France Bringing Back Nuclear Energy Growth

French President Macron says with the electric car future, France must produce up to 60% more electricity than today and Nuclear Energy will be a big part of it.

1. The operation of all existing reactors will be extended without compromising safety.
2. Macron announced the launch of a programme of new reactors. They learned lessons from the cost overruns and delays with the EDF nuclear reactor. They have a new EPR2 reactor design. France will build at least six EPR2s and up to eight more EPR2s if all goes well.

Construction will begin by 2028 and the first reactor commissioned by 2035.

This could mean 25 Gigawatts of new nuclear in France by 2050.

The EPR-2 is an optimized version of the EPR reactor. EPR-2 has many similitudes with the EPR. It has the same power output (1670 MWe), an operating life of at least 60 years. Its constructibility has been improved. The double-walled containment building has been replaced by a containment building made of a very thick wall coated by a metallic liner.

Nuclear accounts for almost 75% of France’s power production, but former French president Francois Hollande had aimed to limit its share of the national electricity generation mix to 50% by 2025, and to close Fessenheim – the country’s oldest nuclear power plant – by the end of his five-year term, in May 2017.

SOURCES- World Nuclear News
Written by Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

143 thoughts on “France Bringing Back Nuclear Energy Growth”

  1. Yes, 1900s science fiction, before this era. O'Neill specifically limited his examples to 1980s tech, but more/better will be used. He did that to provide a consistent reference for the design comparisons.

  2. Do like all the fusion efforts which I've been tracking for 63 years, we're getting there,but don't stop the NuScales of the world.

  3. For really high grade process heat you'd want HTR's like the XEnergy offering, but NuScale is hot enough, rejected heat is nothing ,th effect of low Carbon is 200 times less heating than a natural gas plant. It's the suns heat that dominates,and C02 restricts the re radiation of heat to space.
    When a NuScale plant provides process heat, and you need a higher temperature, you just use resistive heaters to get whatever temp you want.

  4. NuScale can build plants faster than wind parks and is the only low Carbon source that is dependable. The French are too proud to buy this,we'll se what kind of SMR they make, they have lots of experience.
    NuScale gives power to the grid in 2029,th French will take years longer than that and will buy natural gas in the interim.

  5. Yes,8% is exactly nothing,as power use has expanded more so they burn more gas and coal than they did years ago.
    Japan could save billions of dollars and clean the climate with the turning of a few switches.

  6. You can mix a lot of H2 without issues, at last 15% but they can go to 100% with a little work.US has had a 900 mile H2 network for decades with no issues.

  7. All European countries have oil and gas, they are too stupid to get it out. Europeans hate fracking, they believe the violence is unfair to rocks.

  8. Nobody wants promises of next century tech which would make them even more dependent,th beauty of plants like NuScale is that it frees the people from large aggressive countries.

  9. When we say "Greens" we mean Russians. They'll keep Euope on coal and gas,which makes it easy to extract trillions of dollars from them in protection, if they pay they won't invade this year.

  10. In science fiction, not in this era. People want to stop nuclear so that th Russians can take back control of Europe.

  11. France has no natural gas, oil or coal in France. Germany has a good deal of coal. A person can see the decision making process in the 1970's, make nuclear power plants from ores from our colonies, or buy coal from a country we went to war with in World War 2.

    Without natural natural gas, natural oil or natural coal in the ground in France, there is no fossil fuel/carbon fuel lobby.

  12. Searched "power beaming redirector":

    "According to one aspect of the present invention, a power distribution system is provided, which comprises at least one source of electricity, at least one microwave transmitter for converting the electricity into at least one microwave beam and directing the beam in a selected direction and at least one orbiting redirector satellite for receiving the directed microwave beam. The redirector satellite has a transmitter for converting the received microwave beam into a plurality of outgoing microwave beams and directing the outgoing beams towards selected targets."

    https://patents.google.com/patent/US8074936B2/en

    The initial beam could come from Earth Peak Intermittent Power, PIP, or the Moon. If from the Moon, the orbit would have to be high to get the moon beam.

  13. He designed a phased array reflector? Great. What was the cost per square meter, and the expected loss percentage from the reflection?

