deterrence that France proudly and effectively provides the alliance. Plus, personal here, I like the "je ne sais quoi/don't fuck with me" attitude of the French forces. I welcome the wildcard that keeps our adversaries on their toes!
I am not French, nor deeply familiar with the arrangements here, but what happens if the uranium price is 2x or 5x? I am guessing it has little impact on the total cost of operating a nuclear power plant. Also: There are lots of alternatives. Kazakhstan, Canada, and Namibia control nearly three-quarters of the entire global uranium market. To be clear: I am not doubting that the existing purchasing agreements between France and its former African colonies are fair.
History behind the French decision to build it's own independent nuclear deterrence was interesting:
" De Gaulle asked asked Kennedy: “Would you trade New York for Paris?” His point was that if he wasn't convinced, would the Russians be? So it's not just about numbers of warheads. It's about the defensive posture overall. "
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2025/03/nuclear-deterre...
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1962/08/de-gaul...
> construction is heavily subsidized
It's not subsidized, quite the opposite EDF is subsidizing its competitors through ARENH.
> It's not industry secret that if you count the entire life cycle, nuclear is the most expensive (in terms of euros) energy we have.
It's not. It only appears expensive compared to other decarbonized means because the calculations never take the opportunity cost of intermittency. Wind and solar are only cheap because you never count the price of the back-up plan in the cost (and also because magnets and solar panels are bought for cheap from China). If you count the price of running an actual grid all year long then it suddenly becomes the most efficient option after hydro and that's why France has among the cheapest electricity in Europe. The German Energiewende is the canonical example of what the theoretical calculations leave out. It should have been cheaper and less carbon-heavy in the end, but instead hundreds of billions have been spent to get only expensive and high-emission electricity in the end.
>And that economic analysis does not even account for how "stolen" the uranium we use is. If France paid an actual fair price to the Françafrique countries pillaged for their uranium, it would probably be more expensive.
Come on, the Uranium coming from Niger is a just a fraction of the consumption: https://www.connaissancedesenergies.org/questions-et-reponse...
Finally, someone with common sense. Nuclear is bad BECAUSE it produces lots of cheap energy. We DON'T WANT this. More energy = more capitalism = evil.
DEGROWTH NOW!
> degrowth
Thanks for showing your true face. But no thanks for your anti-humanism.
It's interesting that they're feeling emboldened enough these days to not hide who they are and what their agenda is. That general movement had a slow motion replay of the Bolshevik vs. Menshevik action, where the moderates (like Patrick Moore, Michael Shellenberger) got purged, and after quite a long time of having an established, comfortable monoculture now they're starting to no longer feel the need to create fake narratives around why nuclear or mines are bad, now they're just straight up saying they want civilization to collapse. (Which is what would happen, there's never going to be any such thing as an orderly impoverishment)
Maybe it's for the best. If they're being honest maybe it'll clarify debates and positions.
> If you're an ecologist, it's a bad investment because it takes us in the wrong direction (more energy consumption) instead of going the way of degrowth.
What a horrible, nihilistic philosophy. Disgusting that anybody takes it seriously.
Taken to it's logical end it's quite literally just anti-human. Their ideal outcome is a suicide pact.
No, it's not a suicide pact. If it was just a suicide pact, they'd get it over with and leave the rest of us alone. It's a homicide pact, a genocide pact for the entire human race.
And we have tried it too! There have been energy shocks before, where the price of energy spikes and causes corresponding drop in energy consumption, leading to degrowth.
They only talk about the benefits in the abstract, but not what an energy shock actually means. It means people can’t afford to pay for heating and freeze to death. It means factories close down because the inputs are too expensive. Construction stops because the raw materials (steel, concrete) are too expensive to manufacture, and people don’t have money to pay for new homes.
We have done all these things just in the last 4 years! So why should we do more of it instead of just building more renewable energy?
degrowth is compatible with increasing standards of living for 99.5% of people all the while being able to then actually preserve these standards up in the future.
our current model produces growth without proportionally increasing standards of living, and accepts that livelihoods will collapse all over Europe and Africa as it becomes increasingly hostile to agriculture due to climate change.
think of the viability of degrowth as a policy within the prisoners dilemma of global capitalism as you want, but please come up with a more serious critique that doesn't equally indigte the staus quo
None of that is true.
glad you pointed out something very few people point out in these conversations - the cheap uranium fuel France gets has a very large hidden cost.
the coups that happened recently in west africa are largely due to that largely hidden cost.