The public in the past have invested for the public interests. After the private have do not profiting from old State made investments leaving anything else falling apart. When they reach a certain level of mess they going out, leaving the State arrange the mess and handle the rage, waiting to came back once a new wave of investments will repair the mess.
Unfortunately people seems to ignore that, allowing such model to prosper.
Not sure what privatisations have to do with the problem. My understanding is that it is a combination of a technical problem (corrosion happening at an unexpected pace) and the impact of covid lockdowns which deferred critical maintenance.
Privatization has everything to do with the problem. Let's take EDF and our nuclear plants. Why is EDF struggling financially today ? Because, through the magic of _opening up to the market_, they have been forced to sell up to 100TWh are prices as low as €40/MWh. The new private operators that came in simply resold that. And right now ? They're even kicking out clients, just so they could sell on the market at €1000/MWh. What does EDF struggling financially mean ? Among others, fully depending on the state to give them the money they need to exist, not being able to keep training and maintain specialists to repair such corrosion (we needed to import people because there were simply not enough qualified engineers for that), not being able to build more plants and therefore losing our edge in nuclear power.
Why are most of our public services struggling ? Because over time, they've been handed out to private companies. Unemployment office ? Partly privatized. Tax collection from employers ? Privatized. Healthcare ? Partly privatized, and the beast is being starved so they can privatize it more.
There has not been a single, memorable outcome of a public service being privatized in France and it getting better.
> they have been forced to sell up to 100TWh are prices as low as €40/MWh.
Should be plenty. The Swedish paid off nuclear plants operate around €25/MWh. Lazard similarly puts the range for paid-off nuclear plants at $24-$33/MWh.
It's easy to underpay nuclear power then realize heavy investments are needed after a while to either keep the plants alive with modern safety norms or to dismantle them (we have done that a lot here, electricity used to be cheap).
Also EDF has been trying to build the EPR in England, Finland and France, and it costed much more to build than budgeted. And someone has to pay the difference. And it seems that this someone is us :) (French tax payers and consumers)
> Also EDF has been trying to build the EPR in England, Finland and France, and it costed much more to build than budgeted. And someone has to pay the difference. And it seems that this someone is us :) (French tax payers and consumers)
My view is that it is a subsidy for the naval nuclear reactors and weapons programs in UK and France that they choose to pay from a national security perspective. The French and UK public simply gets to eat the costs with barely any say in the matter.
How do you get that? In the UK our nuclear weapons are US bought so we don't use any fissile materials we make, and my understanding was submarine reactors are very different to traditional utility scale reactors, to the point that different companies produce them.
It is all about creating the industrial base with people going through university specializing in it. This is from last time I googled the topic:
In 2017 this angle was up in the news in the UK. Take the responses as you like.
> The government is using the “extremely expensive” Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to cross-subsidise Britain’s nuclear weapon arsenal, according to senior scientists.
> In evidence submitted to the influential public accounts committee (PAC), which is currently investigating the nuclear plant deal, scientists from Sussex University state that the costs of the Trident programme [1] could be “unsupportable” without “an effective subsidy from electricity consumers to military nuclear infrastructure”.
> [...]
> This week, the Green MP Caroline Lucas asked the government about the Ministry of Defence and the business department discussing the “relevance of UK civil nuclear industry skills and supply chains to the maintaining of UK nuclear submarine and wider nuclear weapons capabilities”.
> Harriett Baldwin, the defence procurement minister, answered that “it is fully understood that civil and defence sectors must work together to make sure resource is prioritised appropriately for the protection and prosperity of the United Kingdom”.
> [...]
> At the PAC hearing, the Labour MP Meg Hillier asked whether “Hinkley is a great opportunity to maintain our nuclear skills base”.
> Lovegrove answered: “We are completing the build of the nuclear submarines which carry conventional weaponry. So somehow there is very definitely an opportunity here for the nation to grasp in terms of building up its nuclear skills. I don’t think that’s going to happen by accident. It is going to require concerted government action to make that happen.”
> Andrew Stirling believes that there was a crucial, largely unspoken, reason for the government’s rediscovered passion for nuclear: without a civil nuclear industry, a nation cannot sustain military nuclear capabilities. In other words, no new nuclear power plants would spell the end of Trident. “The only countries in the world that are currently looking at large-scale civil power newbuild programmes are countries that have nuclear submarines, or have an expressed aim of acquiring them,” Stirling told me.
