Why French Nuclear Energy Failed

2:41 Chernobyl happened in 1986!

@Detre Chernobyl is not in France

masterworks sounds like a scam, did you do your research before promoting them?

Why does masterworks need to advertise if they’re so in demand there’s a waiting list?

Dispatchable nuclear with relatively easy thermal storage in sand or bricks and multiple steam turbine generators could do base load and peak power generation. Next generation must be designed with this capability to be competitive.

in fact I say the only weak link right now is germany and their energetic tourret syndrom

france is reliant on Russian Uranus for its powerplants, even in war times!
There is a reason why Uranium is not on the sanctions list against Russia!

@F-Rune Russia is only the 6th largest producer of Uranium in the world...

And let's not talk about Alstom

Its has more to do with market forces bro and the public demands in this case

Ahem. French never had cheap energy. The reactors ran on tax money all this time, your electricity prices never reflected the costs of production.

Are any of you sure - that if in charge - you could do any better?

surely that must have freed up some tax money no?

@hagala these industries are probably the most subsedised in europe.
A government entity can simply keep selling their reserves for the price they bought it for and by the time prices come down fill their reserves back up again. Insulating them from market instability.
Private companies simply charge the market rate since they are just middle men buying it at the same time they sell it to the public forcing market rates onto the public.

Short term gains long term consequences

@hagala Why would it? Even then is that really worth it?

Italy is the same. We also buy the nuclear power from France.

Do not underestimate French: when its a matter of national pride and security they will find a way out for sure.

Exactly, why did France need a liberal market for its electricity?

@Luca J Something something EU something something.

@Luca J UE made it mandatory to open the market in France to competition. As a result, EDF, the company in charge of producing the electricity, has to sell the last one to the competition (competition that doesn't produce it btw, they're only distributors.)

@Luca J Same nonsense happened in Japan. Exactly the same.

It is, the incapacity to make it to 60 years is just a massive shame.

"cheap".. no tax funded subsidized energy hiding its true cost. but it was a good idea back in the day. it just no longer is.

The problem it isn't cheap.

It is highly taxfunded and will still cost billions in the future. Even reactors finished in the last 20 years were far more expensive to build and to operate then other typs of power generation in europe.
Reactors that are about to get started will be costing about 5 times as much to build and 3 times as much to operate then other power generation.

@pax und peace it is

In how many years? You need a solution now. Go solar will ease the daytime load issue. And is much quicker.

@Walterwaltraud go solar? In france?? Oh I get it. Just install solar and the electrons will get so excited they will blow the power grid. Like, like you know, like yeah … going to Davis this year?

Personally I’m a big fan of the potential of MSRs .. but I think thorium is hugely over hyped. That said I’m still very excited for the possibilities of advanced nuclear going forward.

British people who go to live in France always complain about the very high cost of electricity there.

Yeah no. Europe is way to filled with people for a large amount of reactors. at least the west. 1 nuclear reactor going Chernobyl. ( yeah now repeat the bot response of " but its so rare to happen" Yeah, it only needs to happen once tho.) could cause half a country to be evacuated. 1 nuclear reactor in the Netherlands or Belgium breaking down mean you now have 5 million refugees in a single day. good luck with that.Europe does not need nuclear. Or at the very least. not at a much higher extent than we already have.

@R K Comparing soviet-designed Chernobyl (RBMK) reactors, with defective safety systems and NO containement structure vs. western-designed PWRs with advanced safety features AND a containement structure is beyond moronic.

@pxidr Good bot.

@R K The irony🤣. How much do you actually know about Chernobyl or western designs?