    I don’t think anyone ever built a phased array microwave reflector in the 80s. Or even today. But I would love to hear his estimate of its cost and efficiency. Especially if it reflects 90% of the incoming energy to the target, as you’d suggested. That’s truly amazing.

    The economics for earth-to-earth will be worse than for space-to-earth or lunar-to-earth, in the scenarios we were discussing. Because a single earth transmitter may not have a large amount of power to send, but it will still need to monopolize the entire, giant , phased array microwave reflector for as long as it is sending.

    But before we can look at that, we first need to look at the cost of the reflector and the expected losses from it. If Criswell has already calculated that, would you mind quoting it here?

  14. "Redirector" has been a part of Criswell designs as long as I can remember, 30 years. 80's tech. Earth to Earth power beaming uses redirector (Criswell 2009) in a new way, but not that exciting to me. Only the recent PIP situation makes E to E exciting. Redirectors are to interact with radar on the Moon. Of course they are big. The conservative beam density and low, easy frequency make them big, just for the scale of power. Also, the use of the phaser beacon means the task is simplified. Think of modern military, and ask them if they can *hit* a target with radar if they get to put a beacon of their choosing at the target. Even if they need to bounce it off of something.

    Criswell has given what you want, checked it with the top radar engineers, and sez no prob with 80's tech. In/since the 80s. 1 cent per kWe-h at scale. Total. Redirectors included. We DO need design upgrade, but not to see if it is possible, just to make it better/cheaper given new tech. A huge difference. Criswell was also against demonstration as a waste of time for such basic stuff. E to E serves as that for those who have doubts. It is the thing to do NOW.

  15. I don’t think a phased array microwave reflector has ever been built. So the cost of it is somewhat difficult to estimate. Especially since it will need to be huge in order to intercept the entire beam from the ground, if it is above LEO and maybe a large fraction of the way around the earth.

    So it’s hard to say whether earth-to-earth beaming is economically viable, until such a device has been invented, tested, and given a good cost analysis.

  16. "Yes, the earth beamed power does sound expensive". NO, LSP is cheap, and Earth to Earth can be no more. 80s tech is not new. Phased arrays hitting multiple targets is not new. Yes, it has to be big enuf. These are all included in the LSP cost. Cheap. First designed in 1984, tech better now.

  17. Yes, the earth beamed power does sound expensive, because of the new kind of technology needed in the satellites. Especially since a single redirector satellite will only handle a single transmitter/receiver pair at a time. And it must be big enough to intercept almost all of the beam from the transmitter.

    Hopefully someone will cost out this kind of a system someday.

  18. LSP needs refiguring, as Criswell is no longer avail, and Musk rockets have changed the est cost and lowered the complexity of getting started in ISMRU. LSP cost is needed to determine Earth to Earth, as the design will not be *only* for Earth to Earth. The faster we start Earth to Earth, the faster the Earth collectors will become obsolete and abandoned, as cheap electric energy will come from Space, into the rectennae. The curious thing about most Space Solar plans is that they have dedicated beams from one sat to one rectenna. Missed opportunity, seems.

  19. You are starting with pieces rather than the whole plan. The Earth to Earth cost cannot be more than the LSP cost, or people will not use it, *at scale*. It uses the same redirectors and rectennae as LSP, subbing in PIP Earth energy for Space power. This means it won't be much less than LSP either. Getting some rectennae built is a big deal. Pretty sure the radars can be much smaller than those in Space, as they are closer. They are the only cost to get this PIP energy used, if LSP is being done too. I find that adhering to Criswell beam density limits forces such large aperture that focus is not a problem anyway, even 3 times farther out than the Moon. At meaningful scale.

    Redirectors are not well defined to me. Criswell mentions no separate cost or efficiency for them, that I have seen. When I first saw them, I thot they were not needed as you want backup for at least a short time, and the Moon will *always* work when expected, unlike the Sun on the Earth's surface. From the drawing, it looks like they are quite high, but not GEO, so they can hit many targets. They definitely CAN AND MUST hit many targets, phased array stuff. There are 10 to 100 thousand rectennae at scale. I would perhaps test the beams thru the atmos with a simple reflector first, instead of waiting for a redirector, just to get things moving. I can imagine a surface that absorbs both sunlight and 2.5 GHz, and transmits too, from either side. Does not mean it is possible.

