Can somebody tell me what is the TRUTH about France and nuclear power?

[CTyankee]

The RWingers are always yammering about how France is so successful with its use of nuclear energy and Americans have to "get over" their fixation against it.

I suspect there's a "catch" somewhere in all this, but I truly don't know where it is.

My biggest concern about nuclear power plants is the safety concern. Has France somehow solved that problem, at least to the point where it is at an acceptable level of risk?

What's the deal?

[Spouting Horn]

1. The "deal" is that since

Three Mile Island, all common sense has been thrown out the window.

The energy infrastructure in this country has been neglected long enough.

[Schema Thing]

2. my French friends are positively glowing about this

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. I've spent some time there.

electric rates are reasonable, the supply is always adequate, and people much prefer their energy source to smoking chimneys.

[CBGLuthier]

4. One possibility

Maybe France doesn't let private companies low-bid the plants.

My fear of nuclear in this country is based on the fact that we let corporations literally get away with murder.

[Squatch]

5. Here's some info from a consortium of anti-nuclear power groups

Link

[Juche]

6. I don't know much about France

aside from that they supposedly get about 80% of hteir energy from nuclear.

In the US we have about 104 nuclear plants that supply 20% of our grid energy. That isn't too bad, and I assume 500 nuclear plants would be enough to get 100% of our energy from nuclear.

However nuclear is extremely expensive, far more than other sources of electricity. It also still has dangers.

I think the only reason the RW takes up nuclear is because they consider it a form of alternative that isn't 'liberal'. They probably consider wind or solar to be 'liberal energies'.

If you ask me, geothermal is a much better idea than nuclear for baseload electricity.

[SteelPenguin]

8. Geothermal has it's own issues

In most locations Hot Dry Rock geothermal energy would need to be used, and it isn't without it's dangers. An HDR project in switzerland caused earthquakes to occur, shutting down the project.

I don't know what I'd prefer in my backyard other than Solar honestly.

[Catshrink]

12. Wind

Three states alone -- Texas, S. Dak. and one other, I forgot which, could supply electricity for the entire US. No pollution and the wind is free.

[no_hypocrisy]

7. My brother, who studied physics, told me that France uses a different method

of nuclear power than this country. In other words, France uses "fission" nuclear power as opposed to our "fusion" nuclear power. I don't understand the technicalities of both of them, but I was left with the impression that fission was somehow safer than fusion, less chance of an accident like Three Mile Island.

Also I dated a guy about 30 years who supplied parts to nuclear reactors being constructed. He told me about defective parts regularly installed, both for the actual structure of the building and the mechanical installation of the reactor(s) itself. There were better parts but with enough incentive money, eyes could be averted. I don't know if France is just as susceptible to corruption as this country.

[jmowreader]

9. No one uses fusion nuclear power

They haven't figured out how to sustain a fusion reaction. The longest fusion reaction ever witnessed happened at a Tokamak in France, and they got less than seven minutes' worth of fusion out of it.

Everyone who makes electricity in nuke plants uses fission reactors...France appears to be better at stemming corruption in their nuclear industry.

[Schema Thing]

10. No, it's the same technology as we have.

they do re-use their fuel however, so they have less waste, but it is still a huge problem for them.
<snip>
Ironically, the French nuclear program is based on American technology. After experimenting with their own gas-cooled reactors in the 1960s, the French gave up and purchased American Pressurized Water Reactors designed by Westinghouse. Sticking to just one design meant the 56 plants were much cheaper to build than in the US. Moreover, management of safety issues was much easier: the lessons from any incident at one plant could be quickly learned by managers of the other 55 plants. The "return of experience" says Mandil is much greater in a standardized system than in a free for all, with many different designs managed by many different utilities as we have in America.

<snip>
Things were going very well until the late 80s when another nuclear issue surfaced that threatened to derail their very successful program: nuclear waste.

French technocrats had never thought that the waste issue would be much of a problem. From the beginning the French had been recycling their nuclear waste, reclaiming the plutonium and unused uranium and fabricating new fuel elements. This not only gave energy, it reduced the volume and longevity of French radioactive waste. The volume of the ultimate high-level waste was indeed very small: the contribution of a family of four using electricity for 20 years is a glass cylinder the size of a cigarette lighter. It was assumed that this high-level waste would be buried in underground geological storage and in the 80s French engineers began digging exploratory holes in France's rural regions.

To the astonishment of France's technocrats, the populations in these regions were extremely unhappy. There were riots. The same rural regions that had actively lobbied to become nuclear power plant sites were openly hostile to the idea of being selected as France's nuclear waste dump. In retrospect, Mandil says, it's not surprising. It's not the risk of a waste site, so much as the lack of any perceived benefit. "People in France can be proud of their nuclear plants, but nobody wants to be proud of having a nuclear dustbin under its feet." In 1990, all activity was stopped and the matter was turned over to the French parliament, who appointed a politician, Monsieur Bataille, to look into the matter.