Bro i have a degree in business and energy and delt with the costs of energy a lot. Nuclear is not cheap at all. If we did what you suggested, firstly we'd need decades to do it and don't have the capacity to do it, secondly it would be extremely expensive and cost more than any alternative except for the underdeveloped wave power. Thirdly it would increase demand for uranium so the costs and emissions for mining uranium would grow much faster than they already do. That's right with every passing year uranium gets harder and harder to mine and more and more polluting and energy intensive. By the mid of a new nuclear plants lifespan, if we built one today, starting its operation in 15 years (realistic construction time) and then 15 more years.. and voila at that point even with current demand for uranium, it would consume so much energy that the energy needed in the entire nuclear plant supply chain and construction and dismantling would bring the life cycle emissions of nuclear power ABOVE gas power plants. Not to mention the costs. If it was possible I'd be all for it but its not feasible, we don't have easily accessible uranium anymore. It would be so simple so easy if nuclear was an option. Would solve all the problems. but it can't. it's impossible. it is a finite ressource and unless there's some significant nuclear power breakthrough we won't have much nuclear power left in the world by the end of this century.

I am trying! Have been optimising my process the past couple of weeks so I should be able to produce faster in the future :)

@Into Europe well i will be looking closely 🤣🤣🤣

😅

@Into Europe 2:41 Chernobyl happened in 1986!

Yes, but I care more about the story than seeing the guy's face all the time. But keep up the good work!

We do have very capable pipe welding robots nowadays that can mitigate the issue somewhat.

The complaint is that both nuclear AND gas are considered green, though. The reasoning is that while nuclear is better than fossil, subsidize them is also the wrong signal as the focus should still go to renewables. From this perspective it makes sense.

yes, austrian government is a pain in the ass for eu , and now with this war, austria try more to be fiend with putin insted of keeping close with europe

@Stefan Reiterer This is a good point, but the way Austria is making it is misleading.
In this context, the main problem of nuclear fission is that it relies on non-renewable fuel, not that it isn't green. Including it as a green alternative should, therefore, not be a problem.
Especially considering how ungreen sun and wind can be in comparison.
The responsibles are showing that they care more about ideology than facts, which is very dangerous for the future.
"Green" and "renewable" should not be held as synonyms.

These are two different contexts.
This video is about the nuclear power plants meant to produce energy for the grid. EDF's nuclear fleet refers to the set of the nuclear power plants it controls.
What the military would call the nuclear fleet is the set of buildings that are including their own nuclear reactor for their alimentation in energy, which would indeed be a fleet of ships and submarines instead of plants.

He also said the government milking big unsustainable dividends (for tax revenues puroposes) was part of the problem. That's typical of state-owned enterprises

MSRs have never left the prototype stage, so while they may be great in theory, we need something that we know will work today.

@Tealice Nonsense, China just started an MSR, the most difficult type a thorium LFTR, it took them 3yrs to build. The IMSR 200MWe by Terrestrial Energy is just finishing its 2nd stage CNSC approval in Canada. Has already bid on a new Darlington build.

>France has the best nuclear industry in the world
Yeah, that's what we want you to believe. :)
Unfortunately, the french govt and public in general has been very anti-nuclear for the past 20 years. Nuclear is once again viewed as positive by the public, but it's a recent thing.
So for 20 years, we've been telling EDF that nuclear was a thing of the past and that we had to move away from it only to act shocked now that they have not made the necessary investments to continue the fleet operation.
France only recycles once its fuel into MOX. Twice thru cycle. No multi-recyling. We used to operate the world's largest breeder reactor until 1997 but now the only breeder in comm operation is in Russia.
To sum up, while we've retained a good chunk of competence in nuclear engineering, we've lost most of our capabilites to actually build plants. And there's no easy solution, just practice.
Anyways, congrats on the Pickering refurbishment program that was passed in ontario.

Sadly hydro power has a very detrimental effect on nature by destroying habitats for fish and other aquatic life. In Europe many hydro dams are being removed for this reason and also because they are slowly falling apart.

Arguably it did at one point and it still does have a very impressive safety record. But those times have mostly passed.

