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Writer/Narrator: Brian McManus
Writer: Josi Gold
Editor: Dylan Hennessy
Animator: Mike Ridolfi
Animator: Eli Prenten
Sound: Graham Haerther
Thumbnail: Simon Buckmaster
References:
[1]www-pub.iaea.org/mtcd/publica...
[2] www.cleanenergywire.org/news/...
[3] www.politico.eu/article/parli...
[4] EU parliament backs labelling gas and nuclear investments as green www.reuters.com/business/sust...
[5] www.trade.gov/country-commerc...
[6] Explainer: Why nuclear-powered France faces power outage risks
www.reuters.com/business/ener....
[7] EDF ordered to inspect 200 nuclear pipe weldings after more cracks discovered
www.reuters.com/business/ener...
[8] Welders wanted: France steps up recruitment drive as nuclear crisis deepens
www.reuters.com/business/ener...
[9]
French parliament votes nuclear plan with large majority
www.reuters.com/world/europe/...
[10] EDF announces new delay for Flamanville EPR reactor
www.reuters.com/business/ener...
[11] ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/sta...
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I am once against asking you to watch the entire video before commenting.
Such lofty expectations!
I am once again asking for your support
You tried your best at being unbiased, thanks. Look forward to the next one and an in depth look at what we know about of the Baraka power plant in the UAE. Can we trust the figures. Is it comparable? Obviously you will bring up Nuscale.
But I want to jump to conclusions
I dont need to see the whole video to know the reason. Stunningly because one would expect better from the Germans, nuclear power was shut off in Germany because they were all kinds of massive stupid.
Nuclear’s defamation may just be the greatest thing that the coal lobby has ever gotten through
When I read the title of the video, my first though was because Germany has massive coal deposits and the coal companies lobbied against nuclear energy. I wouldn't be surprised if the green party was started by the coal company.
Air pollution, acid rain, and burning coal releases heavy toxic & radiative metals and isotopes as NORM naturally occurring radioactive minerals // that ends up as metal oxides or fly ash that blows around everywhere like a continual Chernobyl accident // Coal is a toxic disaster and its best case is with clean coal gasification used as purified chemical feedstock to make methanol, DME, synthetic gasoline, diesel and jet fuels, lubricants and other petrochemical hydrocarbon and carbon molecules used widely in many industries. The heavy, toxic, radioactive and valuable metals present in tiny parts of the coal, can be recovered and commercialized to create additional profits and revenue to the clean gasification industrialized coal chemical feedstock creation. Nuclear the safest and cleanest way to make negative carbon electricity, but not the cheapest, though other renewables cost more when energy storage added for 24/7 caseload uptime for Wind and Solar, since the storage capacity of energy storage needed to stabilize such sources costs more than over budget nuclear reactors.
Despite the fact the that the burning of coal produces 1,000x more nuclear fallout. The coal that's burnt isn't pure carbon, it's laced with a multitude of impurities, traces of nuclear isotopes and poisonous heavy metals are spewn in the air around coal plants.
@@CdrmnkNathan And impurities aside, even the perfect burning of coal is already very problematic by itself with the massive amounts of CO2 produced
@@TheNikoNik Trees and plants NEED CO2, if they stopped cutting every bloody tree they see in the Amazon, there would not be any issues, all this climate BS drives me nuts. I am in my late 60s and still remember all the articles in the 70s from the media that we were facing a new ice age, more BS that was all lies, certain individuals are making billions out of this climate change BS and as usual the stupid public listen to them rather than do research to see who the bad actors are making a fortune, and yes most politicians from various countries have their finger in the pie as it were. Even if Europe stopped ALL use of carbon fuels it would make no difference, the biggest players in pollution are China America and India.
One important note regarding aging nuclear reactors. Before a nuclear reactor start operating the power plant has to get a license from the country's nuclear regulatory authority to operate it for a fixed number of years, let's say 20 years. Before this license expires the plant has to make a choice to renew the license or decommission the reactor. If they choose the former option they have to prove to the regulators that the reactor can safely operate for the next period, let's say another 20 years, which includes upgrading control and safety systems, replacing aging equipment, doing extensive inspections on critical components, etc. Just because a reactor is 40+ years it doesn't mean it only conforms to safety standards from 40 years ago.
Yea but the bolts , Concrete and Metal beams are 40 years old 😂😂😂
@@Harrock and they would be inspected and replaced if needed. You do realize that some things last a long time, right?
The french reactors were checked by the EU. They were rated among the worst in europe and important stuff wasn't even checked because of pressure by the french government. That is why I don't want any nuclear power in Germany. We would have to spend billions, it is just too expensive.
@@xenn4985 yes but often many nuclear reactors that try to renew their licence, often have to replace everything.
We shouldn't have rolling safety regulations. 1970s western nuclear power stations are already the safest form of energy on earth. More safety regulations just serve to increase costs and prevent the uptake of nuclear energy, increasing net harm.
France did not fight to label natural gaz as green. Germany did that.
France could have to makes Germany happy so Germany would approve nuclear power plants in return
There are a few german political specifics missing. The first phase out was planned similar to what you named as the "middle way". A slow reduction of nuclear power, while ramping up renewable power. The problem was than reversing this plan and later making a new phase out which had no real plan behind it (the one Merkel is responsible for). Instead the renewable industry was systematically destroyed (Germany was leading in the tech for solar and wind energy before Merkel) and a switch to natural gas was favoured (with massiv lobbying). When they than relized that was a shit idea, both from the view of climate change and the dependency to dictatorships like russia, it was to late for both ways. Going back to a slow nuclear phase out was not possible anymore and the the renewable energy was also not build up good and fast enough.
The sad thing is that you probably believe this whitewash. The German solar industry is dead because it is not competitive. And the foreign industry only sells in Germany because the plants are massively subsidized. And the disaster would have happened in exactly the same way, perhaps with a few years' delay, if the original plan had been adhered to. This is because renewable energies are simply not capable of replacing conventional power plants.
Dictatorship like Russia? I see... So, it this wonderful plan of yours, mind telling me where, exactly, you planned to get the fuel for those Nuclear reactors? Where is your uranium getting mined? What are you doing with the spent fuel? Do you have the technology and expertise to create the entire industrial chain? Without Russia. Oh, wait. You don't have to answer that, because you already gave an answer with your actions. It's not a very creative solution, I have to say... Here we go...again, and again, and again....Drang nach Osten! We all know who will triumph in this newest attempt to "Manifest Destiny" your way into taking over Russia. I'm just surprised that German greed overpowered rationality and suicide was chosen over peaceful coexistence. Since you consistently take our kindness for a weakness, we will have to explain it in your own language. Generalplan Ost, except we don't want German land. We just want to be left alone. If Germany is an irradiated wasteland, we don't have to worry about attacks from the West...
Common myths of the anti-nuclear movement. But this is simply nonsense. There is simply no way(!) to replace nuclear power plants with renewables. The plan was completely hopeless from the start.
@@11everhard Exactly. Nuclear can't be replaced. Not now, not 25 years from now.
@@11everhard What we are seeing now is people owning a house taking their electricity supply into their own hands. There are some mistakes being made in terms of the extra going to the grid not being paid for so people try to waste it or turn off the supply instead, but it will have an impact on the long run. There are more ways than we thought and there is constant research on storage and optimization. The best scenario would be to be freed of both fossils and nuclear, but it will never happen if we don't go out of our way and try (unless there is another accident before then that would somehow be worse than the others).
One day the anti-nuclear folks will have to answer for setting us back in the fight for decarbonization.
Litterally.
Nuclear energy should be banned worldwide.
"Uhh, solar, uhh wind."
@@ACatLoversHandle FJB
Semper fi mofo
Hi there - French-trained nuclear engineering graduate here. A great, balanced video as always. There was one detail that I think needs clarifying though. The cracking did not happen because the reactors were old. In fact, it happened in the younger, “N4” type reactors. In the case of the Penly-1 reactor (the one in which the crack you mentioned happened) the previous welds done beside the crack were likely improperly heat treated when done, leading to internal stress in the pipe, causing the crack. So case of bad workmanship and/or lack of quality control rather than ageing.
Well using numbers from well known anti nuclear think-tank lazard is not really balanced.
@@matsv201 "Fukushima was as bad as Chernobyl!" lol. This video is hysterical.
@@milo8425 yea.. that is not really compavle. One side quite a few people died and 4000 acers of land made useless for multiplel decades. The other hand, 0 people died and 2% of the ejaculated land remain useless 10 years later.
Out of curiosity, what is your salary? My mates a nuclear engineer on Royal Navy submarines and the salaries in the forces are pathetic. Interested to know what similar jobs pay in this field
@@milo8425 we can fuking spot radioactive fishswarms per satilet to this friggin day.....just becasue most of the shit ended in the sea instead over land doesnt make it one friggin bit less damaging....clown comment...
My grandfather worked in Germany's first nuclear power plant; the Versuchsatomkraftwerk Kahl (the 'test nuclear power plant Kahl'. Built in 1961.). Though it wasn't actually build in Kahl, but right outside of it. In the neighbouring town of Karlstein, where I grew up. To this day, the town's coat of arms displays an atom to commemorate that. Bonus fun fact about that town: Karlstein is named after 'Karl dem Großen', better known as Charlemagne. The "father of europe" would often travel through the town to get to his favored hunting grounds in the nearby Spessart woods. And ~1200 years later, the nuclear power plant was built right by the river he had to cross to get there. Crazy to think about that.
🇬🇷🇪🇺ATHENS🇬🇷🇬🇷☦️☦️☦️☦️☮️🙏🙏🙏🙏👋👋👋👋👋⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛🇬🇷🤔🤔🤔🤔 All lifeforms are made of carbon Second. Co2 help breathe better Carbon is our friend. Coal Steam coal trains ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ The establishment fool everyone Coal is friendly We are made of carbon So we must love coal ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ Co2 water i drink Instead of bag breahting Co2 For anxiety Co2 water Is healing factor Carbon is molecule of life We must increase carbon We must increase carbohydrates They fool you The liberal green establishment ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩
There is even Netflix series about this plant - Dark (2017). In fact, the plant caused some timeloops and end of the world. I still think it was right decision to shut it down
To add two points: a) the nuclear power plants was always state of the art of this generation, they were continously updated. b) the generation was among other choosen by FJ Strauss, 'cause he speculated at atomic weapons. So the NucPowPlants wasn't as efficent as they could be.
Small comment on the crack from a french welding engineer : it's not thermal fatigue, it's stress induced corrosion. It's a much more complicated topic ! But as someone that worked on the repairs, I can say that it's well under control, and just the fact that it was detected before being critical, it shows that the safety procedures are working
Good for France. Hope that you country is staying on top of repairs. Here in Japan about 20 years ago at a nuclear power plant in the west, a pipe burst scalding to death a worker. Has to be one of the most horrific ways to die. Keep safe.
That's a misunderstanding... that it was caught shows that a small part of the safety procedures are working. You don't know what you haven't caught, or isn't covered in the safety procedures because it is completely unknown, or ignored or neglected.
@@Andreas-gh6is yes and no. Stress induced corrosion was not something that was suspected as "possible" here. It's because of a weird superposition of "coincidences" that it happened. But the procedures aren't necessarily about finding the causes. They analysed every possible failure mode, and put in places controls to make sure that it wouldn't happen. For instance, here the failure mode is a rupture of the pipe. The procedure calls for visual, surface and volumetric controls to make sure the risk of the failure happening is minimal. You can't plan for everything, yes. But you can think of all that could go wrong and prepare for this. And without this, the french nuclear authority would never have accepted the operation of nuclear reactors. Those guys are extremely strict, and not someone you're playing with. They, by the way, have congratulated EDF for their response to this issue, and the "safety procedure are working" is le paraphrasing some of their conclusions Th
Although I'm a pro-nuclear guy, and with all due respect toward you and your work Informattricks... I really hate it when people involved claim "it actually proves safety procedures are working" in that case. It's only partially true. It's mostly true, in my opinion. Still, it so close to be a lie, I would never let anyone say that. First, it's a bare minimum for safety procedure to inspect and therefore detect unexpected failures. Claiming "see, it works" is VERY concerning, because we have MANY other examples where similar incidents weren't correctly addressed. They actually were kept so secret they in the end WEREN'T handled, or not correctly. People know that. They know the phrase to be a lie. Therefore, repeating the phrase which was a lie, in a context were it's only partially true, very wrong message. Second, that particular failure is very serious! Yes, it's under control. But it still shouldn't have happened. Why did it happened? Many reasons, the loss of know-how being one of them, and probably the main. The answer is "need more money, more investment, in short, more nuclear" is probably the correct answer, but still very unsatisfying. Another big reason is... that safety procedures did NOT work until they did. Hence back to point one. France is NOT exemplary. Yes, we had no Chernobyl, no Three mile Island, no Fukushima in France. It's not simply "luck", it's indeed because of quality work and choices. But Russians, Americans and Japanese aren't poor workers and unwise people. They are like us. People. The very reasons why these major incidents occurred, we find them in France too. And despite the changes in regulation, despite the adaptation... we still find them. Fission nuclear energy at his very core will ALWAYS be extremely nasty. That is a very efficient industry and very necessary one nowadays, but we shall always work with the idea in mind on "how to replace it. How to make sure we do not need that terrible thing anymore". Like I said, I am a pro-nuclear guy. Thus to my opinion, yes, definitely, we need to build more reactors, we need to invest more in this energy, we need to train more people. But more importantly, we need to talk about every issue and answer every critics. For god sake, we have to stop over simplifying the problem.