Christian Bataille resembles the French comedian Jacques Tati. His face breaks into a broad grin when asked why he was appointed to this task. "They were desperate," he says. "In France, executive power dominates much more than in Anglo-Saxon countries. So that if the Executive asks parliament to do something it means they are really at the end of their ideas."

Bataille went and spoke to the people who were protesting and soon realized that the engineers and bureaucrats had greatly misunderstood the psychology of the French people. The technocrats had seen the problem in technical terms. To them, the cheapest and safest solution was to permanently bury the waste underground. But for the rural French says Bataille, "the idea of burying the waste awoke the most profound human myths. In France we bury the dead, we don't bury nuclear waste...there was an idea of profanation of the soil, desecration of the Earth."

Bataille discovered that the rural populations had an idea of "Parisians, the consumers of electricity, coming to the countryside, going to the bottom of your garden with a spade, digging a hole and burying nuclear waste, permanently." Using the word permanently was especially clumsy says Bataille because it left the impression that the authorities were abandoning the waste forever and would never come back to take care of it.

Fighting the objections of technical experts who argued it would increase costs, Bataille introduced the notions of reversibility and stocking. Waste should not be buried permanently but rather stocked in a way that made it accessible at some time in the future. People felt much happier with the idea of a "stocking center" than a "nuclear graveyard". Was this just a semantic difference? No, says Bataille. Stocking waste and watching it involves a commitment to the future. It implies that the waste will not be forgotten. It implies that the authorities will continue to be responsible. And, says Bataille, it offers some possibility of future advances. "Today we stock containers of waste because currently scientists don't know how to reduce or eliminate the toxicity, but maybe in 100 years perhaps scientists will."

[judy]

11. Thanks, I believe this is the real story

They can talk about nuclear energy all they want. Until they find a way to recycle nuclear waste, it is a bad idea. It will be like with oil. One day the earth will be covered with nuclear dumps, or we will shoot it into space and create a giant garbage ring around the sun.
If more resources were spent researching ways to recycle waste, maybe, then there would be a future for nuclear power.
But then, there is alway 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl. I have a relative in France, who died of cancer from Chernobyl fallout, along with thousands of others.

So no, I don't think nuclear power is the answer.

[SteelPenguin]

15. There never would be that much waste

The amount of waste generated, even over hundreds if not thousands of years would be, space wise, minimal and could be isolated in a very very small area. That's not the problem. The problem is if you designate some 100 square mile area in Nevada as the dumping ground, how do you get the waste there safely. How do you make sure the waste stays contained.

Launching it into space would also be monumentally stupid. Not only do you have the transportation dangers of taking the waste to the launchpad, instead of the dumping site, but you then get to put it on a rocket which has it's own potential to blow up and spread that waste even further.

The dangers of meltdown at this point are negligible. The real danger of Nuclear power is in it's waste.

Still, given the choice of the amount of particulate pollution caused by coal plants, and the resulting health damage caused by it, if my choices were nukes or coal, I'd choose nukes. I know that coal is hurting me and my family. Nuclear only has the potential.

[hunter]

13. The lights will still be on in France when they are going out here.

Climate change is going to reduce the amount of hydroelectricity available in the U.S., especially in California, and natural gas shortages and/or price increases are going to be very very painful.

Of course humans will continue to build new coal plants, and coastal areas worldwide will flood sooner, rather than later.

I think for-or-against nuclear power is entirely moot at this point, especially in the USA. We saw the road ended at the face of a cliff, and we hit the accelerator anyways.

If Buckaroo Bonzai was driving, we might have made it through into the eighth dimension and back. No such luck. The U.S. economy is in the very first stages of crash and burn. Much of it will not be salvageable when the fires go out.

[madokie]

14. just reading that made me sad,

I'm sure thinking it must be sadder still, :cry:
But all jokes aside we'll come out of this intact, badly beaten and bruised and with a much smaller number of us but we'll survive. Grant you I think we will be looking at a lot of things through different colored glasses and it should be better for the lessons we will have learned by all this goings on today. The strong and the smart will be who survive too not the dumb fucks, you know the ones, the assholes who are dragging their nukles so as to have a trail to find their way home with, yep, those folks. ;-)

This all providing that little boy wonder along with his cohorts and cabal of war criminals don't start using those 'tactical nukes', that I'm sure they have by now, on Irans nuclear facilities some of which are very deep in the ground if I remember correctly. China and Russia have in the past made reference to the fact they couldn't or wouldn't be setting that invasion out. If China and Russia get involved then all bets are off on any of us surviving. But short of that I feel we'll, humans, will survive and be much wiser for it.

How many billions of dollars goes unaccounted for by the pentagon or is it trillions??? 7 + years time, billions of dollars and a strong desire to aquire small 'tactical nukes' and Madmen with a plan, makes me worry :scared: