Decouple Media
1 HN recommender · recommended in 4 months, 2022–2026
1:11:06 · 12K views · Jun 20, 2022
Mark Nelson of Radiant Energy Group explains how France, a leader in decarbonization through nuclear power, mismanaged its fleet, and what policy and outages threaten its future.
Used as background in nuclear energy threads for its account of French policy and the economics of the fleet.
5 comments from Hacker News
I would really recommend listening to discussion with Mark Nelson, managing director of Radiant Energy Group, about the state of the French nuclear power industry. "Something's Rotten with French Nuclear" this video
> China currently builds more renewables than nuclear. I said it is irrelevant. Those are different things No: nuclear and renewables are electricity-generating equipment types, and all the debate is about the proportion of renewables and nuclear in the final system. Seeing them as disconnected (in different universes) is not even funny. [LINK] > unless you don't understand the irrelevance of nameplate capacity with intermittent renewables. This perspective dates back a time when transporting electricity was expensive (lines, losses...), storing it also was expensive ( ), fossil fuels and nuclear were the only way to obtain gridpower... all this is obsolete. Explanations: [LINK] > China is also currently seeing the bottom drop out of their renewables industry Source? (I lived in China from mid-2017 to mid-2025) The renewables industry there is, as in nearly every nation, in much better state than nearly any other one. > The EPR2 projects could not even have started in 2022, because he law that prohibits increasing nuclear capacity beyond the currently installed 63.2GW was only repealed in March 2023 Nope. This law stated about active production capacity, and never forbade any reactor-building project. The very first EPR (Flamanville-3) project was running while this law was instated (2015) and did not stop. It simply forbade it to start without other reactor with at least a total equivalent powerplate value to be shutdown. Recent news: [LINK] > they still have to deal with a
Essentially these plants are forced to be unprofitable via energy laws. For example, the nuclear plants are forced to sell their energy to energy traders at unprofitable low rates but those traders are never required to buy the energy and if the price of energy drops below this rate (AFTER it was bought) then the traders can just "return" the energy and the operators have to eat it. This happened during covid when energy prices collapsed due to lack of demand. These middlemen profit off of cheap nuclear energy instead of rate payers. In addition, the nuclear plants must pay a 23 euro per MWh tax that subsidizes the operation of renewable energy. Since the plants are forced to sell their energy below cost and subsidize renewable generation, they are not profitable and aren't given the proper funds to maintain/improve these plants. So then these plants look bad/expensive and the ministers in charge demand that these plants are closed down before the end of their life. Even though the upfront costs have already been paid and the electricity they make are far cheaper than renewable generation if you don't force these crazy disadvantages on them. Mark Nelson talks about theses problems in this interview: this video
I never disputed that it's a fact that China currently builds more renewables than nuclear. I said it is irrelevant . Those are different things. It's also not "way" more...unless you don't understand the irrelevance of nameplate capacity with intermittent renewables. China is also currently seeing the bottom drop out of their renewables industry, with over a third of the workforce laid off and massive drops in installs and production due to a reduction in subsidies. The EPR2 projects could not even have started in 2022, because he law that prohibits increasing nuclear capacity beyond the currently installed 63.2GW was only repealed in March 2023. And yes, reversing course so massively takes a little while, particularly when they still have to deal with a lot of the fallout of the failed "soft exit" policy. As to site selection: you disputed, I showed. Then you change the subject. The interviewee was the president of the French parliament, and he is quite specific. And he is not the only source, this is really well known...unless you bury your head in the sand. Here's a long look: this video
Yep. That was a one-time occurrence, due to (a) inspections being deferred during COVID and (b) France's long time catastrophic underinvestment in their nuclear fleet. Until March 2023, there was a law in France that made it illegal to increase nuclear capacity in absolute terms and mandated reduction to under 50% in relative terms. this video But again, a one-time event, and it doesn't change the high capacity factors world-wide (over 80%) and the extremely high capacity factors in reasonably well run fleets ( > 90% in the US, and also inGermany when they still had nuclear ).