> Building nuclear submarines is a ferociously complicated business. It requires the kind of institutional memory and technical expertise that can easily disappear without practice. This, in theory, is where the civil nuclear industry comes in. If new nuclear power plants are being built, then the skills and capacity required by the military will be maintained. “It looks to be the case that the government is knowingly engineering an environment in which electricity consumers cross-subsidise this branch of military security,” Stirling told me.
It’s “simply mismanagement” is a trivial tautology that can be applied to any situation.
Team didn’t deliver? Mismanaged the team. Team failed to deliver because they didn’t do any work? Mismanaged the hiring process. Massive wild fire? Mismanaged forests. Asteroid wipes out all life on Earth? Mismanaged the planetary defense systems. Andor escapes from Narkina 5? Mismanaged imperial prison complex.
Given that nuclear power plants are known entities and the list of "unknown unknowns" should be non-existent given their safety critical nature it simply is mismanagement.
If your nuclear plant costs more than $33/MWh to operate then you are doing something wrong and stop trying to blame "the green movement", "privatization" or whatever.
so costs to build operate and maintain something never changes and is the exact same everywhere and in every country and if it’s different then what you think it’s “mismanagement”?
Because I’m pretty sure it’s going to be different from France to America to poland
> The LCOE figures for existing Generation II nuclear power plants integrating post-Fukushima stress tests safety upgrades following refurbishment for extended operation (10-20 years on average): (in 2012 euros) €23/MWh to €26/MWh (5% and 10% discount rate).
There, from a source extremely positively biased towards nuclear.
> Among others, fully depending on the state to give them the money they need to exist, not being able to keep training and maintain specialists to repair such corrosion (we needed to import people because there were simply not enough qualified engineers for that), not being able to build more plants and therefore losing our edge in nuclear power.
EDF is struggling because the state kept intervening and asking them to shut down future nuclear plants.
You can't have specialists if they are retiring and the state destroyed any career prospects due to planning they would shut down plants...
> EDF estimated the cost at €3.3 billion[6] and stated it would start commercial operations in 2012, after construction lasting 54 months.[7] The latest cost estimate (July 2020) is at €19.1 billion, with commissioning planned tentatively at the end of 2022.[8][2]
Incomplete and biased analysis. What you describe as 'privatization' is nothing like a free market which is what most people think you're describing.
Privatization in your case is crony capitalism combined with state power to manipulate markets in favor of certain actors. The key enabler in this scheme is government power corrupted by money.
The commonality in all the different areas that are failing -- power, healthcare, homelessness, etc.. --- are the regulatory systems that are grossly distorted by corrupted government interventions.
The main problem with governments and their services today is that there is no real feedback loop and systems without feedback are doomed to fail. You can vote liberal or conservative and nothing changes because they are two wings of the same bird.
Maybe there's no "good" capitalism? What we used to think of as "good" capitalism was really heavy government investment leading to a "virtuous feedback loop", for which the Government got no credit?
I think that's more accurate then the "not TRUE capitalism"/no true Scotsman interpretation.
Let me be clear: I mean setting prices with market mechanisms, which all the "mixed economies" do. There's really no alternative to it for the economy as a whole (although government adjustments due to externalities, for example, are needed.)
> the recent gas cap for Russian oil as the hand of the market?
As not market pricing? Markets work to find the most efficient economic solution, or at least local maxima. But everything isn’t economics. National security, for instance. So we take economic pain in exchange for national security outcomes. Domestic energy markets are different from international ones.
Markets are essential. A modern industrial economy cannot function without markets to provide prices for the millions of different things being produced. This is why the Soviet Union failed and why China moved to allow a market to operate.
Right, but price setting via market mechanisms is orthogonal to capital ownership.
I'm increasingly convinced that we should strive towards an impure market socialist system because control of large corporations that are more powerful than some countries really doesn't belong in private hands.
And I say impure because some amount of private ownership to capture entrepreneurial spirits is a good idea. But Fortune 500 companies aren't about entrepreneurial spirits.