To an extent yes, but overall nuclear power plants are extremely expensive to construct, run, and especially destruct. Nobody needs them for anything, with wind and solar being there for almost no money. In Germany, with German weather conditions, NPP kwh costs 6-8ct (until shutdown), solar 4ct, wind 2ct. NPPs are useless, extremely dangerous and expensive monuments of the past.
Closing down working plants that are not in immediate danger or in need of a service while at the same time approving open-pit coal mines to increase "energy independency," now that's progress right there.
Thats not whats happening. The area which is allowed to be mined for coal has been limited. And the limit has already been decreased. "Approving open-pit coal mines" bs.
@@hb3123 You can rephrase this to "approving coal burning power plants". It is still horrible and the opposite of progress.
Don't forget they not only got rid of clean energy (nuclear is cleaner than solar and wind and also safer too! believe it or not) but they also had to rely on importing energy from countries using nuclear and they had to import fossil fuels too! Leaps of progress have been achieved in germany.
Amortization far from completed and install useless renews.
"not in need of service"? You should get yourself more knowledge on this topic.
Actually, even after Cernobyl and Fukushima I don’t worry so much about meltdowns (though they are bad enough and I’m not even talking about Sellafield and the likes), but about nuclear waste. Decades of nuclear energy generation and still there no way to get rid of that stuff. It’s like flying and hoping someone will invent the landing strip anytime soon.
Nuclear waste is incredibly stable. Look up kyle hill and his videos on nuclear power. It's so safe he kisses a nuclear waste cask without a care. We solved nuclear waste a while ago. Doesn't even take up that much room, American designs have the waste just stay at the old tractor because they are so safe.
@@christopherhammond9467 Kyle Hill has every right to kiss whatever he adores, and I have no worries about a new nuclear waste cask. Trouble is, it has to last for 20.000 years, and that's were my trust ends. Have a look at Wikipedia: There's only one active site worldwide for High Level Waste, and that's 70 years after the beginning to produce nuclear energy. In my book, that's not a problem solved.
Well, if we ever do fast reactors on a large scale, the problem would probably go away pretty quickly.
The solution to nuclear waste is reactors which can reprocess high-level nuclear waste into fuel that can be used again. But even without waste reprocessing, nuclear power plants produce so little waste, and the waste is so easily stored that it’s not really a problem. The perceived problem has been nothing but a media show. In fact, nuclear power has been plagued by Chicken Littles, just like the ones promoting climate change alarmism today. Don’t believe them!
@@leopoldbloom4835 The comparison to flying and landing strip is missed. We don't need nuclear waste recycling to work immediately (like you need a landing strip when you are flying). Immediately we need a storage mechanism, and that is working pretty darn well. The amount of nuclear waste is tiny, and storing it securely is not an issue. We have promising research directions to for recycling it too (like SMRs), so the problem of recycling is not ignored at all. And please do note that nuclear waste recycling is much more advanced than waste from other energy generation methods. Coal is emitting more radioactive elements to the environment than nuclear, because no one cares about storing the waste securely. Solar and wind are often irrecyclable right now, and their lifetimes is much shorter than nuclear. Nuclear waste is a problem, and it's good to talk about it. But IMHO we worry far too much about this problem and far too little about problems of other energy generators.
France is like that one team member that does 70% of the presentation and Germany is the person who says "mhm I'll get around to it" and never does.
Small correction: 0:43 The fallout spread on easterly winds, not westerly. The wind's name is where it came from, not where it's going.
@@Yulo2000Leyjenimbys are destroying society
@@Yulo2000Leyje I do not think you realize how little waste is actually produced. It is not much. I highly recommend this guy, a energy professor. Ill even time stamp where he talks about how much is produced. /c1QmB5bW_WQ?t=1517
DAng it i always check comments before video, thanks
@@Yulo2000Leyjedo you know how much (or rather how little) nuclear waste is actually created?
@@beanapprentice1687 Depends on if you mean just the fuel pellets themselves or all the equipment, uniforms, PPE, etc that gets contaminated and has to be disposed of as well. Combine all that with the containment and protective shielding so it doesn't seep into groundwater for a long period of time, and it adds up. There are theoretical plans of how to store it long-term, making tunnels underground that can then be backfilled and compartmentalized on the way out, for example. But getting approval and then building it is probably a long way out yet. Dumping at sea is a less legal option due to treaties not to do it anymore, despite it being the easiest, most cost-effective, and somewhat "safest" method (ocean floor is 3 miles down and it would be roughly concentrated in the dumping area, but there's still ocean life there as well as whatever drift you have from the currents).
The worst part here is that Three Mile could hardly even be considered a disaster. A disaster in PR maybe, but nowhere near a nuclear disaster, yet had such a massive impact nonetheless.
A sorry coincidence with the China Syndrome being released to theaters, and the mainstream media went to town on them hyping the incident completely out of proportion
How was Three Mile Island not a disaster? That was a partial meltdown of the core, which damaged the reactor beyond repair. According to wikipedia, the cleanup lasted for 14 years and cost 1 billion US$, and obviously, the multi billion $ investment into the reactor were lost, too, after only three years of operation. It's not on par with Chernobyl or Fukushima, they really got lucky, but that's still a disaster, don't you think?
Yes, on the level of nuclear disasters, TMI would be ranked somewhere around the Joke level.
@@MatjesHunts Apologies, I should have clarified. I meant a disaster in relation to public health. Sure it was a financial disaster, but the situation did not actually pose much of a health risk to surrounding residents. I believe Kyle Hill recently made a video covering this recently. I would consider it more of an nuclear "accident" than a disaster. That being said it still shouldn't have happened. It occurred due to bad early warning design, although the actual containment design worked alright since there was never actually a risk of an explosion. The only reason talk of a possible explosion ever took place was due to a miscalculation by the NRC.
@@beewyka819 Nuclear disasters are typically like that: very low deaths, very high financial cost. But if your core melts down, that is definitely a disaster.
When our bavarian brothers would not be that dump, we'd already have enough storage by the north-south relation for wind energy
dumb* Cheers from the Rhineland
10:10 Magnox? Britain kept ones running until the mid 2010s, and North Korea uses them to this day.
It’s crazy that the two greatest nuclear disasters were caused by utter incompetence and cataclysmic natural disasters. And then that every other nuclear disaster had a higher death rate by suicide than by cancer and radiation sickness
Wizard, plus Fukushima put a nuke plant on a shoreline where earthquakes and tsunamis happen …. that’s poor planning.
@@stevesherman1743 Other nuclear power plants on the coast got hit just as hard, but didn't suffer any meltdowns. It wasn't the location of Fukushima Daiichi, but rather the fact that they didn't build a sea-wall appropriate for the location, ignored advice on locating emergency generators high up and didn't provide enough isolation for safety systems located in the basement. There was also incompetence too, as the engineers had neglected their responsibilities to test safety systems. Meaning they had no idea if the ICs were functioning, since they didn't actually know what operational ICs look like.
Not quite. What *is* crazy is that anyone thinks it will ever be any different with nuclear. Tell me now. Who do you think is planning where current power plants will go? God? I'll go one better - even if we say for the sake of argument that *all* nuclear accidents to date have been caused by our juman stupidity (i's not quite true), work it out for yourself: given current and historical levels of human greed, incompetence and downright stupidity, should we build power plants that scatter radioactive contaminants everywhere when people do stupid things? Now: Anyone that answers yes to that is truly stupid. In other news, even God (LOL) would be scratching his head to tell us how many people have died from just normal operations of nuclear power, never mind all the disasters - and we have had plenty by now. Plenty - disasters that Nuclear told us would not happen. Yet, somehow, you know exactly where all the hot particles went, and can categorically tell us that they caused relatively few deaths. You seem to be in the wrong job. You should be telling fortunes - or maybe working for the IAEA, because their scientists seem to think that radioactive releases are dangerous, and they are spending billions on containments. You could save them all that money. Go you.
@@stevesherman1743 Yep. Nuclear are poor planners. Tell you what. Why don't we ask them to build lots more. Duhhh.
@@punishedfoxo LOL. Yes, quite a catalogue of stupidity - by the nuclear industry. Given that level of stupidity in practically all humans, namely you - yes you!, and me too, and every other human on earth. What kind of power plants do you think we should build, now that we can see what humans can be trusted with - i.e. sod all? And given that, when operated with an adequate level of incompetence, nuclear power plants explode and scatter hot particles all over the earth, should we be building any more than we have to? If you answer anything else but "no" to that, you are too wrapped up in the technology, or have too much to gain from building nuclear power plants. Understand, we still need nuclear so long as other nations have it, but we should not be generating electricity with it - or worse - licensing private companies with greedy shareholders to do that for us.
French here who's working in for EDF in a nuclear power plant. Few things to be said: Firstly, the safety of french reactors is immensely better than any russian or Japanese technology. The technology involved is different and the AIEA (the independent nuclear control organism) imposes on us a lot of control even if the slightest non dangerous fault is detected. After Fukushima we had to improve all of our facilities' safety in regards to earthquakes and tsunamis eventhough the threat is basically non-existent in France Secondly, you didn't mentioned how we ended up with an industry with a critical lack of investment. This was largely due to the European integration that imposed on us some ludicrous competition policies. EDF has to sell at a loss one third of its production to the competition. We are the only energy producer in France but we finance a flock of privately owned company who are supposed to develop their own production site, which they do not. So basically, we got the French taxpayer who paid for the construction of the powerplant, who subsidies private entities, and who buys to these company the electricity providing them a huge margin. This policy was pushed by Germany in order to get a European energy market where all of the competitive advantages of France have been nullified. It is a complete rip off
It was also Germany (and I think Greece, not really conversant on that) that opposed Brexit. As an American, you make it sound like they wanted to creste a gov't. external to and independent of every national gov't. in Europe, so they could afford to be more stubborn and intractable in the 21st Century than in the previous five. I am overstating the situation, but I imagine not fabricating it from whole cloth.
Saying that your plants are safer than Japan's is an impressive claim, since Japan is supposed to have among the most modern 2nd-gen plants in the world.
@@HuntingTarg so to keep it simple, the plant of Fukushima Dai Ichi used some reactors built in the 70s, so not so new. Their technology is a reactor of "boiling water", meaning that basically their is only one cooling system, and that the coolant is on direct contact with the core of the reactor, so a single leak in that circuit leads to radioactive contamination. The French technology is a reactor of "pressurised water". The coolant which is on contact with the core of the reactor never exist the confinement structure. There is a secondary and a tertiary cooling system that is not radioactive. That means that in the case of a fusion of the core, the Japanese system is dependent on their electrically powered pumps to inject water directly into the core of the reaction. In the French system you have some redundancies that allow us to operate some safety operation through the secondary and the tertiary cooling circuit, which limit the risk of critical failure of the entire system
@@HuntingTarg and you can add to that that the safety processes of the Japanese industry at the time was vastly exaggerated. TEPCO is a private company focuses on making a profit. They had two internal and one external audit that pointed out the risks of their system before 2011 but TEPCO didn't addressed the concerns. Safety is expensive
@@HuntingTarg oh and did I mentioned that in Fukushima the used nuclear fuel was stored in swimming pools located on top of the reactor? So when the pressure of the reactor had the confinement structure burst, all of the used nuclear materials were spread around the area
france is the leader here. acquiring the skills needed for new nuclear power stations has been a painful process. there has been a lot of development of materials science since the 1950-70s. with this new technology studies are being done how to extend lifespans to 75 years. there are also molten salt reactor designs being developed. these can use existing waste as fuel while also reducing the total amount of waste. its not so say that all alt energy is useless. thanks to fracking technology, deep geothermal energy may be able to provide significant amounts of energy to the grid as well. when i was a kid at school and the narrative was that nuclear = bad, waste = bad, i always wondered why not invest in studying for solutions. scientists are quite good like that.
the problem, as the video shows, is that Nuclear keeps arriving behind schedule and overbudget. Including in France. Flaminville is 12 years and €16 billion over budget. Even China didn't even reach 50% of their original nuclear power target (112GW) for 2020 - missed their revised target of 70GW for 2020 - and are set to missed the revised revised target of 70GW for 2025. Whereas renewable projects have been beating their targets. Again, using China as the example where their target was 1,200 GW for 2030 - which is on course to be beaten by 2025. And this is the problem that Governments are seeing when they're looking at where they want to invest resources. We're seeing countries like the UK investing tens of billions into nuclear, with French backing, and still seeing generation *decline*.
2:10 "very real" well you should put thing in perspective. The mortality rate for nuclear power is a few deaths per trillion kwh. The mortality rate of coal power is 10 000 to 170 000 deaths per trillion kwh. And coal power plants actually releases more radioactive emissions than nuclear power plants.
I think there is an error at 11:33 regarding the cracks found in French nuclear reactors. Error might be too strong a word but something important is missing: While the cracks were indeed found, they were found on a backup security system which is meant to be used in order to inject water under high pressure to cool down the core in case of an emergency. This is by no mean something you should ignore and backup systems should be in perfect working condition because you want them to be working when you need them. Cracks were however not found on the primary circuit in which water circulates under normal operating conditions. If your French is good enough, there is a lengthy parliamentary enquiry on this topic you can find on youtube,
Thank you for giving us the real information on the defects found at the plant. Fear mongering is common when it comes to talking about Nuclear Power and I'm not surprised that this wasn't as big a deal as the presenter made it sound like. Also I find it troublesome that such a big commotion is made about the lack of certified nuclear vessel welders. This could be rectified by training programs in a matter of months. This is not an Astrophysics or Quantum Mechanics type of long term study. It takes proper instruction and hours and hours of practice (months of daily work), not 6 years of post graduate work. Pay them what they are worth and you will attract guys from all over the world to come there and do the necessary quality work. These types of certified welders are worth more than most Engineers. Just because they can't do the Calculus doesn't mean that they are not highly skilled and highly intelligent.
@@marscruz I completely agree.
@RepentandbelieveinJesusChrist repent to my ass
There are welders but the number of hours they can work in this part of the reactor has an annual maximum set by law. That said, experienced welders are in high demand and there are not enough of them. However, this is a common problem for all manufacturing industries.
@@julientabulazero103 This does not apply to the construction process. Only to maintenance and repairs.
@0:46 "spread on Westerly winds" Westerlies are from the west to the east... the image shows winds from east to west...
One important thing which is not highlighted in this video is where France's nuclear reactors get their uranium from. This is very important with regards to total associated emissions as well as from an energy security point of view.
The amount of uranium used in npp's is very small and can be imported from Australia and Canada. Enriched material is stored years in advance - by the way, where does Germany get its lng from?
@newyorker641 The point is that one can't claim that France's nuclear sector is so carbon-neutral when uranium is having to be shipped over from other continents - and from countries which are ex-French colonies. Anyhow, that doesn't make Germany's energy sector any cleaner!
still ALOT better then germany and the rest of the world by loads
@@ridarikabi8601"oh noooo we have to ship a few cargo ship of Uranium from halfway across the world" we dont even HAVE to import that much because we can and France does recycle spent uranium meaning it has an even better reserves. You wanna know the truth? NOTHING is carbon neutral as far as producing massive amount of electricity is concerned, the renewables? They pollute like hell to produce the infrastructure required, then you still have to maintain it, while also destroying natural fields to make giant fields of stuff like Wind or Solar energy destroying landscapes in the process. By all mean compared to nearly everyone else especially germany lol France IS as close to carbon neutral as it could be in energy production, since nuclear uses clean ressources we can renew quite a few time, that we can also stockpile for a while, necessiting little space, and overall quite safe. Also theres nothing wrong with buying from ex-french colony, yes France is bad to them, but just because its the former imperialist doesnt grant an embargo by default, and Uranium sources are varied enough around the world that an Embargo would take a years to hit properly
Uranium is highly abundant in the earths crust. There is plenty of places they can get it.
One of the things you missed, and I hope you cover in your next video, is that SMRs aren't just easily replaced because they're small, they're easily replaced because they are designed to be built and assembled in a factory, instead of being assembled in-situ.
They also use the fuel less efficiently and create even more waste issues than the large facilities though. And the Nuscale projects in the US are already falling apart as time to market and cost increased significantly.
@@BugMagnet You're right, the replaceable nature generates large volume of waste which hasn't been accounted for and requires new waste streams. For reprocessing facilities, such as in the UK, there are large volumes of operational waste generated that currently do not have a waste stream or route. SMRs will have to be designed to meet future disposal requirements, or at least have decommissionable parts that can be easily decontaminated or size reduced for appropriate waste conditioning. In the UK, this would have to meet acceptance criteria for the GDF as national strategy has shifted from spent fuel reprocessing. SMR manufacturers would probably also have to fund the various waste conditioning streams for the waste generated as a result of their products, as existing disposal options for LLW for example are restricted to existing operational large-scale plants and facilities. Waste predictions and strategy through to 2135 published in the 3-yearly radioactive waste inventory report compiled by NWS (Nuclear Waste Services) do not include waste generated by additional waste streams such as SMRs that have yet to come to fruition.
@@BugMagnet The main reason nuclear reactors are inefficient is to avoid handling the fuel over non-proliferation concerns. With waste reprocessing fuel use can be much more complete. (Which means that the waste only needs to be stored for decades instead of millennia.) It it very difficult to do waste reprocessing in a way the prevents nation states from diverting material to nuclear weapons. France is able to do it because they are one of the established nuclear powers.
@@jamesphillips2285 That is the advertisement I have heard a lot. Upon looking into the topic of closed fuel cycles I found both the USA and France managed to build fast breeders that up fuel use by orders of magnitude. (closed fuel cycle instead of open fuel cycle) All those projects were then buried by their designers over the same issues of horrendous economics and poor reliability. Yes, it solves the waste proble, but actually using that technology is so expensive no one would ever want to do that. Which brings the whole nuclear industry back to "lalalalala nothing bad will happen for a million years lalala" The next attempt at this was supposed to be molten salt reactors. One was run in china and big surprise, molten salts eat through pipes. As soon as someone manages to build a reactor that can produce affordable electricity with waste that only needs to be handles for one century, I will be all for it. But good luck competing with renewables that are dropping below 5ct/kwh all over the globe.
@@jamesphillips2285 This is an interesting one. I can only speak from experience in the UK, I don't have the means of knowledge elsewhere. The UK, having reprocessed more spent nuclear fuel than the rest of the world combined, and that's at one plant in particular (there were two major reprocessing plants, THORP & Magnox.) What made Magnox Reprocessing so successful was the natural enrichment of the Uranium metal fuel that compiled the Magnox fuel rod. This restricted the fissile content to some 0.8%. Magnox Reprocessing's chemical separation plant could use large scale stirrer tanks instead of smaller and restricted pulse columns of THORP, which were geometrically restricted in design to allow neutron leakage as such to prevent a criticality. The plants were designed to output similar quantities per year, but THORP's added complexity generated a multitude of technical problems during operation that ultimately led to an average output of just a third of its true capacity. Reprocessing in the UK doesn't necessarily eliminate the length of time required to store the waste, it simply volume reduced it it (using the French AVM process actually) by diverting the fission fragments dissolved in the organic phase of chemical separation during reprocessing into highly active liquor, concentrating the liquor, storing it in HAST (highly active storage tanks) and mixing the evaporated calcined liquor into glass through its vitrification plant. The concentrated nature of the fission products generate sizable quantities of heat output that require passive convection cooling for up to 40 years prior to any consideration of storage into the geological disposal facility, which it'll remain for the rest of days. The PUREX chemistry allowed for large volumed of Plutonium waste to be generated, which the UK has the world's largest stockpile of, and no final plan for where this will be disposed of. Various plants are being constructed for the handling of these special nuclear materials to contain it for the short-medium term. Ultimately, reprocessing whilst proven successful for the UK has been met with significant technical challenges and cost. Magnox Reprocessing held up better than THORP despite nearing 60 years in age as opposed to THORP's 25 years of operation, but the last fuel rod went through the charge machines last year, ending the UK's reprocessing programme. Further spent fuel will simply be held within storage ponds until the final disposal becomes available. It's simply cheaper than constructing a modern reprocessing facility with all the regulatory oversight that would inevitably delay its construction. This doesn't consider the effluent wastes generated that require ion exchange or flocculation either, or grout encapsulated waste generated, such as sheared Magnox swarf from the fuel cladding.
What I don't understand is how the France of the 1970's was able to construct all these reactors that have apparently performed quite well, yet modern day France seems unable to equal even a fraction of these past accomplishments. It's also quite baffling that France would go all in on nuclear power and then completely abandon it so quickly, these potential problems should have been quite obvious.
because of politics. The French green party is in part financed and influenced by the German green party who is using German taxpayer money to spread its anti-nuclear ideology in neighbouring countries.
We have lost the "savoir faire", that's mean that we don t have anymore enought engineer or expert il fonction. We simply lose our knowledge by not contructing new site for more than 40 years. Also now security has way more hight standards, that's means more cost and even more technicals needs to construction.
Liberalism is a hell of a disease
Le left is a cancer for France DE Gaulle was the last true leader
Politics. Nuclear energy had bad reputation for too long, politics decided to go against it for too long, and we lost the knowledge. => Oh Fukushima: let's decommission every nuclear plant. Oh no more gas: let's build more nuclear plants. etc. Baffling as you said.
But are those new expensive nuclear reactors high pressure - explosive - water / steam? Or are they low pressure molten salt with a totally easier to manage safety profile? Anyway - great background material - love it.
Yeah, I notice how 'cheap' wind and solar is - especially when they are not producing any output, which is more often that people think, and 100 % backup of renewables is required mainly these days by CCGT gas turbines - which are the only things fast enough to keep up with the roller coaster unreliable output of renewables, and keep the lights on.
Output of solar and wind power plants can be accurately predicted 48h in advance, as soon as one has enough solar and wind power installed.
@@old-pete Then why is the weather forecast always wrong ?
@@chrissmith2114 The weather forecast is not always wrong. Additionally the forecast is not for one region, but all regions. That is why I wrote one needs a certain amount of installations. Forecasting the output of a single windturbine would be difficult.
@@old-pete The truth is that unreliable wind and solar need 100% backup from mainly quick reaction CCGT - UK is set to build at least 20 new CCGT stations in next few years. You have in Australia the madness of EV being charged from diesel powered generators. Solar in UK between October to march contributes very little to grid and then only a few hours per day. Just look at grass and trees in UK, they stop growing October and start again in March ( hint they use same 'power source' as solar panels ). Suggest you look a Sheffield University 'Gridwatch' site which graphically shows inputs to grid every 15 minutes, and has daily, weekly, monthly and annual graphs, just watch how often renewables do not turn up.
The output of solar is only zero at night at a national level. The output of windturbines is not zero either. Gridwatch clearly shows that.
I was extremely into environmentalism even from when I was young, and the opposition of major green parties, environmental groups etc to nuclear power was always the thing that confused me the most. Sure, once I learned about Chernobyl I was scared of nuclear fallout and treated nuclear sources with the respect they deserve, but it seemed so strange to want to ban that entire form of power generation when thousands and thousands of people die every year of coal mining related injuries and illnesses and we were acknowledging that we had to use less fossil fuel.
Well the nuclear waste isnt so nice for the people either
@@Zwiebel4 Nuclear power is the only option to replace fossil fuels. To almost exact quote preeminent climate scientist Dr James Hansen, believing that renewables can replace fossil fuels worldwide is almost as bad as believing in the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. The IPCC reports also say that there is no solution with more nuclear. Re cost: Nuclear power is way cheaper. Take the worst case for nuclear, Vogtle (Hinkley C is comparable). 30 billion USD for 2234 MW nameplate. Say 90% capacity factor and 80 year life. A simple amortized cost is about 21 USD / MWh. Take utility scale solar. Take some reasonable / optimistic numbers. Say about 0.70 USD / watt nameplate. 20% capacity factor. 25 year lifetime. A simple amortized cost is about 16 USD / MWh. Already it's a wash. Now look up any paper trying to model an energy transition to solar wind. They call for 2x or 3x overbuilds on solar and wind to reduce storage requirements to a something reasonable. For that, see the peer reviewed paper "Geophysical constraints on the reliability of solar and wind power in the United States". I haven't even added in the costs of the 1 day of batteries (huge), extra transmission costs (also huge), costs for synthetic grid inertia and blackstart capability (large). Re LCOE: Often, nuclear is reported as not being vastly cheaper compared to solar and wind. This is because most cost numbers are from anti-nuclear source Lazard using LCOE. LCOE is a scam because it doesn't compare total system costs; it compares only solar cells and wind turbines to nuclear power plants, but solar cells and wind turbines require a lot more extra equipment to make a working grid (storage, backup, overbuild factors, synthetic grid inertia, blackstart capability). LCOE is also a scam because it bakes in a cheat that makes longlasting capital seem much more expensive. It's called discounting. It's a tool for a private investor who only cares about short term profits. it's completely inappropriate for directing public funding. Something can have a smaller LCOE but a higher upfront capital cost and a higher cost per year to maintain the solution. LCOE makes nuclear appear 3x to 9x more expensive for common discount rates of 3% and 10% respectively. Nuclear looks worse under LCOE because it has a much longer lifetime compared to solar and wind.
renewables exist...
@@Zwiebel4stop for a moment to think about those statements. If renewables only was cheaper, Germany/Denmark should have cheaper power than France /Sweden who use a lot of nuclear. But they aren’t. Ask why, and you’ll see the flaws in the math. Highly recommend podcasts by Chris Keefer and Robert Bruce, substack by Doomberg that cover the data in detail.
@@rubenwillmarth9731 There is a lot more to installing renewables than just the cost. Wind is incredibly cheap. It has become the cheapest form of power generation today. The reason why we don't have more of it is simply because political reasons and the required distance to inhabited areas prevent energy companies from building more.
One Problem of re-stating nuclear power in germany: There's noone to work at those reactors. The old guys are entering their pensions now or work to safely dispose of the old reactors. Since everybody thought the exit was coming, there are no universities teaching nuclear engineering etc. anymore. We lost the know-how. Not to mention the general lack of workers in this country...
DTU (Technical University of Denmark) just started teaching the physics and engineering of nuclear power plants again. I also bet some of the old guys could be persuaded out of retirement -- just like old COBOL programmers were up to Y2K. It's a problem that can be solved easily (and quickly) as soon as the regulatory climate in Germany turns for the better.
@@mitropoulosilias we ain't importing nuclear scientists, we are mostly importing labour to fill positions in healthcare, construction etc. So positions which don't get filled by Germans themselves. And yes the tax burden is a problem, but mostly because it doesn't get reinvested correctly due to inefficient buocracy
If a problem can be solved with money, it's not a problem
The needed craft should be generalized ... to something like "Mission Critical Safety Systems Engineering" or "Dangerous Technical Processes Management", not specific to nuclear technology only. There will always be need for such expertise profile and good money in their careers. Also the problem of lost knowledge is unacceptable in age of information, it is clearly lack of law-mandated procedures for knowledge management in place and nonexistence of national (and international) infrastructures for retaining such important documentation.
Amazing nuclear ever happened in the first place since it had never been done before and there was no one with experience and no universities teaching it!