Marco and Scholz agree that France will help Germany with gas (if needed) while Germany will help France (if needed) with electricity this winter
clip-share.net/video/5X6Xpa5VNfA/video.html

But it’s the fault of the government, they joined the EU electricity market.
Which is the main reason why price are so high the production cost in France is at around 60€ mWh (normally it’s at 40€) but we paid it 100€ to 200€, because like he says EDF is force to sell its electricity at loss to « reduced an unfair monopoly » as Brussels bureaucrats say. And since price are high people who had a contract with alternative providers prefer to turn back to EDF but EDF doesn’t have that electricity because it’s obligated to sell it’s energy at production cost (production cost which since then have rise by a quarter) so EDF as to buy it’s own electricity from it’s concurrent at market price.
So it’s not our fault if this is happening and if we don’t show displeasure the government will do nothing about it and even worsen the situation Macron wanted dismantle half of nuclear powers plants but then he saw all the manifestation and he backdown
And we are not ultra individualistic we want the best for our country and our people

well waste storage is easy enough, just dump it in an abandonned deep mine, line the walls with concrete if you're paranoid
plus there are some promising avenues for actually making something useful out of it
solar is pretty nice, but not sufficiently scalable (outside of deserts), because, sure, you can and should cover rooftops with it, but then you still need a lot more space to meet energy demand and you don't really want to use wild or arable land for it

@yjlom There is the Homer Simpson Paradoxon - the most dangerous technology is operated by the least responsible people.
Also, how to pass information onwards 100.000+ years? Paper? Floppy disk? Engraved stone?

@Daniel Ciesinger Where is that coming from?
The Simpsons is a comedic cartoon. This is not how power plants are handled in real life, especially in France.

@Loïc Caquelard By todays standards, working in a nuclear power plant is one of the least attractive job propositions. So this is why you don't get the best. You get the leftovers who are incapable of getting better jobs.

Do you have actual evidence of this, besides cartoons?
While it is true that the field has known a lowered popularity thanks to the anti-nuclear propaganda of ideologists, this meant that there were less candidates to sort into the formations, not that the ones exiting them weren't adequately trained.

Some are also plain traitors too.

Yes.
I acknowledge that youtubers have to take on some dodgy sponsors if they want to make money, but this art scammery is a next level rip-off. The art market is a scam even before you add all the shit you describe, mostly there to launder money.

@Felix Krull Almost every ad on Clip-Share is crap. Meanwhile, they censor the users and prevent them from expressing themselves and calling out liars as they should be called out, with curse words and insults

How on earth is that the takeaway? Nuclear was hampered by the public through the legislative process.

Now, we can talk about stupid moves like giving away dividends to shareholders for no good reason. But simply saying that forcing a monopoly is the solution is frankly brain-dead.

@da_Revo Public services should be owned and regulated by the government. Profit motive should be second especially in something as basic as electricity.

It rarely is. Longterm and sustainable anything just doesn't go together with libralism.
It is great for quick and dirty consumer goods and stuff. Anything important it will eat itself from the inside out and when it all collapses in on itself the public can have it back.
It happens over and over again and still people keep saying it is the way forward.

@Max Kaufmann Fixing prices is a great way to burn money. I don't even need to make this argument anymore. People will just mine Bitcoin and pocket the difference.

We now have a european grid. Which is what was the original point of the privatisation.
But it created many new problems.
We need one big european utility now. With renewables we need the ability to diversify and deploy resources where they make sense all over europe. It makes the conversion to renewables so much easier and cheap. It is the obvious thing to do.

@Joao vMR but nationalizing it on the country level would be stupid. There now is an integrated european grid, lets use it in the most efficient way.
That way spain where it is sunny can provide most the energy during the day for europe. And norway can supply spain at night with hydro, and netherlands can supply bulgaria with their excess wind capacity etc.
Going full renewables on an individual level is near impossible, on a continent wide level it becomes orders of magnitude easier and cheaper.
And otherwise you get disparity where some country with little access to good resources to use for renewables need to import energy from other countries who are along the north sea for example and can exploit wind in a massive way. Then it would again bennefit the northwestern countries a lot more and make the eastern countries dependends again. Forcing them to go nuclear which are massive pits that absorb massive amounts of public money.