  20. It will be interesting if someone calculates the earth-to-earth cost someday. Especially the “redirector” satellites. It seems it will need to be a fairly large phased array antenna, and a given redirector will only be usable by one sender/receiver pair at a time. 

    I’ve never seen a phased array used purely as a reflector before. That will be an interesting design. It will presumably be in LEO, so it will need a fair amount of thrust to keep the orbit from decaying. It could rotate the entire device rather than being a phased array, but that will require even more thrust.

    It sounds expensive. I hope someone calculates the cost someday.

  21. OK. "LSP total is 1 cent per kWe-h, retail," includes the solar panels, everything, in Space, except the rectennae. To the extent you can do it on Earth cheaper, do it. Otherwise, in Space. That will depend on how much the Space ISMRU is better than on Earth mfg is. The whole LSP thing including collectors is less than thermal electricity! The power beaming alone stuff is cheaper on Earth, or don't use it. If we don't do much Space stuff, pretty clear Earth to Earth will pay. edit: If the PIP is cheap.

  22. The question wasn’t the cost of solar panels. It was the cost per MW to build the earth-to-orbit-to-earth beaming system. That would include the transmitter, receiver, and “redirector” in space.

    The usefulness of this kind of earth-to-earth beaming will depend on the cost.

  23. I would guess that 70% is close. No certainty. The Snead one way 77% *must* include the conversions or it makes no sense. The one reflection in Space must be good and easy. Atmos can't be too bad if the 77% includes it one way already.

    Your question as to cost is unclear as to whether "cost per megawatt to beam from solar panels " includes the panels. NO! The panels or windmills or nukes or geothermal have to exist for their own reasons. It is when the sun is high and bright or the wind is strong or the nuke is in a sleeping city, or the lava is flowing hot, then power beaming comes into play. The Earth energy has to be almost free and excess, or you would just collect it in Space. Only recently has this been true, for renewables, as the collector cost has fallen far faster than the grid electronics associated with the local load. LSP and some SPS systems include Earth to Earth power beaming as a bonus. It is not fixed in place, can balance both load and source variability, and go very long distance. It is a cheap part of LSP, which is in turn cheaper than thermal electricity. A great place to start.

  24. If you’re saying that 70% of the power gets through an earth-to-orbit-to-earth beam, then that sounds like it could be useful. At least if it’s also including the conversion from electricity to microwave at the sender and reverse at the receiver.

    Then the remaining question would be the cost. I wonder if the cost per megawatt to beam from solar panels in one country to receivers in a distant country would be cheaper than just building nuclear or geothermal in the receiving country. If it is, then this might be useful to combine with terrestrial solar and wind.

    It just depends on the actual numbers.

  25. The Snead figure 3 shows about all I know about his plans' efficiency. I get ~77% or 6.5/5 for that step. Another 10% for bounce and thru atmos again. Exact same transmitter and rectenna. He is not describing Earth to Earth power beaming. Criswell is delivering cheap retail, and sez 50 to 80% of the cost is the rectennae, believe it or not, as there are so many. Starting this with even cheaper ground transmitters and Peak Intermittent Power, almost free, and it works. The Earth PIP *replaces* the in-Space solar cells for that advantage, so to speak, so LSP prices could be beat, at least for a while. I would clearly want to go farther than conduction lines can, to get power from sun while in the nite.

  26. I was asking about the earth-to-earth beaming cost and efficiency. If someone is saying 70% of the power gets through when going from orbit to earth, then it may be that earth-to-orbit-to-earth would be 0.7 * 0.7 = 0.49, which means only half the power gets through.

    But I didn’t see the 70% when I quickly looked through that paper. So maybe the 70% is for the entire round trip?

    I would also be interested in the cost per MW to create an earth-to-earth beaming system. If it’s able to be cheaper than traditional power lines, that would be good to know.

