French Nuclear Debate Ignites Amidst Presidential Race

[FBaggins]

Japan’s nuclear tragedy is igniting a debate in France, which generates more than three-quarters of its electricity from nuclear energy. And while that nation’s presidential candidates are squaring off on the issue, an independent audit agency there may have settled the dispute for them.

The country’s powerful nuclear sector has the unflinching support of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. His opponent in the May election is Francois Holland, a Socialist who favors cutting the use of nuclear energy to 50 percent by 2025. While that pitch held lots of resonance with the French people during the early and uncertain days after the Fukushima Daichi disaster, it is losing some sway now and forcing Holland to back peddle.

Here’s why: The independent and influential French Court Audit correctly notes that the 22 of the country’s 58 nuclear reactors will have reached their 40 year lifespan by 2022. Policymakers must choose whether to extend their lives another 20 years, which is technologically feasible, or to decommission them. That would require France to build the equivalent of 11 new electric generators before 2022 — a move that the agency says is “highly unlikely, even impossible.” The French government, meanwhile, is expected to release its own analysis of the nuclear energy program there by mid-month. It will say that increasing the lives of the existing units there from 40 to 60 years is a better way to spend the national wealth than to build new power plants from scratch.

...snip...

Polls, generally, have shown that the French nuclear sector has its solid base of support as well as its determined opposition, which right now is at about 15 percent and unlikely to carry the day for Holland. That may be part of the reason why he making less aggressive comments toward the nuclear movement.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2012/02/08/french-nuclear-debate-ignites-amidst-presidential-race/

[hunter]

1. Maybe Germany can build them some coal fired power plants...

... or Russian fueled natural gas plants.

Nope, not gonna happen.

I hope...