I have an essay about this in about an hour from now. You gave me great ideas to form or to give attention about renewable energies thanks man
In Austria we only build one nuclear power plant and never activated it (the vote for banning it was conducted before they started it ,but after they already build it)
I feel an immense amount of dread every time I remember the nuclear shutdowns and reinstating of Russian gas and very dangerous brown coal plants, as a German.
yeah i feel the same dread looking at france reinvesting in nuclear energy in 2023. i agree we shouldnt have turned off all plants yet but reinvesting in it is even worse. and its not like france is only risking their own people, when they are overusing their plants and the inevitable happens we will be the idiots too. i cant believe we just let that happen and at least we did the morally right thing even if it wasnt the most efficient or profitable thing.
Modern fission power plants do not have the same risks as those ones. Fission technology is actually thousands of times safer than fossil fuel power plants. You do know burning coal, oil, and natural gas releases toxins like FUCKING MERCURY into the air that we end up breathing in, yeah? Modern fission plants are specifically designed so that if they have a problem, they do NOT explode. The only reason Fukushima turned into such a disaster is because the plant's owners didn't want to spend money to protect it from tsunamis, even after the government said they should. The only reason anyone would ever have reason to fear nuclear power is ignorance and emotional bias.
I get the same amount of dread when i google maps germany and look at the open slag pits. They have destroyed large parts of their country with coal mining and let people that don't understand nuclear energy scare politicians away from it.
@@NOBODY-oq1xr1. It's nowhere near inevitable 2. Modern plants are extremely safe even if several steps go extremely wrong, even if a meltdown does happen, modern containment structures make it practically a non issue, even Fukushima had 0 recorded deaths for example
Chernobyl was _the_ example of extreme danger in shoddy, unsafe design. This is not the case for any nuclear power plant in Germany, France, the US, Japan or even Australia (yes Australia has a nuclear power plant - it is for producing radioactive isotopes for medicine rather than for generating electricity, but still, it's there).
4:41 For everyone who is confused by the solar energy in France from 2PM to 3AM, the x-axis does not show the time, it shows the past 24 hours, so it begins somethere during a summer afternoon. You make very good and well researched videos.
Yes, it was clearly labelled as such. But it would be more intuitive if the hours were aligned with the clock, or make it obvious, by showing, say, 30 hours.
Not only that. Germany is under green dictatorship, where loud mouth and emotions overpowering science and logic.
> "This is what a day looks like in France" > TIME (PAST 24-HOURS) > 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 Who could have possibly thought that it _wasn't_ for a day
@@williamstucke5445 what you are asking for is to have statistics and graphs that are not made to mislead you or trick you into believing in a bias. This was clearly done on purpose.
Thanks I was also wondering why this was presented with that stupid time axis.
People tend to forget that Germany is one of the safest countries for nuclear Powerplants. No majpr environmental Problems (like Tsunamis). One of the highest Safety standarts in the world,... it just doesnt make sense for the "green" Party to shut the worlds most advanced nuclear Reactors while, 3km behind the French border, there is one of the oldest Nuclear plants in the World (Tihange) for ex.
The conservatives and liberals decided the shutdown.
Not only aging Plants, with multiple record heat summers with low river levels, France had to Limit production and even shut down some plants during weeks in summer ... And it is getting even warmer
Yeah it was great having Germany criticize Russia while simultaneously buying oil from them in insane quantities.
Well, now he’s buying. They just transport it through India, burning a lot of fuel. There used to be efficient gas pipelines. But there are two advantages: 1. Germany no longer depends on gas from Russia. Depends on fertilizers from Russia. 2. Russia will not freeze due to global warming.
Man they are super hypocrites, 😭🤮😓😵
@@jamesburrows3602 you cannot trust germans in business and in general !
@@jamesburrows3602 German governments since Merkel got to power in 2005 are a complete joke
It is incredible how much harm Germany caused to the World since its foundation. Amazes me.
15:05 This is the exact reason we had so much underinvestment for years, French politicians basically said the exact same thing and first wanted to reduce France's nuclear share of electricity generation to 50% of our electricity grid. France's issue is also down to its red tape, Finland has the same EPRs 2 and they just launched their first one.
Yea Finland does. And the reactor was started operation over 10 years late. There were a lot of issues. I remeber at least one was that a French company supplying critical components went bankrupt. And the reactor itself was compleatly new desing and would have been at the the originally planned date of completion of 2009 been the largest nuclear reactor in Europe or even the World.
Why would you bring up the Finnish EPR as an argument? That reactor was also decades behind schedule and billions of euro over budget
@@jokuvaan5175 Yes, the reactor started operation severely late and over budget, but large part of that is because the knowhow of building nuclear power plants has been lost. Some delays were because: -Areva (the French company in charge for building the power plant) was not at all familiar with the Finnish authorities, who actually wants to see and inspect fabrication and quality control plans for critical components before their fabrication can begin. (=Inexperience with Finnish authorities) -Areva had previously only supplied the reactor, not the entire powerplant. They effectively jumped in to a huge construction project with little to no experience. -The people who were involved with building the currently operating nuclear plants did it in the 70's and 80's. Skilled and experienced people in this field have retired a long time ago. -The design was new, which quite understandably caused delays both in design and fabrication phases. For example, some critical components were made 2 or 3 times to reach the required quality level with the selected fabrication methods. -Key personell in TVO (the organization who bought the reactor) had no relevant experience in managing large construction projects. -Safety requirements have become much more strict since the previous projects, requiring the design and implementation of new safety systems or redesign of old systems. If a similar project was to happen within the next few years, there would likely be far fewer delays and cost overruns. First of all, the companies and key personell involved have gained experience in design and management of large construction project. The new design has been built, new fabrication methods have been tested and improved. Some design issues have been solved. Companies have gained experience working with the authorities and each other.
@@andersvj Because it was also a pilot reactor (so going over budget is expected just like in any industrial pilot programme). Now that it works and that most of the required knowledge has been acquired, building the following reactors will be both faster and cheaper.
Actually no, the exact reason is Germany hates seeing France with the nuclear advantage, so they lobbied directly and via the EU to bury France's nuclear program. And now they're like "oh look, it's dangerous because it's not maintained enough". Yeah right, it's not maintained enough because they requested it to be abandoned.
I have watched all and you havent even mentioned about melted light metals nuclear plants - the stable fission reaction
Even when this video is very good in parts of explaining history and status of Nuclear Power, there are some muddles in the topic of German exit from nuclear and fossil-fuel energy. Let me explain as some German that are interested in the energy transition for years. 4:26 "How could they celebrate?" As you describe, it was a long fight for some of the people against power plants in general. Additional the topic power plant was used in Germany to try to delay the energy transition pointing out to "only build power plants" in 20 or more years. "harms Germanys goals for clean energy" - no the opposite. Because nuclear power plants are so expensive, you have to use the generated power every time. This results in the situation, that we turn off regenerative power plants. Because of regulations we also have to pay for that. Without the nuclear power plants, we are now able to use more of existing regenerative energies and can import more cheap regenerative energies from Denmark or Belgium. Additional shutting down nuclear power has an end now, because no one last, so we can focus on reducing coal and gas now (it was planned to do both in parallel, but political actors delayed successfully. Investors of fossil fuels do big marketing campaigns to have as much delay as possible. 4:33 "more dependend on fossil fuels" - no, since shut down of nuclear power plant, we burn as less coal as 1965 5:09 "france is energy independend" - no, France imports all Uranium e.g. from Russia or Africa as Germany before. Germany decided to become independent from this. France get more and more problems because that dependency. 5:25 France use heaters a lot. So in summer, when France has too much nuclear power so it's cheap, Germany slows down fossil energy generation as much as possible to import from France and many others. In winter France uses cheap wind from Germany, because alone there will be not enough energy in France in winter. Import/Export beween France and Germany is +/- 0 6:54 LNG we only start to import gas, because the pipeline to Russia was closes and destroyed by terrorism. It's less for energy production (here we have many backups like coal or import), but the industry and heating needs it a lot. In future we need LNG to import H₂, because Germany is too small to produce all needed energy for all the industry alone.
You missed one major fact. Germany was to be considered main battlefield in cold war times. People were not only against nuclear power but nuclear weapons, too. And both are related at least in mind. From a practical perspective. Think of captain Schettino or pilot Lubitz running a nuclear power plant as chief engineer. You will only know after something is getting wrong.
This is the context I was missing! Thank you. I finished the video and was left with the question "But... WHY?".
In that case, the threat of nuclear exchange makes any threat posed by nuclear reactors negligible...
@@jamesmccurdy The video was only about presenting nuclear power as good and not about illuminating why Germany is against it. It was also full of mistakes, like France being a net exporter and Germany importing electricity from France. Germany has been a net exporter of electricity on an annual basis for many years. And the people in Germany have been demanding the development of renewable energies since the 80s, but the corrupt CDU has made many criminal deals with the coal industry and systematically destroyed e.g. the German solar industry, which was the world market leader. Over the decades, there have been many very big scandals around the topic of nuclear power and final storage, a lot of police violence during protests (see "Castor transports"), lies, deception, lack of transparency, corruption. Simply a lot of things that have stuck in people's heads over several generations. All this was not illuminated at all and everything was simply presented as if the Greens had no concept and as if Germans were just scaredy-cats without a plan.
A good point, especially relevant today, as in, July 4th 2023. There have been reports of Russia planting bombs at the Zaporizhzhia NPP that is under their control and the Ukraine government claims to have knowledge of the Russians telling the civil work force to clear the NPP by tomorrow. They have made threats to blow it up already, let's hope it is just threats.
What a ridiculous take..
I don't know where you saw that "nuclear reactors typically have a lifespan between 20 to 40 years". Pretty much every commercial design is designed to last *at least* 40 years. As for the corrosion crisis, had you checked on your spreadsheet, you would have noticed that it typically affected *newer* reactors. The affected pipes were emergency circuits, meaning they couldn't have burst at *any moment* as you claim, but only if safety injection was used. That's a big problem for sure, but it was not the ticking bomb your phrasing implies. Sorry, but I think you could've spent a little more time researching the subject, especially as an engineering channel which should have the skills required for a more in-depth understanding of the issue. As it stands, your video ends up making erroneous statements regarding the causes and consequences of this crisis.
RE is only an "Engineering channel" in the loosest sense, they often have only a shallow understanding of the topics they talk about.
That is a fair assessment of the video. Some of the comments provide far more factual data. I also enjoy how he glosses over the fact that solar and wind require standby sources to maintain the grid. By definition, that standby source CANNOT be solar or wind. France has it right and China is actually building more nuclear power plants than ANY country on the planet.
@@Joe-xq3zuscience enthusiast vs scientist
Real engineering has a bias against nuclear, i don't know why, but it is very obvious when you watch multiples videos in which he talk about nuclear energy. He will only present part of the facts. brush off the politics around them and just get to the conclusion that nuclear energy isn't worth it, look at this video Germany the most industrialized and wealthy country in Europe is emitting massive amounts of CO2 and they are injecting billions of euros to transition to renewable energy, but still failing, the conclusion of the video is that France is a ticking bomb while exporting electricity and trying to modernize their nuclear power plants. It's ludicrous coming from someone who is usually rational.
You have to realize that people who advocate for solar and wind are liars. Everything they say about nuclear, gas, solar and wind are a pack of lies. He's not just "wrong," he is deliberately misleading his audience.
You forgot to mention that France has to import uranium, so no independence there. Plus mining of uranium is pretty dirty. And then the nuclear waste. In Germany they still have not figured out how and where to finally store the nuclear waste.
Hi, oldish German with a physics degree here. After watching the entire video I still know precious little about why Germany supposedly hates nuclear power. I had speculated that, as the Green Party started as a Cold-War fueled peace movement and Germany would have been where all those tactical nukes that were built during the nuclear arms race were supposed to stop the swarms of Soviet tanks, turning Germany into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, Germans might have become extra critical of anything nuclear. Even earlier than that, when the new post-WW II German army was created, there were calls to arm it with nuclear weapons. The German government rejected that idea, for pretty obvious reasons - that would not have looked good to anyone a mere 10 years or so after the end of the Third Reich. And then there was (or should I say is, and ever will be?) the search for a national long-term storage facility for highly radioactive waste. It was ongoing when I learned about it as a boy. Now I'm almost ready to retire and they still haven't found one. Maybe they will all agree on one before I die, but I am not holding my breath. I also hoped for more background on Merkel's decision to get out of nuclear energy after Fukushima. At the time there were discussions about "reworking" and slowing the previously decided "Atomausstieg" (nuclear phase-out), not least of all in Merkel's own party, and Angela Merkel herself had until then not shown any enthusiasm about saying goodbye to nuclear power. Then Fukushima happened, and suddenly she was spearheading a new effort to reverse the reversal and get out of the nuclear power game even faster than previously planned. It was pretty striking to observe. I always suspected that she, as the head of German government and one of the very politicians with a science education, might have learned more about the real happenings in Fukushima, and something about that non-public information might have spooked her. Let me be clear, I personally do not hate nuclear power or radioactivity. If you can build a nuclear powerplant cheaply and safely enough, and you succeed in convincing enough of the neighbors of where you want to build it to not sue the hell out of you, then more power to you, figuratively and literally! But from what I am seeing, nuclear power won't save anyone from climate change - it will simply take too long to implement. Traditional nuclear plants are monstrous money pits that now take forever to build, thanks to the nuclear industry's past sins that have required more and more regulation. SMRs (small modular reactors), Next-gen reactors and fusion power are still at least 50% hype, and the final 20% of any problem are the hardest, right? But let's say we miraculously build all those nuclear power stations, and we get another problem: we need to buy fuel for them. I don't need to spell out what it means when demand exceeds supply. Plus, the current main provider of uranium is Kazakhstan, delivering about 40% of the world's demand. What if Russia decided they'd like to re-acquire the thinly populated yet resource-rich former Soviet republic to make Mother Russia great again? Not so great for the rest of the world.