Speak for yourself. God, I dont want to return to the time where there only was a regulated market, with prices set politically, and subsidized by our own taxes.
If we had all consumers in a regulated market we would have terrible shortages rigth now or, if there was no shortages, we would be puting up huge amounts of public debt, and with the dificulty of borrowing in southern europe and the raising in interest rates in northern europe we would have huge interest payments every year, wich means, of course, raising taxes in corporations and industries (because a goverment that wants nationalization of the energy market is likelly to also want that) meaning that we would turn the european products even less competitive and chronically crpile our economies even further than they alerady are.
Oh god, and imagine states setting the energy mix with their populism... We wouldnt even have nuclear energy rigth now

@Duck 0351 this was never the case when utilities where national industries. Not even trough the 70s and all the oil embargos.
Non of that happened and there is no reason things would be different now.
They are all theorethic doom scenarios that have no relation to reality at all. All the same theorethical doom scenarios can be made for any market structure. It's just a bunch of nonsense.

@Baron von Limbourgh Why is Hydro Quebec such a massive money maker for Quebec? Why is Saudi Aramco such a money maker for Saudi Arabia?
Why is Equinor a massive success story for Norway? If anything, Norway should revert back to the 60s, and mandate 100% government ownership over Equinor, and 50% of all oil production licenses in the country.

Spain still plans to shut down their whole fleet and nuclear is downright illegal in denmark.
I guess France and others have already done their part by lobbying hard to get nuclear included into the so-called "green taxonomy".
But french nuclear industry is already way to busy trying to fix/extend the service life of its fleet (+ a few EPR in the UK).
The rest of EUrope will probably have to get contracts with Korea and the US for their future reactors.

Having said that, the EPR design really seems troubled. France should clean house and focus on building successfully domestically and in the UK with the Hinkley C and Sizewell C plants before it can be trusted with more export orders.

@Angelica Oung The EPR works in Finland though

@Me Neither very glad to see Olkiluoto come through tho very late and out of budget

In 2050 the energy demand will be three times that of today, we need to switch all our industry to electricity to replace fossil energy as primary source. This ensures that there will always be a base-load demand that will be coming from new industry's that produces green molecules to substitute current fossil bases chemicals. Nuclear is economically viable, if we build many costs and delays will be lower then today. They are economically viable and will produce new value adding industries what makes them the most economically viable ever.

@Fred Bcf Wind and solar are much cheaper in Europe than all the other energy sources with the exception of lignite. All 3 are below 10 cent per kWh while nuclear is at 11-13 cent. The high prices of electricity at the moment is due to coal and gas import prices being high.

Situation in Czech rep: Last year we produced 77TWh of electricity. If we were about to de-carbonize industry and use electric cars, we would need at least 135TWh of electricity.
i.e. would would need to nearly DOUBLE the electricity production over short period of time (one or two decates).
Or we could start importing electricity from abroad. But we are landlocked country, surrounded by electricity importers. Those GreenDeal plans are totally unrealistic and there is no way to fulfill them.

I think EDF opeates a few projects in the UK and our nuclear power plant in particular.
If you check on the power generation of the grid, when the wind blows we have been exporting power to them while we would normally be buying so I pray the wind keeps blowing all through this winter

Depending on how cold this winter actually becomes, we'll see if they keep true to their word.
Renewables go a long way, but supplemented with nuclear the EU could be netzero in like 2-3 decades if they put their backs into it.

We need a single european wide utility. That can deploy resources all over europe where they make sense and it being one large network. It is the way forward.