Lol no it hasn't. As of last year, the state owned 83% of EDF, along with everything that being a publicly traded company entails. The renationalization process has been started, then immediately halted by shareholders that sued to block it. Additionally, things don't get magically fixed because it belongs to the state again. The current state of things is the result of 20 years of selling off EDF, piece by piece to vultures.
This is like watching a new administration take over government and then blaming them a month later for problems caused by the previous administrators. It takes time to fix years of neglect and malicious incompetence.
Sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but I can't quite follow what you're saying. I know it's anti-privatization, but I can really make out the rest.
What does this mean
> "After the private have do not profiting from old State made investments leaving anything else falling apart. When they reach a certain level of mess they going out, leaving the State arrange the mess and handle the rage"
He means that a publically built monopoly rarely benefits from privatization. Because the efficiency gains will largely be extracted by the private owners.
there was also an (ideology motivated) sabotage, where EDF is forced to sell at a loss to private competitors who produce nothing, who then will turn around and sell to customers at a cheaper price than EDF. So they can claim that private is obviously better.
It’s all a house of cards anyway, as the “alternative providers” who were supposed to provide all that magical agile goodness through the wonders of competition fold one after the other and are actively pushing their customers to EDF.
That’s cargo cult economics: someone said competition was good so we’re going to have all the appearances of it without giving up on our large publicly-funded infrastructure. Because at the end of the day we need electricity and all these rent seekers are only good at extracting value from existing installations. Utterly disgusting.
That's what I call Potemkin Markets. You see that everywhere, enabling insiders to engage in legal risk free looting but claiming it's okay because you sprinkled magic free market pixie dust on it.
> Sure, obviously this has nothing to do with a 40-year anti-nuclear policy.
Ah, the good ol' French anti-nuclear policy: I remember when French intelligence blew up a ship belonging to a pro-nuclear lobby group. Wait, that was the Rainbow Warrior[0], which belonged to Greenpeace, en route to demonstrations against French nuclear tests
Blowing up nukes in middle of the Pacific ocean, has nothing to do with nuclear power generation. There is clearly a communication and educational issue around nuclear power.
"Anti-nuclear policy" is self-explanatory, but I'll indulge you. Can you name a country that is pro-nuclear weapons, but against nuclear power generation? I can nama a couple that have reversed attitudes.
Also, sinking protestor's ship goes beyond testing weapons, and is strong proof that France is pro-nuclear (weapons|energy)
Israel is one of those countries. Actually France helped Israel with nuclear bomb technology (1953) and yet Israel has no nuclear power plant to this day.
France has been historically pro-nuclear for weapons, for dissuasion (after WW2) and for energy (no gas/oil/coal), But it changed on the energy side in the last 15 years. Not sure why the sentiment changed over time. Likely poor communication and education.
Protestors (Rainbow Warrior) were protesting against the last nuclear tests (weapons) in the Pacific ocean in 1985. It had nothing to do with nuclear energy production in France.
So yes France have had an anti-nuclear policy in the past 15 years leading to today where half of the 56 nuclear reactors are stopped. France needs to become pro-nuclear again, restart the current reactors ASAP, and start building more nuclear power plants to replace the aging ones.
On the military side, Those nuclear weapons are for dissuasion. There are no more live tests (all simulation).
I disagree that France had an anti-nuclear policy, but good call on Israel, even though Israel's official position is to pretend it doesn't have nuclear weapons (or a nuclear program).
Perhaps as a thought experiment, but in practice the two are very much linked. I'll ask you the same question I asked sibling comment: can you name a country that is pro-nuclear weapons, but against nuclear power generation?
France was proud of the nuclear energy. It had plenty of cheap and carbon-free electricity (it was once exported to all the neighbouring countries)
It was a way to be independent energy wise, as more countries can export nuclear fuel than oil.
It was building power plants, and processing nuclear waste from other countries
And it made plenty of engineers busy ! France used to be a country led by engineers.
Anti-nuclear policy sure was more significant in Germany as it has led to the complete stop of its use, but in France it has also slowed down the development of the industry.
Although it has evolved positively over the last three years, nuclear energy remains controversial in public opinion [0,1], and many ecologist and left-wing movements have militated against nuclear power for the last 30 years. Whether or not it had an impact on the country policy toward nuclear power would require a more in-depth and complete archive work, but just remember that Emmanuel Macron was advocating toward reducing the share of nuclear power when he was elected for the first time in 2017 [2] (he has now changed)
wow... I mean france basically said at the start of the energy crises that they will build tons of new nuclear plants! they even were the most influential country within the eu which made it possible that the eu gives funding for nuclear plants.