Great video, as always. Just a few things I'd like to add : 1) There is currently a massive overhaul of the older reactors, known as "Grand Carénage". The objective is to get on the same level of safety as the newest plant, the EPR2, by heavily upgrading almost every aspect of the process : a new "tub" to collect corium is being added, all the piping and hvac systems are being checked to be sure it'd resist a massive earthquake, all the cableways are reinforced, and so on and so forth. The main goal is to be able to push the reactor to 60 years, and perhaps even beyond that, while maintaining safety standards among the best in the world. 2) FLA3, or the new EPR being build in Flamanville, costs discrepency mainly comes from a policial issue : all the others reactors are made in pairs, which allows for a much better "scale effect" than building one reactor after the other. For exemple, if you are stuck on a problem while building the first reactor, you can use the knowledge to modify the second one while building it, and in the end you'll end up with 2 reactors in less time that it would take you to only build one. 3) FES, the nuclear plant of Fessenheim in France, was closed ahead of its time because of political pressure by Germany and Switzerland. This was a huge blow to EDF economy during the corrosion episode, and is still something that is resented in France (I work in the field in France, all the views above are mine and not my company's).
And Fessenheim was indeed a disgrace and disregard of security concerns of your Eastern neighbours. Nothing wrong with putting NPPs on solid streams, but doing it downwind and away from your major economic hubs is quite telling how little you care about your neighbours. Flamanville: Be honest about the total cost of construction as assessed by the Cour des Comptes, probably the least biased numbers one can get on such a project. That, Hinkley Point C and Olkiluoto cost overruns are abysmal. And just for the record, I never was against NPPs and lived 3 km from one (Leibstadt) for two years.
I'd be very interested to know what you would think about Ireland building a small number of nuclear reactors
Point 2 is total bullshit and wishful thinking. It makes no sense, and the lack of results just confirms it.
@@fan2hd277 Well, economy of scales are there - in theory. But if their goal of 3 billion is multiplied on the first attempt, how much better they'd do for number 2 is quite speculative.
@@michaeljhonfarrar Would be a waste, if you look at a) their needs and b) their wind potential.
remember burning lignite also emits radioactive particals in the air. A nuclear plant contains its nuclear radiation, but a lignite plant trows all its nuclear radiation in the air
we need to compare radioactive decay profiles for both technologies
And nobodey is burning more coal... Why does this bullshit argument always come up? The only time Germany had to shorty increase the ammount of coal being burned was last year....because Germany had to overproduce a lot of electricity short term do to a) gas price exploding and gas security in question do to the russian invasion and b) France fucking up their nuclear power plants and needing a lot of imports Literally without german coal France would have had a bad suprise last year. France and Germany were literally trading gas and caol because germany needed non russian gas for heating in the winter while france needed coal electricity to keep the lights on. Since then coal has again been on a decline in Germany with renewables being (finally) build faster then under the previous gouvernmeant. Also its a funny myth in general that people outside of germany think back when germany had more nuclear power palnts were werent still burning shitloads of lignite coal. The share of coal was bigger then today back during germanys pro nuclear times because it was simply cheaper then building more NPPs. The nuclear phase out in Germany (sadly) didnt really replace much coal and gas yet because what happened was that nuclear was replaced by renewables as share of the energy production. This was mainly do to the last gouvernmeant under Merkel being absolute coal and nuclear loving shitheads. They killed germanys renewable industry and refused to phase out coal do to "the jobs". Originally in 2000 when Germany started the phase out of nuclear there was a very simple and logical plan: build up renewables while phasing out coal and nuclear slowly over 20 years. The cosnervatives simply forgot about the "build renewables" part. For a stop gap measure russian gas was supposed to be sued because it could function as a very flexible base load with renewables until alternatives would be build (or gas turbines modified to use hydrogen gas). Gas turbines have the advantage that you only have to turn them on when it is needed and you can turn them of basically immediatly again unlike coal plants or nuclear energy. However, that also wnet to shit under the last gouvernmeant who decided to go full on russian gas instead of using it as a stop gap measure during transition. And now both Germany and France are fucked because they fucked up both their strategies the last 20 years and the internet debattes which was the "better" desaster :D
100%, and no one mentions that.
And then also the ridiculous high CO2 emissions and the insanely large open pits to mine the coal .... As a German I hate the anti nuclear sentiment in our country....
@@BetaD_ Open pits that destroy your countryside, no less.
5:46 Calling that first bar "coal" is actually flattering. The majority of that is Lignite, which is just about the worst you can use for electricity generation. Thank you so much, 'Green' party.
Lignite is in use long before there was a Green party...
I work in the nuclear industry in Canada for the only Nuclear level 2 cleared corporation and build components for many various outfits. Nuclear is very potent, the only catch being that the waste management solution needs to be figured out.
Waste management has been figured out. A reactor can store every single bit of East within the footprint of the plant, underground in stable and secure storage vessels that are so safe another KZheadr on this website LICKED one to prove his point. Also, there are several reactor designs that can run off waste from other reactors, recycling waste into more energy(waste-burning reactors or advanced fuel reactors) the waste these produce are significantly less radioactive and have a substantially shorter half life (like, some of the worst waste products in the mix have a half life of 450 years as opposed to 704 million) Waste management has long since been figured out. It’s stable, safe, and space effective hell, it’s so safe I’d be more than willing to let these companies bury the waste under my house (for a price of course 😉)
Im a MechEng student, and just took a discipline about piping engineering. The teacher lecturing worked on one company that built some of France's and Belgium's Nuclear Power plants. Pipe fatigue and stress rates and cycles are thoroughly studied and are easily measurable. Pipe maintenance should be the top priority in maintenance plans. If the responsible entity let the pipes crack to breaking point, they are slacking, and may be acountable for millions of deaths
Are you studying at a trade school?
@@danhobart4009 Engineering is not a trade.
@@douganderson7002 Where did you read a "uhm ahkshuallly"? You ok, fam?
@@douganderson7002what do you consider strongly related? International law? Maybe contemporary dance...
@@Derzull2468 In some countries you can study through a trade school and get a BTech engineering degree with a government ticket.
As someone working in the nuclear field, the video is very accurate about the importance of continued focus on nuclear. After a 30 year of neglect, it can be extremely difficult to continue operating and constructing nuclear plants. Nuclear benefits from scale and society knowledge. Both Germany's plan and France's plan are good. Full nuclear or zero nuclear are best. The lukewarm commitment is the most expensive and least beneficial. As the workforce gains knowledge and designs are standardized, additional nuclear plants shouldn't be vastly over budget.
Yeah this is the thing everyone seems to miss, if you do not already have a huge domestic nuclear energy industry it is just not feasable to run on nuclear and if you have to choose wether to build a renewables or a nuclear based energy solution then nuclear is just to slow to get started.
Why full nuclear or no nuclear? You can have less plants but you just have to commit to a cycle of building a new one while decommissioning older ones.
Pardon my ignorance, i don't have a engineer degree, but this kind of reasoning feels like a non sequitur: "we don't build nuclear power plants because we don't build nuclear power plants". If the objective we have is to reach net zero in 2050 (enough time to build quite enough reactors I THINK?), at least now i don't see any other way to cover the base load that intermittent renewables leave uncovered. Couldn't we plan to import expertise from other countries like France?
@@piethein4355The most beautiful thing about all of this is that "renewables" are not 100% good for the environment, nor better than nuclear energy, the wind itself increases the local temperature, because it decreases the kinetic energy of the wind, reducing its range and efficiency in absorbing the thermal energy of the place, in addition to preventing the moisture from the sea from reaching the center of the larger continents. 100% nuclear is definitely the best, in every way, it's greener, cheaper, produces more energy and produces less waste.
@@fabianodendrella5526 If I remember correctly, California in the US and Australia faced some blackouts for betting too much on renewables like solar panels and wind.
"windturbine are smaller, cheaper, easy to replace", big problem, energy don't work like that: - You don't take in account that windmill produce if there is wind, most of the time they are at 20% of their max capacity even when they are placed in a good area. - Renewable like solar and windmill need a lot of connection as they produce individually less. They also need a lot more complexe material that need to be imported. - For windmill you can't sum up offshore and on land as if they were the same. They are very different in rentability, infrastructure, place taken... - Comparing renewable to nuclear as no point as they don't work the same way. Solar and wind can't be controlled so you need to produce always less than you use with them and complete with other sources like nuclear, hydroelectricity, coal or gaz. You can't compare two sources of energy if one need to be completed by another one. We speak about mix of energy because it's good to have a bit of everything to be competitiv and reactiv to any problem. I recommend this youtube channel to understand the problematics with energy: www.youtube.com/@LeReveilleur
That is all considered for the price tag. The price tag is per produced kWh.
That's Real Engineering for ya, all of his videos are riddled with big problems. He knows how to present a video, I just wish he spent more time researching. He should hire a crew if he needs to.
5:24 correction on that map: France doesn't export to Britain. What happens is that the French company EDF is in charge of a lot of the UK's power planets (especially nuclear ones) and the French government has taken over EDF and as such gained its contracts. Another point of contention between the two nations, unfortunately, as the French government keeps demanding the UK pay more than contractually agreed for the continued construction efforts of its new nuclear plants.
Well, there is a 2GW IFA interconnector, and a 1GW IFA2 interconnector, both HVDC. And the Channel Tunnel owners have added their own 1GW ElecLink to that.
I went to the largest pit mine in Germany on a school trip as a kid, it was insanely large and destructive, the huge on-site tracks for coal and the monstrous excavators were cool to see but even 25 years later I still remember the scale of it all. There really does need to be a mix of SMR's and clean alternatives for any real goal of future energy demands, but to completely rule out nuclear because of a couple accidents (some from bad design and/or placement) is shooting ourselves in the foot.
no, every reactor can be weaponized by malicious actors and start a nuclear war, for a start. Its also prohibitively expensive, everywhere.
@@Unknown_Genius Yeah, it seems like so many of the 'solutions' they keep touting are just moving the carbon to an out of sight, out of mind kind of place. I was reading an article a while back about the solution for nuclear waste and that it had mostly been solved, can't remember where but I think someone also made a video about it, might have been Kyle Hill or someone like that.
Actually the main arguments against nuclear (from the non-dogmatic middle ground) are the strongest and most convicing - nuclear is far too expensive. It is also not as reliable as we are told - the "down times" are suprisingly high. It is also not as flexible as other forms of large scale generation - which is increasingly important in an industry dominated by renewables.
Talking of mines. Have you asked yourself where the uranium comes from and how these mines are run? Then France stops being self-relient.
@@1968Christiaan Indeed, and the problem is that such a divisive topic is never discussed in good faith. There are good anti-nuclear positions about costs, downtimes, huge upfront cost, access to water when europe is going through droughts, etc... (I say that as someone heavily in favor of nuclear and, while hating Macron's guts, thinks his energy policy is by far the best in Europe)
I know it was part of a sponsor plug, but from an ex-engineering student, the advice at the end was bang on, particularly if you take Python a step further and learn how to use anaconda virtual environments, notebooks (google colab, jupyter, ipython, etc...), numpy, scipy (especially optimize and integrate) , pandas, matplotlib/seaborn, etc... I had to do a hard pivot two months into my undergrad dissertation because my original plan wasn't working, because I already knew Python and the above libraries from previous work I was able to apply the research I had already completed and quickly write and debug a program to automate nuclear fuel geometry design, which saved my degree. I also used Python and the above packages extensively in my MSc to write a hypersonic flow solver for basic geometries in just a week or two. Even just knowing the basics goes a long way, I recently used my knowledge of Python to write an Excel macro in TypeScript, a language I'd never used before, that automated data scraping from spreadsheets that would have otherwise taken a team of people weeks, saving a project that needed that data to inform a decision from going over its deadline.
The very least i expected is seeing a comment about a programming language and its libraries when clicking on this video that talks about nuclear power and politics to some degree lmao
I'm an AI engineer and I approve this message
16:32 for reference
I've been avoiding python because of some issues I have with it (main one being speed) but Now that Mojo is coming out I'll be going back to it but will most likely modify it to have syntax I prefer like brackets instead of indents and changing some keywords to match go syntax.
Python couldn't have had a better endorsement. In the past, I've had skirmishes with Fortran, PL/1, Basic and C. You've kindled the interest of an old retired guy.
France had a huge crisis in electricity in the dry summers 2018 and 2019, when the nuclear power plants had to be throttled or switched off due to cooling problems. There is still no solution for the waste problem. In Germany both Germanies tried to dump that waste at the block border. France, UK and Russia have some wild deponies and dump a lot in the sea. Decentral nuclear power means having nuclear fuel and waste everywhere making it easy available for people who will do no good with it. It also means there will be a lot of illegal dumps like in Russia. As you said renewables are already cheaper and faster available. Summing up all those facts investing in nuclear power is a bad idea. And one more: nuclear power has the same problem as renewables. It has to be stored. Switzerland is buying a lot of French nuclear power at night to pump water up the mountains and they sell a part of it back at daytime when it runs down through turbines. As there are losses they buy more as they sell back but they still make money by it. Germany has to convert the coalmines to storage ASAP with caverns on the bottom of the lakes that will be there. Those caverns will be pumped empty when there is surplus renewable energy and fill them through turbines when energy is needed. The grid has to get intelligent. Freezers can cool down to deepder temperatures when there is surplus energy and then turn off when it is short. Washing machines can start running when energy is cheap...
As a german, i was never a huge fan of nuclear energy. But the problems of the other energy sources like coal are way higher. France has even some nulear power plants a few kilometers away from the german border. If they would blow up, we would have the same problems, as if they were standing in germany directly. A big problem is the missing long time storage space for nuclear waste, we don't have suitable locations for it in germany.
We don't have suitable locations anywhere.