Fall of Soviet Union was in 1991, Chernobyl is a dumb mistake on my part 🤦🏻‍♂️

@Into Europe the Berlin Wall fell before the USSR did

This isn't so simple.
Renewable energies come with lots of restrictions that scale up badly. Both wind turbines and solar pannels require much more land surface than nuclear power plants and require that land to be where the wind and sunlight are. And given the high costs and losses of energy storage, most of that renewable energy has to be used immediately. This prevents from installing more production based on sun and wind than is needed so that the excess is used when the sunlight or wind is absent and therefore explicitly imposes a certain portion of other sources into the mix to still have enough energy during these down times.
But the most important problem right now with wind and solar that hasn't been solved so far is to build these infrastructures in a way that is secured in the long run and safe to the environment. Wind turbines and solar pannels both rely on non-renewable resources, among which rare earths are the scarcest. Their mining and processing is difficult and expensive to do in a way that doesn't spoil the environment too much. With most of the currently known reserves of these are in China, which makes absolutely nothing to mine and process them in an environmentally sound way. Additionally, China deciding to stop exporting these to some country would put a stop in its ability to build wind turbines and solar pannels, unless by going through third parties, thus increasing costs by a lot.
If these materials were mined and processed with more care to the environment, prices would also go way up, thus making wind and solar energy much more expensive to develop.
The nature of the pollution produced by this industry also makes it far more difficult to contain than nuclear fission's. The amount of waste is incredibly larger and, since it is chemically polluting rather than radioactive, it never stops being a hazard instead of diminishing in harm with time faster the more it is hazardous.
All alternatives must be developped so that we can pursue these different options within the limits of our access to them.

Just build them on stilts, so the rising sea level won't be a problem.

Tuurlijk niet. Dr moeten 50 of 60 jaar gigantische subsidies in anders wil niemand die electriciteit kopen.
Als overdag the strike price 3 of 4 cent is en zo'n centrale een vaste operationele prijs heeft van 30 cent moet er voor iedere kwh die die produceert over t hele leven van de centrale 25 cent belasting geld bij.
En elektra van renewables word ieder jaar alleen maar goedkoper. Dus moet er ieder jaar meer bij.
T is een idioot idee.

No friendship possible with Germany. Serfdom of antagonism

@Walterwaltraud France nuclear fleet does load following that may effect capacity factor but that's about it and france is connected to EU grid and has headroom for export and their product is much preferred to W/S because it's dependable, i'm not sure about this causing damage to the reactors france is doing studies to possibly extend the rectors to 60 years and this fact alone goes against what you said, france recent problems are due to pile up of work not done in covid times (poor management) and pushing reactors to limit in same period to secure supply (lack of oversight and awareness)
And by the way the W/S suffer from reliability the most, expensive batteries and bigger grid is required and that's not even enough to address it constant on/off for wind turbines is proving bad for their life span that is dwindling from expected 20y to 13-15y (example denmark) all of this nukes your LCOE argument as non of this is mentioned
You addressed some good points and challenges facing nuclear grid but non that can't be overcome, and your supposed better alternatives are laughable and would not make anything better but worst by a long shot and cost trillions doing that like any renewables grid just ink on paper and studies far from any real life example

@Ihab - You are obviously not an engineer. The load following of French nuclear reactors is something I've know for decades, only the first generation of reactors was not able to to that. But as I stated before, that still wastes capital and energy if you cannot make good use of the lower end of the energy load curve. Such might be electrolysis, but when those are only working part time, it's wasted tied capital as well. Or heating water, charging cars, raising the load on bauxit melting etc. On a grand scale, btw and since you appear to be a nuclear tech fan but no expert, I'd suggest you start looking at the supply side and availabilty of exploitable uranium oxide globally. You fanboys seem to miss that, whilst I look at the engineering and macroeconomics mostly. You never look at the negatives of your on fanboydom and never fail to amaze in trying to downplay all the upsides that another alternative provides.
So once more, wind and solar provide very steady cheap energy, very decentralized, and since they are dispersed in a very decentralized way an adapted infrastructure in the transmission net is needed. But that comes organically, as the net needs to be rebuilt every couple of decades anyway and network planners aren't silly fanboy but serious utility engineers. It raises the resilience of the network, ask anyone in Northern America or Ukraine for that matter. It lowers the export of funds to resource rich country (how many uranium mines in France, just for the record?), makes use of engineering skills locally etc. But - it definitely needs buffering. Now your battery argument falls flat on the face, the only moment those are useful are in mobility and day-night storage. Gas peaker plants and gas underground storage however are legacy technology, rather low tech low capital investments and thus the easiest way to go in backups. None of that is needed if you have rivers like Québec or Egypt, or geothermal like Iceland.
(more later, gotta operate some megawatt gas turbines.... as opposed to you, I am not a layman in this field...).