I'm really not sure what you want? of course for everything there is an anti movement, but france is definitly not anti-nuclear, neither are most of its people.
The Superphenix closure was entirely political. The turning point was when the socialists had to ally with the environmentalists because they were getting short on votes. That would be the “gauche plurielle” circa 1997. In parallel the Gaullist old guard, who were all about sovereignty were overtaken on the right by neo-liberals looking to get a quick buck, for whom the Russian oligarchs were role models, also in the mid-1990s. But even at that point it was uneasy. I think most informed people would have been pro-nuclear, but that was a politically risky thing to say out loud.
The environmentalists (well, most of them anyway; there always were some who saw that the alternative to nuclear was coal and oil, not sunshine and rainbows) were always against because they were mostly hippies doubtful of any state-run project and somehow nuclear bombs.
> France used to be a country led by engineers.
And teachers and doctors. But we’ve got the politicians we vote for.
Superphénix was a fiasco. And France has since given up entirely on fast reactors. They've mothballed the entire program, cancelling what was to be the next fast reactor prototype. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASTRID_(reactor)
BTW, you can infer from this that France doesn't think nuclear is going to power the world. If it did, breeders would be necessary, as there's not enough cheap enough uranium to do it with burner reactors. But they don't think there's enough of a market for them to be worth continuing to develop.
> Superphénix was a fiasco. And France has since given up entirely on fast reactors.
It was not really a fiasco; it was shut down before being really productive. Sure, there were some wrinkles, but it was a one-off, not the 10th in a fleet so this sort of kinks are expected. It was an experimental reactor, the design was not supposed to be directly useable as a commercial reactor.
Nevertheless, it had a whole scientific life ahead, some experiments would have been useful for nuclear fusion as well. There aren't many reactors able to produce fast neutrons with that spectrum. Regardless of the state of SFRs, closing it was a purely political decision, the consequence of horse trading between the socialists and the environmentalists without considering any engineering or scientific aspect.
> BTW, you can infer from this that France doesn't think nuclear is going to power the world.
France does not really think anything. There is no master plan, all the decisions are done in a certain context without really any long term thinking. What you see is an industry that has lost its political support. Now that some of the stupidity of the whole mess is dawning on some politicians there is a bit of flailing around, but do not mistake that for some kind of strategy.
> If it did, breeders would be necessary, as there's not enough cheap enough uranium to do it with burner reactors.
That is not entirely true. There are thermal reactors that can work with unenriched uranium, it's just that PWRs are not the most fuel-efficient design.
In any case, no, nobody serious is advocating for using only nuclear. It is just one tool in the toolbox, and there are better sources for some uses.
> That is not entirely true. There are thermal reactors that can work with unenriched uranium, it's just that PWRs are not the most fuel-efficient design.
That's not a rebuttal at all. The problem isn't enrichment, the problem is there's not enough cheap uranium ore. If the world's primary energy demand (18 TW) were provided by burner reactors, the estimated global uranium resource (at cost sufficient to not seriously affect economics of burner reactors) would be exhausted in perhaps five years.
This is so tight that nuclear w. burner reactors cannot provide more than a small fraction of the world's energy. Renewables would have to do almost all of it. In that scenario, there's little reason to use nuclear at all, as nuclear and renewables do not mix well on the grid or elsewhere.
It's not supposed to be one. It's just that there is more nuances to this than 'thermal reactors are going to run out of fuel in 10 years' and 'fast reactors are going to solve the uranium supply'. PWRs and reactors that depend on enriched uranium use much more uranium ore than those that can burn natural uranium, and not all of them are breeders.
> he problem isn't enrichment, the problem is there's not enough cheap uranium ore.
Which is directly related to enrichment, because to enrich uranium you need one order of magnitude more ore than for unenriched fuel and we end up throwing away a lot of perfectly fine nuclides. Then there is the issue of reprocessing, because you are also throwing away a lot of perfectly fine nuclides if you cannot re-use spent fuel, because you need to reach certain enrichment levels. That is something doable even in PWRs.