  27. The costs are not separated out in LSP, as it was seen as a way to start, not a big separate project. LSP total is 1 cent per kWe-h, retail, estimated before cheap Musk rockets. One redirector in orbit and existing radar should send a beam to be measured on the ground before a rectenna is even built. There is the plan. Here is the tech that it will prove out, assuming you can reflect a radar beam:

    https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9318744

    edit: from Snead, he is getting 77% on the transmission from sat to ground, lets say another 10% of that lost in bounce and thus ~70%. Far superior overall product to conduction lines even where they can go.

    https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4282/1

  28. I looked at pages 12 and 13 at the link, but I didn’t see the percent energy loss. And I didn’t see the cost per MW to build the system.

    So what is the loss percentage and the cost to build it?

  29. "You should check out Criswell LSP ppg 12-13 Earth to Earth Power Beaming." The plan there was fairly tangential, just a way to save a little by not shipping coal. That was 2009. Now, however, we have Peak Intermittent Power, PIP, to bounce off of the redirectors, so they are quite useful for Earth to Earth Power Beaming, easily 1/3 of the way around the Earth in one bounce. This is not the NZ plan, which does not use redirectors in Space.

    http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/pdfz/documents/2009/70070criswell/ndx_criswell.pdf.html

  30. For long-distance power beaming with a chain of repeaters, what is the expected cost per repeater per MW, and what is the expected percentage loss of energy per repeater?

    How do those compare to the cost and losses in a traditional high voltage power line?

  31. "an energy source that won't be there when you need it." You vote FOR the truth of that statement. Duly noted. Also noted is that this is in the context of a discussion about Earth to Earth Power Beaming, as described in Criswell LSP ppg 12-13. Where exactly will this power "not be"? Where you don't build a rectenna?

  32. You have a grid. I live in Texas. The announced new grid long distance lines don't go far enuf, cost too much and are fixed in place. Do you question the tech of 80's radar that is proposed, or have some specific issue? Line of sight would imply not having redirectors, which are to solve line of sight issues.

  33. Earth to Earth beaming has certain line of sight issues.
    Also we already have a grid. For better/worse it is a sunk cost.

    SPS is like Starlink in that it could help with remote areas much like Starlink connects remote areas.

  34. 02/16/2022: 3 matches for 'fission', 4 matches for 'batter{y,ies}', 6 matches for 'fusion', 'solar', 'wind', 'water', 'renewable' each ~4-6, 'power' ~22 matches on this page

  35. You should check out Criswell LSP ppg 12-13 Earth to Earth Power Beaming. Even those pellets are hard to move around when they are in the cooker.

  36. Too bad they are not able to select where the intermittent or even baseload energy comes from. That would really help.

  37. *Pretty sure* Helion uses nonsuperconducting Al, has low energy neutrons, but indeed a vacuum. It does not have to be as cheap as fission, just as cheap as fission plus thermal step. Unless all you want is heat. The thermal step alone is too expensive compared to power beamed intermittent free energy. Obviously, much of that uses existing fusion.

  38. Sheesh. You think boiling water with steel hardware that lasts for decades is expensive, wait until you're stuck using high temperature superconductors and ultra high vacuums, maintained in the face of a high neutron flux.

    My prediction is that even if they get fusion working, it will never be as cheap as fission.

  39. I saw plenty of wind turbines the last time I was driving through Germany. Very few of them were actually turning, of course…

  40. The costs are not crazy high inherently. They're driven crazy high in many countries, on purpose, to kill the industry. Even counting Chernobyl, which used an obsolete design even when it was built, and was caused by insanely reckless behavior, nuclear power is by far the safest and least polluting energy source. It's overly safe, in order to drive up costs.

  41. "They have too much nuclear energy."

    This is nonsensical. Are they having to waste it heating resistors? No, every bit of it is being used. What they don't use themselves they can sell to neighbors stupid enough to shut down working reactors.

    And nuclear IS renewable. Once you overcome luddite opposition to reprocessing, we could run our entire civilization off nuclear until plate tectonics stops bringing up new nuclear fuel, which isn't due to happen before the Sun goes off the main sequence and toasts the Earth.

    That's as renewable as it gets.

  42. Considering the number of french reactors that will come to the end of life on next decade and beyond, even if some of them are extended, that number of reactors won't be enough just to maintain the level of nuclear energy production.