Modern reactors don’t just “blow up” Hell, reactors don’t just “blow up” they meltdown. they don’t turn into a nuclear explosion and vaporize everything. A meltdown is a problem don’t get me wrong, but with proper precautions and evacuations in the event of one (which by the way modern reactors are designed to fail safely, as in, with the control rods all the way in, highly limiting the nuclear reaction, perhaps even stopping it entirely.) very very very few deaths would happen, most would be staff and it would be many years later. Chernobyl was as bad as it was due to horrific leadership, and shoddy engineering. Don’t let people use misinformation to cause you to fear. Secondly nuclear waste has already been solved, not only can the entire plants waste in its entire lifetime of running be stored within the footprint of the plant itself, but certain reactor designs can run off of spent nuclear fuel, which then turns the half-life of that spent fuel from billions of years to less than 500. Given how safe and secure nuclear storage is (I’d even happily let these companies pay for the land under my house to bury it, and I’d still live in the house) , 400 years is a perfectly reasonable timeframe for waste to decay.
@@JurgenErhard There are tons of suitable locations. Deep underground cask storage solutions are safe and space-efficient. We could fit the entire produced nuclear waste in human history in a space the size of a football field.
Very important factor to bring about: Coal is the MAIN emiter of radioactive material to the nature; air, soil and water. Thats because all soil have some radioactive material mixed in. Mining is a really insuring way to actually pull radioactive soil from earth and spreading it all over.
And the green party in germany is advcating for renewable energy sources while having their stocks solely in fossil fuel companies 🤡
Never heard of that. What are your sources for this, may I ask?
@CheapSushi it's not that I'm aware of the fact that dirt is slightly radioactive. But the claim that coal is allegedly the main emitter of radioactive material is new to me. I've been on countless discussions and heard every talking point, but this was never mentioned. I live in Germany. Funny how this isn't something worth mentioning. So, yes: I still like to know the sources for that claim.
So I just looked it up and the reporting in Germany is NOT good about this. I've read briefly about modern filters, but also about certain studies on the surrounding environment of coal power plants. I need to do some digging. Thanks for informing.
Coal is a main emiter now. But in case something gets wrong with nuclear wast storage, the situation completely changes. Germany already made its negative experiences with nuclear wast in underground storages that almost contaminated groundwater. This is the reason why people are concerned about nuclear power.
Nuclear reactors are like bridges. Big expensive. But their supposed to be reliable. The reactor should work from the time you were born until you have a midlife crisis. Much like bridges tho. They’re grossly underfunded. And a lot have hit that midlife moment. But nuclear reactors are permanent infrastructure. You have to have the cooling ponds. The on-site storage, the millions of miles of copper. Shutting down nuclear is the antithesis to the green energy future we deserve. Another thing. Is that nuclear is the only power source with an energy density to make extraterrestrial mining even the slightest bit worth it. Trust me when I say, that if they find uranium in the astroid belt it’ll be gone faster than you can say Chernobyl.
There is no green energy. Asteroid belt is full of everything. Still very hard to get it home
Nuclear plants are like industrial cathedrals, they can easily last 100 years if managed properly. 60-80 years is now the new normal in the US. The age of nuclear plants in France should not be a concern. Remember, the containment buildings are the strongest, most robust buildings in the world. They will contain most if not all of any of the dangerous radioactive material that may be released in an accident. Just like TMI did in 1978.
The problem are not the buildings...
The regulation in France is very different and extremely conservative than what happens almost everywhere else. Each reactor is entirely stopped every ten years for a thorough inspection. Even if it's its first decade, it can be stopped as long as things aren't fixed and updated. The crack that is mentionned here was detected by one of these "inspection décennale", and on the newest generation of reactors. They ALL got immediately inspected (as fast as personnel availability could allow), and every time a crack was detected, the reactor was stopped untill further notice. Not to mention that the entire park is undergoing the "grand carénage", a very large plan to rebuilt old reactors to last 30 more years. I.e. not just making them suit current regulations (that's the job of the repairs and fixes during the "inspection décennale"), but to prepare them for the future. Sure, decades of under-investment put strain on the French nuclear scheme, but zero corner have been cut regarding safety. In fact, safety actually vastly prevails over functionnality, and EPR (EUROPEAN pressurized reactor) was basically Germany deliberately cranking up safety standards, knowing it's the priority of the French system, to destroy what it perceives as an unfair advantage in the cost of energy (nuclear energy isn't the cheapest at any time of day and year, but it's the cheapest on average as a baseload, what Germany doesn't get with renewables despite the astounding amounts of money it poured in). In France, despite the neoliberal trend that's been destroying public services, Gaullism is still running strong. Gaullism is an extremely peculiar ideology, with the idea of a strong state and mixed economy (a mix between capitalism and socialism, with mostly free enterprise and private ownership of the means of production, except in fields deemed of strategic importance, traditionnally energy, transports, the bulk of healthcare and education), ruling the country for the common good. The very creation of the nuclear system is a result of applied Gaullism, called the "plan Messmer", from the name of Pompidou's Prime Minister. Just like Germany's Energiewende, France's nuclear system is the result of a very specific political ideology, but a wise one that works. Mitterrand, who was a neoliberal in disguise (his "tournant de la rigueur" appalled all communists and most socialists who had voted for him), put an end to that, also closing down Superphénix, the experimental fast neutron reactor to prepare for a new generation that would have run mostly on spent fuel and was 30 years ahead of its time, to please the Green party. How efficient, safe, and looking towards the future your nuclear system is, is nothing but the result of sheer political will.
Just for the record: Today, France is producing 25g of CO2 for every kWh it produces. Compare that to Germany’s 200g in summer. You can track that in real-time on electricity maps.
I googled it, its about 40g for france and 100g for germany. You tweak the numbers a lot to support your opinions i see 🤡.
@@SeaShrimp Look at the date. That was 11 days ago. Attention to details does not appear to be one of your core strength.
@@SeaShrimpbet you feel stupid now
People seem to forget / or are not aware that the original CDU/CSU plan wasn't coal. They banked on expanding connections towards the Kremel made in the early 2000s - it's why they would consequently go on to essentially put the better renewable option on hold. So it's not really down to not going nuclear but not going nuclear AND putting the actual already planned alternatives on hold.
Yes, but for one, only one nuclear accident of his old reactors, could change everything, at that numbers CO2 is not dangerous for life, instead a Fukushima level in France would be a complete disaster not only for France, so it's not the same apples to apples comparison.
As a german, i say its wrong to completely phase out nuclear fission power. Using the old existing reactors to increase the time we have to shift to better alternatives is WAY better. The german reactors are for the most part at end of their expected lifespan, but that is no reason to simply shut them down all at once. They were phased out bit by bit, but still way faster than they shouldve, and the investment in alternatives hasnt facilitated this kind of process. There is no question, that increasing the use of coal powerplants is hipocracy in regards to the plans for "carbon neutrality". The accidents of chernobyl and fukishima were two very specific incidents where there was alot of human error involved. Thats not to say, that this couldnt happen somewhere else in the world, but the fact remains, that the biggest actual issues with nuclear power, are humans and radioactive waste.
as a german i can say, that you are wrong. Only 5% of the electricity was produced from nuclear energy in 2021. And now we have 46% renewables, in 2021 we had only 41%. Nuclear Energy is very stupid. 3 Generations are making a big nuclear party and 3000 Generations have to take care of the waste. When you think that only 10% of the world energy comes from NPP
@@alexanderdekeuyper2990 "it's a good thing to force a whole industry out of fossil and nuclear powerplants" And what magical energy source are you going to replace that with, if you're also not investing enough in solar/wind/hydro yet? Seems like this all was a lot more about fossil fuel industry not wanting to lose money, than about any actual good reasons. Coal plants have killed more people than all the nuclear disasters combined, many times over. And if unfiltered, also emit radioactive particles just out into the surrounding air. Face it, it's just dumb, reactionary fear-mongering that led you Germans to this point.
German industry HEAVILY leans on cheap energy. This could send Germany into a deep economic crisis. Do you know? Does the EU have rules to follow about nuclear in regards to adjoining nations? I mean, France could build it's reactors very close to the German border, and with prevailing winds, Germany could be the biggest victim in France's (theoretical) reactor meltdown.
It is shameful how much more grams of CO2/KWh Germany emits than France does.
@@alexanderdekeuyper2990 It is shameful how much more grams of CO2/KWh Germany emits than France does.
I like how this video keeps getting recommended every now and then and the comment section gets more heated everytime
Did I miss the OP mentioning how the French nuclear fleet's power output is affected by a lack of cooling water during the hottest summer periods? Because it's been happening recently, and all signs point towards it happening more often in the future.
There isn't actually a lack of cooling water but using water from rivers heats it up a bit which could be an environmental problem for living organisms in the rivers. For this reason powerplants sometimes have to reduce production to respect environmental norms. But that depends on the cooling system used by the powerplant and overall represents about 1% of the annual production. It was a big topic recently because of the simultaneous corrosion problem in French nuclear powerplants and the energy crisis induced by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
@@yalassa1 Yes, exactly what I meant but thanks for providing the context on here. I guess I could use a better term... A ΔT shortage? 🙂
@@derloos the problem is not the lack of cooling water there's enough water, it's just the temperature of the water released in the river after cooling the reactor who is too hot acording the law, but this doesn't apply on the ones with cooling towers and the ones on the coastline.
@@p4olo537 and technically, you could release the water at safer temperatures if you had more water to spread that same amount of heat across... Only there isn't enough?
i have another thing to comment on: the part where you said a nuclear power plant has a life expectancy of 20 to 40 years i think is wrong because thats just the amount of time before the license for a power plant has to be renewed and repairs have to be made.
People in Germany were mostly protesting because of the long term storage of nuclear waste was mishandled and not because of the fear of nuclear meltdown. One of the old salt mines designated for long term storage had water flow in in the first couple years, showing that it wasn't safe to contain the nuclear waste.
Yeah this will be a massiv issue with the NIMBYs when the search for the final storage is moving forward. Building up the trust again will take a long time.
well but it was recenly discoverd by me and doing resarch aobut acrute infomation about high grad nuclear waste and how nuclear stuff works. so i fonud out that in realty that most high level nuclear waste most radioactive prodacts can be in fact used for RTGs or nuclear sterling engine fuel for 30 years then would become mostly inert after 30 years for the most part. also the rest of the stuff in the high grade nuclear waste has soo many usefuel rare earth element isopotes that can be also used after wards. this is expacly the pure leftover zecuom 90 isotpoes that is needed for steam, aerospace jet and rocket terbines metal alloys. also that tacly high level nuclear waste could also just be safly stord in long term nuclear sterlling or rtg power plant and waste conament power genrator felcasitys for 30+ years and generate power on the side. this is bescue a very sinfict aomut of a allready known radioactive mertal that is the most of the hazerd is bascly alot of it is stroum isotpyes that fully decays after 30 years turns into bascly the same zecuom 90 that huge amonuts of it could be used for massvle aerosapce indutrey. in fact thats why alot of post cold war ussr rtg genrators where radied for that super rare zicouim 90 metal that been left in the fully decayed stroum isotpye powered russen rtgs back in the 1970s.
@@toggleton6365 Well, calling people that don't want toxic waste leaks under there feet NIMBY's is quite the statement.
@@silphonym But that is literally what NIMBY means. We need a storage but Not In My BackYard. I am in a Region that is looked at in the Nuclear storage search right now. I mean we have with most of the Windpower parks that get planned and you instantly get a lot new bird lovers that search for rare birds to stop the projects. It was not even meant negative. just the political reality that every search for a storage will mean a lot of pressure from the local population.
Long term storage of nuclear "waste" is a myth and not needed at all. Nuclear waste can already easily be re-used and literally recycled. With the advance of technology we will even be able to completely neutralize all radiation.
France proves nuclear can be transformative, but it also proves that a puppy is not just for christmas. Consistent investment is needed, not just a bolus when setting it up.
The typical example that the best intentions may lead to worse outcomes
In Finland we need 1 extra nuclear power plant of traditional scale to make ourselves completely energy independent. This was cancelled because Rosatom wasn't to be trusted anymore as plant deliver & fuel provider. Then again we need to replace 4 reactors (80%) like France, so in total we should start during this decade 5 new reactor projects. We have first EPR2 reactor running, so when we have run it a few years I think we should copy-paste reactor replacements from it. After that Finland should use localized smaller modular reactors on city level to provide heat and baseline energy for cities to replace gas/coal for heating during coldest winter days.
Finland stopped using Rosatom for political reasons against russia, not because Rosatom isnt trusted. The finnish are extremely anti russian and your gov did it due to the war in ukraine and so you dont have to be dependant upon russian energy - as that is what the EU has advised its members to do
This really needs more upvotes. I think almost no one in the discussion ACTUALLY knows where the radio active materials come from and how much of a claw Russia has on that market. It's WAY worse than the one on oil / gas. People are stupidly funny sometimes. I think if they just see an egg in a pan they believe it might have come from the supermarket, not a chicken.
With that many nukes Finland will probably ve able to heat with electricity like Sweden
Finland already have 2 Russian reactors and they have bought fuel for them from Sweden for decades now. Westinghouse in Västerås-Sweden is one of the largest surplyer of fuel for VVER reactor, and the largest outside of Russia. So there is really not a problem not buying fuel from Russia. So the current 2 VVER reactors in Finland have no problem getting fuel
@@thomasbohn " marvel but an economic nightmare." You are wrong about that. OL3 is making a massive profit despite being quite a bit over budget. That is unlike windpower that makes huge losses despite being on budget.
As a german, I feel like I have to add a few points here: 1. The decisions made around Nuclear Energy are unfortunately more politically motivated than based on the actual power-grid needs. Until around 10 years ago, Germany used to invest heavily into Solar Power, encouraging installments on residental homes. Due to political reasons (& heavy lobbying from the coal industry) the CDU-lead coalition axed most of the subsidizations and partially banned residental homes from adding power to the grid. These political changes also lead to Chinese manufacturers quickly overtaking the previously pretty strong german solar industry. 2. A big part of the debate about Nuclear Power is around the storage of the waste - a topic that's unfortunately missing here. We had some accidents with salt water damaging nuclear waste barrels, which lead to people protesting against having waste in their area. To this date, we still haven't found a suitable non-temporary storage solution ("Endlager"). Funnily enough, the state of Bavaria is one of the biggest supporters of Nuclear Power, but refuses to accept new power plants built and waste being stored in bavaria.
You do realize that you can recycle nuclear waste and reuse it as nuclear fuel, right? You don't have to store it at all. The nuclear waste can be reused many times before it fully decays. In the end, the problem comes down to cost, not technology.
The way I’ve seen is basically digging a deep hole into the ground. Keeps it away from life, and it doesn’t move much… just needs to be away from water reservoirs. Nuclear waste, the Kind regularly produced, is either a radioactive concrete molded into a cylinder, or equipment used by people which I don’t see why they couldn’t do the same with.
@@johnnk3256Also the nuclear waste problem has been long solved with the new technologies. It is way safer to use some underground land to store nuclear waste in your town compared to breathe fossil fuel combustion gases
@@johnnk3256 This doesn't solve the problem, it just delays it...
@@felixw19: Nope it solves it. Recycling nuclear waste brings down the decay time from hundreds of years down to two decades. Which is more than manageable. Not just that, each time you recycle, the volume of the waste also goes down. We've had this technology for like 20 years now.
Slovakia with just 2 nuclear powerplants generates 60% of its electricity. Sure, lot smaller country but it really shows you the potential of the technology.
You forget one important point: france colonization of Africa allowed them to get Uranium easily, stable enough to invest in 50 year plants, and at dirt cheap prices.
Afaik the Germany anti nuclear movement was most concerned about the nuclear waste and the safety of the plants. In the year 2022, when over 50% of France nuclear power had to shut down, Germany jumped on and closed the gap for France. Some of them had to be shut down because of lack of cooling. There was a huge discussion on the nuclear power as a replacement for gas in Germany. The runtime was prolonged. However one reason against a longer continuation has been the source of nuclear material to fuel the plants. The main supplier would been again Russia, which was used again as an anti nuclear Argument. I missed these details in your good summary. It will be interesting if the plan Germany has will work out.
Yeah that was something I was also waiting for. Nuclear power plants in France live off of shipments from Russia, its one area where the sanctions are just disregarded bc France is so reliant on them
There wasn't a lack of cooling. There was plenty of cooling water. There was a silly environmental law that limited the max output temperature of cooling water for no good reason. The nuclear power plants could have continued to operate. There are plenty of uranium suppliers besides Russia. Uranium is not scarce. Not like coal, natural gas, and oil.
@@hewdelfewijfethis is not a silly law. People who have no education probably believe that. If the temperature of water rises to a critical level, water can not keep enough oxygen and so the ecosystem in water collapsed. Therefore you are not allowed to increase the waters temperature to much.
The main source of uranium is in Africa. Why are you talking about Russia ?
@@wopaolon7478 I can only guess. I just remember this has been one argument in the public German discussion about keep the plants running during Ucraine crises Germany has opted out much earlier.
Thank you for taking the time to explain the use of Iodine tablets. Often it gets treated as a cure all for radiation, so it was good to hear it explained right.
It was hysterical over-reaction. even as some radiation was blown over Europe, it was so low, that did minimal damage ... I live near former Uranium mine and many miners lived in our city
so, my RadAway is useless? damn.
It's not a cure but a preventative step to avoid Radioactive iodine build up through contaminated food/water.
@@skepticalmagos_101 Exactly. That is what it is used for. Hollywood is especially fond of using Iodine pills for scenes that involve radiation that would never have radioactive Iodine present. Most KZhead videos that discuss incidents that require the distribution of Iodine pills get the specifics of the distribution correct but generally do not address why. I like that the reason for the distribution was discussed to help work against what seems to me has become largely a Hollywood stereotype.
@@skepticalmagos_101 Almost all of your radioactive iodine exposure from a nuclear power plant accident is likely to come from dairy and eggs. The radioactive iodine spreads over grass, and the cows eat it, and they bio-accumulate it into their milk. Ditto for chickens. The best advice that you can give someone is "don't eat dairy and eggs for the next 3 months".
It's almost like pushing everyone to go to universities instead of going into the trades was a bad idea...
It wasn't, Germany is still a major industrial power house responsible for designing and innovating all kinds of advanced techs that other countries could not build without them, there's plenty of college educated people who understand how nuclear power works and aren't as irrationally concerned about it, there are also very uneducated tradesmen who are terrified of nuclear power through ignorance.
Pushing too many into universities is a problem, but for a different reason.
@@liquidsnake6879 First of all, uneducated tradesmen? Is your implication that all tradesmen are uneducated or just the German ones? Either way, ones profession does not determine their intellect. I've known tradesmen who can understand and explain general relativity and engineers who don't even know how to tie their shoe laces. I myself am a tradesmen but I design, tune and operate audio systems for high end theatrical shows, a highly complex and technical discipline. Also if its the uneducated tradies that are the problem (they aren't) then why is it that whenever there's a public conversation about nuclear energy, the opposition is always some university educated soy boy and not a neckbearded tradie in high-vis?
just to clarify 2 point: 1-the cost of a reacteur depend greatly on where the money come from -if its the state it will be cheap because a real state as a greate level of control on the debte generated (thhing that france can't do anymore because the EU(on german impulse) forbids it) 2-the production cost per MW/h in france is around 50$ but there again since we are in a spot market where EDF has to give 30% of his production to falce company fo the sake of free trade market where the nucleare power is not alowed to be sold at a real price but a price that are sufocating the french pupiles (wel french are going on strik again). and for the Small Modular Reactor: basicali you take somthing that is dangerous and misenderstood by most. you put it in the hand of private enterprise that are known to cut corner for profite. and the since the S in SMR is for SMAL you multiply it by 9000X. what could possibly go wrong.
Considering the subsidies, state owned reactors were not really cheap. And sure, France can and will still invest into nuclear power. No idea what you are writing about.
One of the most important factors that nobody seems to be talking about when it comes to nuclear power, is the production infrastructure for them, or rather, the lack there of. What I mean by this is essentially the fact that so few nuclear reactors are being built in the world, that there isn't really any efficient mass production for their parts. This also means that if, for example, every country in the world would start building at least one nuclear reactor every year, the market for their components would become so lucrative that the components themselves would see massively reduced prices compared to right now. Not to mention the boon to the research and development sectors for nuclear power, and for standardization.
Even then, it's not really mass production. It's not massive to produce something 200 times per year. Sure, maybe there are small improvements with producing them in bigger amounts, but not mass production. Not like solar whose price dropped by 89% between 2009 and 2019. From $359/MWh to $40/MWh. It's about $30/MWh now. While electricity from a new nuclear power plant costs about $155/MWh. The price of Li-Io batteries has fallen by similar rates and wind, solar and battery are together now cheaper than nuclear energy. And they get cheaper every year. Nuclear would have to become much cheaper in a short period of time. I don't think that's realistic. Especially as if we would match our energy demand 100% with nuclear uranium sources would be empty within 10 years. With current demand we have 200 years but the more we use it, the faster it's gone. Alternatives are not ready jet. Maybe we could find new uranium sources, but it would make it more expensive.
But Germany had them already
That's what has happened in China. Their supply chain is well developed and they have the cost of a nuclear reactor down to US$2.6B per GW. Construction time is usually under 5 years. Note that these reactors are built with IAEA oversight and must meet the IAEA safety regulations. South Korea are down to around US$4.5B per GW. Once supply lines are established in Europe, costs will similarly reduce.
@@kevinpaine7893 well, China might fulfill safety standards of the reactor (where I still think we would want to have them even safer), what China is not fulfilling is constructin sight safety.
@@Duconi Please provide a source on the 10 years. That seems wildly unrealistic. Afaik we have 10s of thousands of years of uranium not 10s of years.
I want to make one slight criticism, as a therapist who treats college students. Actually resting and taking time to recover and avoid burnout isn't wasting time. So the correction I'll give is, identify hobbies that leave you feeling restored. If gaming does that for you, enjoy it guilt free. If you feel gross after, find a different hobby. Breaks are wasted if you're scrolling social media, but if you're engaging in restorative activities, then they are well used and rest is necessary. Part of good time management is setting limits on work time so you don't burn out. Set an end time for your work and respect it. Take a day off every week and protect it. Work hard of course, definitely build relationships with your professors, but also use those relationships to get extensions when you need it. Make sure that you are not sacrificing sleep because life is hard, it’s harder without sleep. other than that, a great video!
Wind turbines don't last 60 years. And the composite parts can't be recycled either, so they still pose a problem, albeit less dangerous.
The composite parts can be recycled...
Scaring people out of nuclear power is a very smart way to keep selling them petroleum, natural gas, coal etc..
I live near 3 mile Island and was watching the TV news every day during that time, since that time I have spoken with some of the former workers. Human error such as post it type notes covering part of a screen used to monitor the station were a major contributing factor but almost no one mentions that.
What are you talking about, everyone mentions human error, lol. It's part of why a major driving factor in reactor designs of the last 50 years have explicitly had the goal of reducing the requirement for human interaction especially regarding critical functions and emergencies. Newer designs can't melt down in the same way because they aren't relying on human input to prevent a meltdown.
@@KingBobXVISo many people in the general populace ignore what actually caused the incident at 3 Mile Island. I never even got a decent chunk of the story until five years ago when I finally thought I’d just google it myself. So when people are talking about the actual situation, yes, they mention human error because that’s a normal thing to report on. When people are scaremongering about nuclear power plants or just mentioning the accident in passing, they don’t. They super don’t. For the former category, it implies that there is a safe way to operate a plant without human error to say that. It’s just such a hot mess.
Deaths due to 3 mile Island? ZERO.
Possibly had his own agenda. Three Mile Island scared the s... out of people who read the detailed reports as it exposed the appalling engineering that occurred in nuclear plants and the very dodgy to almost non-existent risk analysis that was carried out, Fukushima continued on with that tradition. TMI had such wonderful engineering las a critical valve that was activated during reactor shut down but did not close when it should have, critically the control panel showed that the valve had activated properly as it showed that an electrical signal had been sent to the valve, it did not show the actual position of the valve, to determine this, the operators would have to go down to the reactor building and physically observe the valve. So a root cause of the destruction of the reactor was dumb engineering or cost cutting on a couple of sets of contacts and some wiring, a simplification but you get the gist. Everyone should know about the stupidity of the designers and builders of Fukushima in the placement of the emergency generators and switching gear, as well as the complacency of the operators in not quickly correcting the issue once they became aware of it. I can't even contemplate how anyone could misinterpret or not understand the Tsunami risks of the plant - one in a 100 year event does not meant that the next event is 100 years away, it could be tomorrow, there could be three in a row mere weeks apart, why would anyone settle for such a high risk when... ohh, never mind.
@@scottslotterbeck3796wow only zero deaths? This must mean that nuclear power is completely safe compared to toasters which kill hundreds every year! Let's built ten thousand nuclear reactors in every country on the planet! The nuclear waste we will just pile up in some poor African country or give to the fish in the ocean to deal with. Wow only zero deaths that's awesome!
11:39 This problem wasn't a result of decades of underinvestment but caused by entirely new technical issues, discovered thanks to new scanning technologies. French reactors have the world's strictest standards. This is incidentally why they were shut down: the importance of cracks is overstated as they were on redundant emergency systems.
yeah, who would ever need emergency systems. it's completely fine if they don't work, no problems at all.
@@moos5221 Yes and that is why France took the decision to shut down its nuclear reactors in the middle of winter with Russian gas cut off. It was the right decision.
@@julientabulazero103 Germany was there to export energy to France in 2022, no problem. The french reliance on russian uranium is a serious problem though, France paying for the Russian war effort, sad story.
@@moos5221 France main supplier of uranium are Canada, Khazakstan and Australia. You are however right to point out that many reactors in Eastern Europe rely on Russia because they wereuilt during the soviet union time to use russian rods.
@@julientabulazero103 France still imports plutonium from Russia, making it one of the only countries in the EU to still pay Russia blood money for fuel.
To be fair, I can understand why a nation that once fell victim to a dictatorship would be hesitant about keeping around something that could be hijacked to make weapons of mass destruction.
My experience over the past few years, living in Germany: We want clean energy! Also Germany: But no nuclear, wind or solar anywhere close to where I live!
Also important to note that other countries have banned nuclear right after Chernobyl. Like Italy. It's not actually just a German thing
Yeah, several countries and peoples in Europe are very anti Nuclear. Heck all the "Nuclear power no thanks" stickers used in the protests all over the world were designed by a small group of protesters in Denmark, one of the first nations to oppose nuclear power over concerns of safety and disposal of radioactive waste. Denmark doesnt have any full scale nuclear powerplants either, only a few small test reactors at a research facility from the 50's and 60's, and even there, the nuclear waste barrels from them have been mothballed around for decades with no permanent long term storage found anywhere in the whole country.
These nuclear accidents are NOT the reason why we Germans have shut down our nuclear power plants. The reason is that there is no way to get rid of the nuclear waste or safely store it. Surely those accidents might have pushed the demonstrations against nuclear power but they (safety concerns) were NOT the main reason.
I don't know how other countries are dealing with it but in Germany there is no suitable place to store the radioactive waste at the moment. We have been searching for over half a century and we are still searching for it.