Don’t be so sure of that. I believe we haven’t even began to tap nuclear power’s potential in the long term. As for renewable being cheap, they are not so reliable. Eventually we will also need to decarbonize industrial processes that require high heat which will be much more efficient with nuclear plants that can supply high quality heat directly (this might require advanced reactors.)

"Impossible n'est pas français"

Where were policymakers influenced by activists? Examples?

@Hall Effect
Germany, Australia, USA, EU, everywhere that has set Renewable energy as their goal. Even electricitymaps has a tag for % of renewables. Renewable or not is utterly irrelevant, its actually nothing but a misleading marketing term like all natural or chemical free. Calling something Renewable tells us absolutely nothing about its sustainability, functionality, environmental impact or any useful criteria at all yet thats what we've decided to base energy policy on, is % of renewables. 🤦‍♀️
Renewables includes wildly different systems that have nothing in common except that we decided to call them renewables. We need to critically examine each option individually and stop thinking that being called renewable matters at all.
Reliable electricity supply is crucial for social and economic stability and growth which in turn leads to eradication of poverty. Energy policy should not favor wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, hydro, nuclear, gas, or coal but should support all energy systems in a manner which avoids energy shortage and energy poverty. All energy always requires taking resources from our planet and processing them, thus negatively impacting the environment. It should be our goal to minimize negative impacts, to base our energy policy on the three objectives, energy security, energy affordability, and environmental protection.
What's important is reliable, affordable, and low environmental impact. Focusing on renewable instead is counterproductive.
Ideology blinds people to facts and politicians are no exception. This isn't a sporting event or popularity contest and we should stop acting like it is. We need more involvement with engineers and energy infrastructure experts and stop depending on those that have no training or experience in any relevant field shaping policy because of the popularity of useless buzzwords like renewable.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
Richard Feynman

Noted!😅

Maybe because the back light is stronger than the key light.

Macron closed Feissenheim...

Almost certainly. Olkiluoto was going to be fully up and running by this winter before hitting another hiccup. Flamenville 3 is not even slated to fuel load until mid 2023.

@Angelica Oung But Flamanville 3 began construction over 2 year later than Olkiluoto 3 and you need to account for that.

I don’t think it really makes much sense to cooperate with Russia or China as they are not geopolitically friendly. France can make it’s own way back to nuclear. Gen 4 reactors…not truly necessary for now. Gen 3 will work just fine we just need to get the supply chain up and running gain.

But we can't resule russian gas and oil, the gasduct was sabotaged, 🤷 guess we'll buy american liquefied gas

There is solar. The sun is always shining lol

@Chaz Bertino Europe is so far north. And it's so cloudy many parts of the year in many areas. And if you look at light intensity naps it doesn't have many areas either. I assume solar could get more efficient but you can't deny what the climate is.

@Baron Von Jo I was being sarcastic lol

France energy prices are among the highest, so who cares?

@Richard Not according to the 2021 electricity tariff publication. Relative to China the average electricity tariff of France, UK and Germany were 2.05, 2.97 and 3.82 times of China. That suggests France has one of the lowest electricity tariff. The other confirmatory fact is France has interconnectors to link UK grid with France. UK has been importing more and more energy from France in recently years.

@Gun Sum Wong I'm not talking about the price passed on to customers. But the total price. Nuclear energy is heavily subsidized in France, more than any other energy source, because nuclear power is the most expensive energy source. There are also secondary costs, such as maintenance or storage of the irradiated nuclear waste.