    More than "growth", I would speak about "soft landing" of nuclear energy production on France.

    It has sense. They have too much nuclear energy, and they need a lot of changes, too fast, if they change from nuclear to renewable. So, these reactors will allow a longer timeline for substitution.

  43. "the only threat to fossile production". There is also Earth to Earth power beaming, moving existing energy to where and when it is needed, from where it is when it is there. This builds most of what is needed for Space Solar, esp Criswell LSP.

  44. "solar and wind are dependent on gas" no, people are. Give them what they really want. "The High Frontier" by Gerard K. O'Neill.

  45. Intermittently having free, excess energy to Earth to Earth power beam. Can you move nukes around without power beaming? You should check out Criswell LSP ppg 12-13

  46. Naught all socialists are naught sees. All naught sees are socialists. All socialists are mentally ill, power addicts. Naught all socialists are consistent with all other socialists. Therefore, naught all socialists are consistent. If some are naught consistent, the whole batch is naught, from the definition of consistent.

  47. Germans have a history of being gullible and easily mislead. It's not the first time they fall for false prophets.

    For some reason the Germans have absolutely no capability for critical thinking.

  48. "Renewable" is all about making sure that the demand for NG stays high through preventing the building of nuclear. Even GP has its "secret" donors. The best way to get lucrative funding is starting an organisation that aims at dismantling western society.

    Take Germany as an example. Very big importer of fossile energy. Record high CO2/KWh. Record high CO2 in total. Opposes arming of Ukraine by even preventing other countries donating arms there. Still Germany is very proud of how much they have done for the environment. What they have done is closing down the only threat to fossile production. It really makes me wanna puke!

  49. You need to pay a lot more,Ca has ruined the world for clean energy, you need to pay a lot more to build some more wind turbines and solar panels.Of course that means you also have to pay for new gas combined cycle plants .
    Just know you have paid for death camps in China and one hundred new giant coal plants there.

  50. Buy SVSVU its the SPAC NuScale will merge with closed today at $10.51 They build the reactors in a factory and each plant can take up to 12 modules 77 MW each. US is committed to one plant in Id at INL,Poland Romania and S Korea all want these.

  51. The neat thing about reactors is they are not remote but right in your heartland wind turbines no one can stand and everyone wants them as far away as possible nuclear plants on barges will be tied up next to cities.

  52. There won't be a better alternative in 30 years to nuclear power solar cells will be intermitant and unreliable especially for EU,they are bad enough in Ecuador on the Equator they are insane in Germany when energy during the Summer is at exactly the wrong time they need power at midnight on Dec 20th.

  53. '..Now if it could just be transported in bulk. Whoa wait:..' I calculated the energy content of the liquid hydrogen in a full load for the 'Suiso Frontier'. It's about the same as that of ten kilos of uranium fuel pellets, which are the most energy dense fuel we use. Ten kilos would fit in a shoebox. Hydrogen tankers could be made larger, but they'll still be far more expensive than a bulk oil tanker, and even a Liquefied Natural Gas tanker has to be refrigerated to only minus 164 C, nearly a hundred degrees warmer than liquid hydrogen.

  54. Hate to say it but NuScale makes heat. Just as you don't want to use electricity to make heat (use NuScale), it costs too much to make electricity by boiling water. This leaves a lot of *current* plans high and dry. This thermal cost (the dismal science) is more than sun photons into line voltage, with new low cell costs. Now that it is easy to move that energy with power beaming, the intermittent overflow is suddenly baseload, when moved 1/3 or less around the Earth.

    Now, it seems that NuScale will be better than Helion for heat??, but Helion is way further off than power beaming.

  55. If we are talking the same thing, that is laser. Now that you bring it up, it is quite interesting because the orbit of the source sats would seem to be about where the redirectors would be. Quite high to see around the edge of the Earth for redirectors, also high for the laser sats to be in sunlight. Perhaps. However, the focus of the laser onto small solar panels of the client sats is over similar distance as Earth to Earth power beaming uses, far less than GEO or lunar SSP. As such, the optics should be quite easy. And remember, at scale, a 1 TWe lunar station at 2.5 GHz (not death ray) is already large enuf to focus to a 1 km rectenna. You don't really want anything smaller than 200 Mwe, seems like to me. So launch a screen redirector, use existing radar to bounce off of it (like Echo sat) see if that still works. Build a rectenna and see if that works. Build a radar and see if that still works. Do it where I get the electricity.