@@Dr_ShadowTimeSeems way better than coal to me
@@Dr_ShadowTime Re waste: We've done the experiment in the real world of a nuclear waste repository leak. It's called the natural underground nuclear fission reactors at Oklo, Gabon. They ran a few billion years ago, running on and off for millions of years. From this, we can say how far the nuclear waste moves in a water rich environment with absolutely zero kinds of artificial containment. From the core samples, the plutonium moved 5 ft. Nuclear waste disposal is easy, safe, and cheap. You are grossly misinformed about the dangers of radiation. Please find the proper scientific sources and educate yourself instead of relying on Green energy NGOs that are probably funded by fossil fuels. You can find links to many primary scientific sources by googling the following two articles which include many citations to primary sources: "The Guardian the unpalatable truth is that the anti-nuclear lobby misled us all" and "Dr Bernard Cohen the myth of plutonium toxicity".
cutting out nuclear while trying to go green (especially for a major economy) is like cutting out one of your legs right before the marathon.
And another one who has no clue what they are talking about.
@@moos5221 please enlighten us all with your counter argument
@@comrade107 Nuclear is a very costly (have to factor in nuclear waste storage and nuclear power plant decommissioning, both costs that the tax payers will have to take care of). Germany has successfully shut down ALL nuclear power plants and is still producing enough energy to supply neighboring countries who can't fulfill their own needs, for example France. Not shutting down nuclear energy just slows the conversion to full renewable energy power production, so it was the right thing to do. If you aren't convinced, then please enlighten us now with your arguments why you think it was a desaster to cut nuclear energy from the mix.
@@user-bw6jg4ej2m that's russian propaganda or what? nobody needed to cut their heating at all and coal only needed to be burned to support the neighboring countries that couldn't support their own. also Germany has probably the best coal power plants in the world, but ofc it's still better to have 100% renewable energy which is the ultimate goal. just happy we don't use nuclear power anymore, since it's obvious that that's a very bad choice.
@@moos5221 upfront cost, storage of spent fuel and safety are quite valid points. However, all major economies US, UK, China,India and even Japan(despite Fukushima) have concluded that nuclear is going to be a key stable source of energy (at least in medium term) and hence are doubling down on it. Solar/wind is great but not stable enough to support the energy needs of a big country alone. They have to be complemented with something that is more stable, low carbon and relatively on demand, until the battery tech matures further. I understand your sentiment of going 100 %renewable (something I desire too) but we have to be realistic. Also, the first three points of concern are either already addressed or being addressed through new solutions like deep underground storage vaults like in Finland, Smaller modular reactors, reactors for spent fuel etc. Hope that answers ur question:)
15:21 You leave off with a message of how nuclear energy seems difficult to do right with these two cases, but why not compare another country that is actively building many nuclear reactors like South Korea?
Because we love paying 5x for Energy
Germany does not do that.
@@old-pete Go tell my government 👍
@@DVS1_ That would be your job. But I would not know what you want to tell them about stuff that is not happening.
Something I never see mentioned: In Germany the storage of nuclear waste was also an enormous problem. One storage after the other was declared unsafe and the waste wandered across the country from one temporary location to the other.
Its a selfmade problem because in germany, the storage has to be save in many ways up to a million years and this isnt possible.
@@romanmaier4307in your country it doesn't have to be safe? is that not a problem? i don't get it
*is is a major problem. Even with all the plants shut down the waste is still there.
There are reactor designs that can use the waste as fuel. In the US, nuclear waste is designed to be recycled in those reactors. Self-made problem.
They need to learn from Finland and Sweden with viable GDF.
Intresting video ! I actually worked at the EPR contruction in Flamanville. It's important to note that this reactor is a prototype one and we expect to use all the knowledge learned to make the EPR2 more cost effective while of course being as safe as possible. But being a prototype means often running over budget and time, and that applies not only for nuclear reactors... Look at how much money SpaceX put into the Falcon 9 before it properly worked... Also a sister reactor (also a gen 1 EPR prototype) recently started in Finland at Olkiluoto. I sincerly hope we can put the nuclear industry back on rail in France. Coupled with renewable energy, it makes for a stronger energy grid by being more diverse and less prone to single point failing or common factor failing...
But ask Areva how much they lost with the finnish reactor..... I like the EPR design, but if they can't be built in less than 5 years for less than 5E9€, they are not a viable options.
You forgotten the EPR Reactor in china, the name of the plant is Taishan 1, it was shutdown because the cooling system caused the Fuel elements to get damaged. The plant is in operation again but well its china, ob they solved the issue fully no idea.
@@wernerviehhauser94 indeed. We hope yhe EPR2 can make things much better in this regard
@@asokawhite i believe it was shut down recently again. China doesn't have a record of being transparent regarding safety and issues... Having EDF involved in the operation of Taishan helped a bit as they pushed towards shutting down the plant to inspect the fuel rods
@@MysterDaftGame True, interesting enough they got build 5 years behind shedule and other bugdet to by more as the double.
The problem with “leveledized” energy graphs is that they generally fail to include all of the central incentives given to create such low costs, in reality they are much higher than your led to believe through most graphs.
Levelized*
@@EvilSmonkerThey do not include many of the external costs. Otherwise fossil and nuclear power would look much worse.
I wonder why nuclear waste is not mentioned, although it is one of the topics that seems to dominate the discussion in Germany, when it comes to nuclear power and is also often brought up as an argument against labeling nuclear power as "green". Other than that, I found this Video very informative, thank you.
France being an importer of electricity in 2022 is a historical first. Especially ironic as it happens at a time when French industry is minimal having been methodically destroyed over the past 40 years. The 2022 situation should have been inconceivable as the electricity issue had been solved brilliantly decades ago when France still had builders. The only causes of that sad state of affairs have to do with selling out to foreign or corporate interests, incompetence, ideological blindness and overall treason of the national interest on the part of the current French elites.
...
Wasn't another major reason climate change? Because of the drought, the rivers needed to cool all those nuclear plants got too warm, so the power plants couldn't operate at full capacity.
One reason was also that water levels were too low, or the water was already too hot to properly cool the reactors. Renewables don't have that problem and don't need a base load. PV and Wind are very complimentary. With smart vehicle charging, boilers that make the water hot when there is a lot of renewable production you can cut your storage needs way down. If you have nuclear reactors, it makes sense to keep them running until you replaced more polluting energy production with renewables. Germany killed its renewable industry a year after deciding that nuclear is being faced out, like they decided decades before. They could have a grid made up of >90% renewables by now, but the politicians loved coal money more.
@@togamid No, i love how people like you spread lies without even checking.
@@Adrian-jn9ov Its not possible to run the european energy grid with renewables alone. This would only be possible with extensive battery storages (which are still problematic from a enviromental perspective), and the renewable energy production capacity has to be much higher than in a compareble grid with a high base production. Relying on EVs as energy storage might be a very risky strategy, because you have to hope that there are enough EVs with full batteries plugged in, and you basically have to force the people to buy a certain amount of cars. This strategy is not compatible with the goals to reduce car usage in cities for example. You can also not drain those EVs completely empty, because people would not participate in such a system when its possible that they want to go to work and then notice that theri cars are at 3%. Its not useful to look at the grids of individual countries. Europe has one large grid and national grids cannot fuction independent. It makes no sense to replace all fossil energy production in a single country with renewables, the production in all countries has to be replaces. Its highly unrealistic that the EU can run a 90%+ renewable grid, at least not with current technology. Germany did not only kill its renewable and nuclear power productuin, they also killed their coal plants. Germanys only hope is that the other european countries wont do the same mistake, otherwise they are fucked.
I don't think the age thing is as dire as it's made out to be in this video. Maybe beef up some maintenance and checkup practices, but a lot of western reactor designs (and hell, even RBMK reactors with modern mods) have far outlasted their initial design parameters pretty successfully. They should NOT be shut down until at least the equivalent amount of power is being output from new reactors.
There is such a thing as metal fatigue. Haven't you heard? That is why they give an expiration date for cars, planes, ships. And after a certain period of service, they are forced to write off precisely because of this fact.
@@TheGreatCatsby-pd2tt the plants have expiration dates too, they're just into the future after reevaluation. And no, cars and planes don't have fixed expiration dates either. The latter are regularly inspected and service dates adjusted accordingly. It's actually a great analogy.
@@ChristopherBurtraw 🤦♂️🤦🤦♀️
The smart minority agrees with you
Well the reactore containment is whats most critical here. Fatique due to thermal and radiative loads limits the life span, usually this would be far more in the future than the 40 years though. On the other hand, we saw hairline cracks in the pressure containmant way earlier than expected (belgium and england if im not mistaken). And furthermore, maintenance cost is what can make a plant unprofitable.... paired with the costs for decommissioning a NPP, its not a cheap hobby.
I personally believe in Thoriumreactors, it is a concept that the UK already practiced with and the Netherlands is going to build a couple reactors that use this.
To put my two cent in: DeGaulle was forcing the development of nuclear power plants in French basically not to getting cheap energy (we are talking about pre-oil crisis and Algeria still being part of French here), but basically to get fuel for the nuclear-deterrence of French, so price had never been the problem at the first place. Secondly, Germany got rid consequently of its NPP, because its actively driving out base-load supply out of the equation. They won't be able utilize the cheap price of production, when it is still subsidizing all "base-load" powerplants. Why it has currently the highest electricity you ask?, well, gas turbine still needed (gas is expensive), updating the grid ("Nordlink", "Suedlink"...), ramping up the storage (e.g. pumped storage power plant, battery...) , "subsidizing" turning-off productions (wind, solar but also the coal powerplants) and evtl. shareholders dividends? (e.g. Vattenfall, Tennet,... ). So I guess it still has to manage the high energy price for a period of time. Last thing about Fukushima: I still remember when the japanese are considering to evacuate Tokyo (32mio) should the wind had been blowing to Tokyo Bay area.
The high energy prices the last two years are the result of high fossil fuel prices. The effect is noticeable in the UK and France too.
I find it interesting that Germany is so pessimistic about nuclear plants, if you were to make a list of countries most able to run them safely you'd probably put Germany at the top, they're kind of associated with industrial excellence. It's a topic for a different video but... are any of these countries anywhere near ready for the ban on petrol cars? Maybe they're expecting fusion power in 10 years...
No, they are most definitely not ready. No matter how much they exclaim it to the heavens. Unless they want to make Electric Cars absolutely free for everyone and production can keep up with a massive surge in demand. It also puts a lot of stress on the energy grid.
buillding a car or a handtool is not the same as building a network with nuclear power plants. French excells building at large scale (TGV, Total, nuclear, ...).
If they're expecting fusion power they will be waiting a very long time and pouring obscene amounts of money down the drain trying to get there that could have been far better spent elsewhere.
Germans are pessimistic about everything, they are thought to hate themselves
German here: A big issue Germans have is with the longterm storage of spent fuel rods and nuclear waste. Germany is densely populated. This makes finding a possible location for longterm storage for the next couple of thousand years basically impossible. Personally, I never really had any doubts in the safety of German reactors. Chernobyl has taught us a lot, and we aren't at risk of getting any tsunamis or big earth quakes like Fukushima. In the long run, I prefer not having any fission reactors in Germany because of the issue with nuclear waste. However, I do think the exit of fission energy was poorly, if not disastrously, planned and executed. We should have massively invested in other low-carbon energy sources. Shutting down our reactors and supplementing the energy production with coal power plants is fundamentally the wrong move. After Fukushima, the Merkel government basically decided to shut down the last reactor within 12 years, and even compensated the energy providers with 2,4billion€ for making them shut down their reactors earlier than originally planned. Instead of 2023, the shut down date should have been in 2040s or so. This decision was purely reactionary. At the same time, we became increasingly dependent on cheap Russian gas. However, the issue we now have is rather tricky. As far as I know, the recently shutdown fission reactors are not in a condition that would allow restarting and using them again. So either they would have to undergo an extensive refit, or Germany would have to build new nuclear power plants from scratch. Both options would take years and new power plants would be incredibly expensive. Never mind, that it will basically be near impossible to find a new location because of all the NIMBYs. (Germany built and finished a fully functional nuclear power plant that never started producing energy, because the people living next to the power plant stopped it - I think it was an issue of improper planning permission etc.) So there is no quick, temporary solution to supplement coal power plants. TLDR: Longterm nuclear waste storage is a huge issue in Germany. I think in the long run, an exit out of fission energy is good, but Germany wasn't ready and prepared for it. The exit date was too early. Now, there is no easy and quick solution to bridge the time until more low-carbon producing energy infrastructure is built. (ps.: I just want to add that German households don't use electricity for heating. Heating is done by oil or gas burners (my sister's newly built house even uses geothermal energy). I see a lot of non-germans think that we will sit in cold homes during the winter now, because we shut down our nuclear power plants. This was never an issue. And had we not stopped importing cheap Russian gas, at the same time as shutting down the last nuclear reactors, it probably would have never made the headlines in the international media.)
This is not a joke Some inefficiencies are built into the system - such as a preference for paperwork over digital submissions. Earlier this year, EnBW Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG spent more than €10,000 ($10,536) to print 36,000 pages for an application to erect three wind turbines in its home state. The binders stretched the length of a conference-room table when placed side-by-side.
Even if it could be done digitally, why do three wind turbines need 36,000 pages of red tape?
@@deus_ex_machina_ Evaluations on the location, evaluations on their impact on local wildlife, evaluations on their impact on nearby residents, evaluations on their impact on other turbines (will they "steal" wind from those?), and so on.
The question is, are these small reactors finished in design fast enough? Before they are built and ready to produce energy in the real world, the whole world is by 100% renewal energy.
I would love to see a documentary on Molten Salt Reactors