> If the world's primary energy demand (18 TW) were provided by burner reactors, the estimated global uranium resource (at cost sufficient to not seriously affect economics of burner reactors) would be exhausted in perhaps five years.
I don't understand why you think this is not related to the type of reactor. Different designs have different fuel efficiencies, so a given amount of raw materials would go further with more efficient designs. Just like condensing furnaces allow to use less gas for a given heat output.
> This is so tight that nuclear w. burner reactors cannot provide more than a small fraction of the world's energy.
That is under very conservative assumptions about the types of reactors and state of ore deposits. Realistically, it's about 100 years, and that's likely overestimating needs because nuclear cannot do everything.
> Renewables would have to do almost all of it. In that scenario, there's little reason to use nuclear at all, as nuclear and renewables do not mix well on the grid or elsewhere.
There is nothing specific preventing nuclear and renewables to be used on the same grid.
> There is nothing specific preventing nuclear and renewables to be used on the same grid.
Any grid with both has the nuclear plant very expensively acheiving nothing whenever there is a surplus of renewables.
This is about 6-8 hours a day without storage or dispatch. When you can match the EAF of the nuclear plant by overprovisioning slightly and adding a few hours storage at lower cost, there's no way for the plant to be economical as a suppliment, because it can't match the $0 of the otherwise curtailed renewable energy.
They might have a viable niche generating heat + electricity for some uses though.
> That is under very conservative assumptions about the types of reactors and state of ore deposits. Realistically, it's about 100 years, and that's likely overestimating needs because nuclear cannot do everything.
An APR like AP1000 or EPR gets 60MWd thermal per kg at 3.5%. Assuming 0 tails essay (economical enrichment leaves behind about 1/4th to 1/3rd of U235) this is roughly 300GJ electric per kg of Natural Uranium. Roughly in line with a CANDU. Reprocessing repeatedly until all the nuclides are fertile rather than fissile adds <20%, or (using technology that exists) <15% with a single round of SNF.
In the most optimistic scenario. For the ~10 million tonnes of reasonably assured resource assuming no increase in energy use and 8 of 18TW can be reduced or provided with waste heat somehow this lasts around ten years.
> PWRs and reactors that depend on enriched uranium use much more uranium ore than those that can burn natural uranium.
This has little to do with enrichment, and more to do with the better neutron economy of heavy water as a moderator. CANDU reactors have moved to use enriched fuel due to superior economics. CANDU reactors are still economically inferior to LWRs, though.
In any case, the difference is negligible to the point being made: that burner reactors cannot power the world for very long before the uranium runs out. CANDU reactors still leave the vast majority of the 238U unfissioned.
> Which is directly related to enrichment, because to enrich uranium you need one order of magnitude more ore than for unenriched fuel and we end up throwing away a lot of perfectly fine nuclides.
To first order, burner reactors are burning 235U. It doesn't matter if this 235U has been concentrated or not. The 238U that enrichment tosses out can't be used in burner reactors in any case.
(This is not entirely correct, since some 238U is converted to Pu even in burner reactors. But only a small part of it can be, since the breeding ratio is well below 1, enriched fuel or not.)
> I don't understand why you think this is not related to the type of reactor.
Because it's not. Burner reactors, by definition, run out of fissionables before they've converted most of the 238U to plutonium.
> Realistically, it's about 100 years
This must be assuming a much larger uranium resource.
> There is nothing specific preventing nuclear and renewables to be used on the same grid.
Yes there is. They are both inflexible sources, and compete with each other to be supported by sources of flexibility (dispatchable demand, dispatchable generation from e-fuels, storage, hydro). In general, when you look at optimal solutions to providing power for the grid, the optimal solution is either all renewables or all or mostly nuclear. There's no middle ground. Putting it another way: if it makes sense to have a grid that 10% nuclear and 90% renewable, it would make even more sense to have more nuclear. Nuclear either goes big or it goes home.
The public in the past have invested for the public interests. After the private have do not profiting from old State made investments leaving anything else falling apart. When they reach a certain level of mess they going out, leaving the State arrange the mess and handle the rage, waiting to came back once a new wave of investments will repair the mess.
Unfortunately people seems to ignore that, allowing such model to prosper.