alt Hacker NewsIf you are so smug about this, answer me:
1: How man reactors were built in the 1970s and are nearing end-of-life?
2: How many reactors has Europe built since 2005?
3: What's the overrun time of reactors in Europe, compared to China?
The only reasonable conclusion to draw is that the industry has existed. It was world class, but the institutional knowledge to bring it back to this quality does not exist and would need to be rebuilt for the new generation of reactors. And we are not even talking Generation 4 here.
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> 1: How man reactors were built in the 1970s and are nearing end-of-life?
> The only reasonable conclusion to draw is that the industry has existed. It was world class, but the institutional knowledge to bring it back to this quality does not exist and would need to be rebuilt for the new generation of reactors. And we are not even talking Generation 4 here.
The only reasonable conclusion from your logic is that it would have felt like an even worse idea to build nuclear reactors in the 1970's. Yet, using today's hindsight, it was a great idea.
Airbus would have been a terrible idea: no one had built commercial airliners before, and only the US had the know-how. Today, we know otherwise.
etc.
These questions are inane. No, "all existing experts" did not retire. not making new plants was a decision made by politicians.
Europe has never stopped working on creating new and better nuclear reactor designs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
France in particular connected a new nuclear power station to the grid as late as 2024 [1]. But the previous reactor was put online in 1999 or so.
Three more were built in EU since 2000: one in Finland (Swedish/Finnish design) and two in Slovakia (Soviet/Russian design).
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
Another possible conclusion is that it's only possible to build them in societies where they can be secretly subsidized and the EU has passed out of this phase.
There's an awkward middle phase where they lie about how long and how much they will cost because the transparency will kill them before they start if real figures are used. But you only get a few chances to pull that trick.
> If you are so smug about this, answer me:
But I'll answer what I can, assuming your are genuine.
> 1: How man reactors were built in the 1970s and are nearing end-of-life?
I think this is a more American-centric comment than you realized... France had a bigger rollout in the 80's and a few from the 90's so there's another decade (*making this time key!*) before a slow decline. Also remember that France is a lot smaller than America so needs less power.
Not to mention, France exports a lot of electricity[0]. I want you to look pretty closely at that graph again. It says they exported 81.8TW this year. What's France's nuclear capacity? 380TW[1]. France exports about 15% of its total energy, more than all its hydro (it's next biggest source). You may be interested to see where that electricity goes....[2]
France can lose those reactors and be fine, Europe is a different story...
> 2: How many reactors has Europe built since 2005?
> 3: What's the overrun time of reactors in Europe, compared to China?
> the institutional knowledge to bring it back to this quality does not exist
Besides, I'm not sure this fear even makes sense. What, China could "start from scratch" but "France" (or anywhere else) couldn't? What would make China so unique that such things couldn't be replicated elsewhere? This is a fallacy in logic making the assumption that once skills atrophy that they can never be restored or restore more slowly. If anything we tend to see skills restore far quicker from atrophy than from scratch! So why paint a picture of "give up"? Isn't that just making a self-fulfilling prophecy?
[0] https://analysesetdonnees.rte-france.com/en/exchanges/import...
[1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...
>If you are so smug about this, answer me
Is this satire?
Yes, very few new NPP have been built in Europe recently. Quite a few have been built by Europe however. The french company Framatome alone, with 18k employees, is actively building 2 EPR reactors in the UK (+ preliminary studies for 8 more), one reactor has been finished last year in France and recently multiple were built or being built in China, India, Russia (although I guess that might be canceled).
Its also already operating the 57 french reactors as well as operating reactors in South Africa, China, Korea, Belgium, Finland.
Sure, the industry will need to grow, but claiming it basically has to start from 0 is ludicrous.