@Richard I am a retired professional engineer working all my life in the power industry. I could tell you the cost of nuclear energy depends on how a government plays it for its own purpose. In UK when nuclear energy was unpopular the decommissioning cost was suggested to be 10 times the cost to build it just overnight! All energy is subsidised in both UK, France and the rest of Europe. They are controlled by environmental regulations that government could change at any time.
The heart of the matter is that France doesn't like UK, Norway or US has large oil and gas reserves but has a big population to support so where can you get electrical power from? The whole Europe burnt coal initially to generate electricity but the government tightened the pollution act resulting coal fired generation uneconomical or impossible, without fitting additional and expensive pollutant abatement equipment, so most countries including UK switched to gas. I witness this trend in my career as progressively gas turbine in open cycle and then combined cycle were installed all over the place by shutting down the coal fired plants. France has been steadfastly developing its nuclear power and is among the most independent.
It is true in recent years there have been minor cracks in French design reactors resulting a significant number of plants taken out of service for safety check/repair. This spoils a power generation industry heretofore has been outstanding by all standard.
China has a slightly different problem of short of oil and gas reserves so China main power generation is by coal. China has also innovated with boiler fluidised bed technology to cut down emission of pollutants while at the same time developing its hydro, solar and wind to be the world's biggest in each of them. China used to build nuclear plant using French technology but in recent years China has its own indigenous nuclear reactors. Last year China overtook France to became the world second biggest nuclear generator after the US.
My point is don't politicise everything but look at what your country has and can do with generating power. Be practical and pragmatic.

@Gun Sum Wong I agree with you

I like sponsorships because they pay the bills of my favourite youtubers, but I imidiatly know that the product is shity.
And sometimes I try to ignore the product completly, specially those for VPNs, wich tend to have a lot of missinformation, and make me sad

Yet French has the clearness record on nuclear power.

@Pimp Poppy that makes it much safer

@Seb. S. Because it is

@Pimp Poppy of course. like the japanese were safe. until fukushima. safety of nuclear power plants is a religion.

@Seb. S. Yet, only one people die and that is still safer then wind power and coal power that cause more death. The new 4th generational reactor if built today are much safer. There have been zero death in French because they have the best safety record.

How about nickel and rare earth that should be mine in developing world such as Indonesia, ecuador.

To make ev batteries

@Ignatius Yanuar did you say that we should keep burning fossil fuels ?
Did you say Djakarta was flooding ?
Climate destabilisation is not real ?

We indeed see flooding in jakarta because we experience itself. But we already see mass ecology disaster in bangka belitung, Sulawesi, Borneo, and papua where nickel and other material for ev mined. Well, our president Jokowi already said he will stop export raw material such as nickel that only benefit multinational company in europe and asia. Instead he try to established ev battery factory Indonesia with help of South Korea and China.

At least we got fairer price since we will produce itself from our country. We already had bad experience with mineral exploitation in papua where multinational mined copper and gold but we, Indonesian only got 10 percent during Suharto era and until 2021 when government finally got 50% stake at multinational companies Freeport

The waste from nuclear energy are absolutelly trivial compared to the waste of other energy form.

But nuclear powerplants give a stable supply of electricity independent of weather, you can't fully substitute a stable source of electricity by wind and solar power. If you go all in on solar and wind you will have to expect power shortages at some points, which I am not sure anyone really wants.

@Daniel Moštěk it's called batteries.

@Tony de Veyra Not sure creating massive battery storage would be very viable, especially considering that there is already a high enough demand for bateries anyway. And they also aren’t perfect.

@Daniel Moštěk there's a clear path for batteries getting cheaper they're already on the s- curve. There's no sign of nuclear approaching any cost curves the opposite has been happening. also There's hundreds of kinds of batteries. What's used for cars may not be best for stationary. We're already seeing a split with LFP. Sodium is just around the corner and so is flow.

The thing is they have advisors and many of them properly also know what they were doing, but at the end of the day, they were just in for the money.

Let's be real: We actually waste so much energy for unnecessary luxury. Why do businesses keep all their lights on in the night is a mystery to me. "Light pollution" is a thing and we should start assessing which energy is really needed. E.g. why do all electric devices not automatically fully power off? We waste tons of megawatts every year with standby alone.