  56. Please, please please!!! I am not talking about SPS!!!!! I am talking about something that would have been considered a pointless proof of an SPS power beaming concept 5 years ago. Earth to Earth power beaming. What has suddenly changed is the free intermittent energy now avail. "You should check out Criswell LSP ppg 12-13"

  57. Look if the economics pan out and the technology is workable then i'm sure that SpaceX will make SPS's by the hundreds using the hundreds of billions that came from Starlink's IPO.

  58. Direct heat up to a certain temperature. You would need higher temp reactors for some processes.

    Anything is better than using electricity to make heat…

  59. 'Big nuclear was the world's solution 30 years ago. … Go H2. Go fusion. Go batteries.'
    Nuclear is still making ten percent of the world's electricity. To the nearest couple of decimal points, H2, fusion, and batteries are making 0.00%.

  60. '..Hydrogen infastructure is growing by leaps and bounds in north Europe..' So you claim. Greenpeace Energy has been selling 'Windgas' for over ten years in Germany. It's standard Russian methane mixed with 'green' hydrogen produced from excess windpower that would otherwise be curtailed. So far the percentage of hydrogen has got all the way up to one percent, by energy content. About 15x that and they'd be having issues with embrittlement of the steel, valve failure, and burners not getting the correct fuel/air ratio.

  61. For once, France is proving smarter than those idiots running Germany. Perhaps they can smarten them up. And to the German People: Wise up you morons! Stop electing imbeciles to run your country! It is now understood that the Greens basically lied through their teeth about Nuclear Energy. They suppressed information on the development of IFR's (integral fast reactors) which reuse their own fuel and it is impossible for them to melt down. And we now have compact nuclear nuclear reactors which are even safer. The entire Green Movement knows this is coming onboard with evil nuclear. Morons… Watch "Pandora's Promise" if you doubt the veracity of my words….
    TC

  62. The military does power beaming between satellites but we won't beam power to Earth that is a "death ray".

  63. China and Japan have extensive nuclear power production,Japan was a leader in PV production yet even today 40 years later PV produces close to nothing and nuclear produces 10GW. Small grids will employ micro reactors, or diesel generators as they do today.

  64. I'm far less worried that nukes will be stopped than that Earth to Earth Power Beaming, Criswell LSP ppg 12-13, will be delayed further. "watts first start arriving" long ago from SPS, let alone the intermittent sources, if my plan *were* followed. Do you support at least 1/100th the effort being put into nukes going into Earth to Earth Power Beaming, using known 80s tech or better, NOW?

    And, more importantly, do you take this stuff seriously?

  65. Closest you get to Model T right now would be Nuscale. Not a paper reactor, not quite at mass production.

  66. Oh? Please tell me why my costs are high. In particular explain why my costs went up 10% when SONGS was closed.

    Please tell me more.

  67. France has a large sunk cost of nuclear rationalism. Makes it easier to keep being rational.

    Shame is that if they had been building one new reactor per year then they would be the energy capital of Europe. Now they have to play catch up and are delivering new nuclear a decade from now.

  68. "Your general rule that nothing new can work"

    My general rule is that nothing new is *known* to work. And that the systems humanity relies on for survival need to be known to work. I'd keep building nukes while developing space power, until the watts first start arriving.

  69. "W. Brown’s 1975 Goldstone demonstration [22] remains the highest-power result to date, delivering 35 kW at 1.55 km." from below. IEEE is doing a special study for later this year, NSS below. Your general rule that nothing new can work is too broad. And does not apply to power beaming. Are you aware that I am talking about Earth to Earth power beaming, before SSP but leading directly to it? Do you doubt ground radar ability to do this? You will be freezing in the dark with that attitude applied to every tech.

    https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9318744

    https://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/NSS-Position-Paper-SSP-Clean-Energy-from-Space-2021.pdf

  70. In France the president has a lot of power , no compromise and Macro is not from an historical party , so he gets more freedom

  71. Yeah: "In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they're not."

    Don't assume that rectenna is actually going to work until it's been tested. The nuke plant you KNOW works. I have a strong bias in favor of solutions already known to work, over solutions that are at present just theoretical. Especially when lives are on the line.

    We're seeing more and more blackouts on account of sources of power which just boringly WORK being supplanted by sources that sound like a good idea, but which didn't have a track record.

    Invest in space power, but until the watts start flowing, buy the nuke plants. You KNOW they'll work, and it's kind of important that the power be reliable.

  72. Been there, done that. I live in Texas. Altho you would think from NBF that Calif is the only place it happens, we here also have a socialist gov and they are comical. When I mention to neighbors my plan to have the first rectenna placed where *my* power comes from, and theirs, they really like the idea. Anything of substance to say?

  73. The motivation for restoration of the planet Earth to pre African Nature, say 50-100,000 years ago, is that Earth is the source of evolutionary processes we are clueless about, yet not only rely upon but come from. Much more to come insofar as we don't destroy the possibilities. Reparations to the Neandert(h)al victims certainly would be the right thing to do, and I *like* life, Nature and Earth, for some curious reason. But that is my personal motivation.

    The power addict neurotic *small World* greens you see are just that, addicted to a power trip that is based upon the ridiculous assumption that the Earth is the World. Cislunar is our current but expanding World. Read Gerard K. O'Neill "The High Frontier" before trying to defeat them. Their arguments, and the various things you mention, are often actually pretty valid appearing without understanding O'Neill. They are mostly irrelevant or absurd if you do.

  74. More vulnerable than trusting socialist neurotics??? How???? Anyone can supply power to your distributed independent rectennae, on your property. The redirectors are cheap and simple, replacements can be waiting in orbit if some destroyed. See Criswell LSP ppg 12-13 for example that has a slightly different source of power than now possible. The beams are switchable and dispatchable, and can even be multiple. Military will prob start with stronger beams, because they can control a larger safety area (way overbuilt IMHO) or don't care about harming the enemy. Normal large scale civilian stuff would have to be purpose built to be stronger than Criswell beam density limits. Thus, limits.

  75. The lack of SSP IS someone's fault, not mine however. Lack of FTL IS NOT someone's fault. My statement is very important, not trivially false as you attempt to portray it.

    edit: For example, ~90 (95 actually) or so NASA did a "Fresh Look" study of SSP. Sounded good when I first heard of it. O'Neill had been published for over a decade. I even knew of Criswell LSP by then, iirc. They limited the study to launched systems, as the notion of using lunar resources was not yet done, did not exist yet, as you say. Thus, no reason to think of it. The reason to use lunar resources is to avoid launch costs, btw, and mfg ease too, in Space. When I read about this limit, I laughed and ignored the study, no input from me would help, they were doomed. Amazingly!!!, they concluded that launched SSP was impractical because of launch costs, just as O'Neill had said earlier. Stupid, no? Their fault there is no SSP, YES!

  76. 'Greenie' tech values vary widely and are certainly coloured by politics – from off-grid dirty-hippies -to- super-tech fusion for all, etc. What's their green motivation? Change everyone into pre-industrial, granola-eaters?; punish first world capitalists through green-fear redistribution?; save the most vulnerable societies only from extreme weather events?; remove an increasingly rare and disruptive fuel source that will eventually run out (if only locally) a lot more suddenly at unaffordable prices than people realize?; push for a climate that reflects the 'world' they want than any new and warmer CO2 dense enviro?. The point is that 'hating on carbon' is not a good solidarity position – it diverges as you dig down into the nitty-gritty of each faction's values. Having a goal such as 75% power from renewables (however you define that) creates a focus that appears, at least at the surface, to include everyone's other values (accepting the rich, accepting growth and prosperity, helping disadvantaged, whatever). That's the key and having a huge range of expensive tech to develop dilutes finances, research, etc. Big nuclear was the world's solution 30 years ago. Times have changed, even though it would have been great to have that extra capacity and lower costs around. Let it die. Go small. Go H2. Go fusion. Go batteries.

  77. Get used to freezing in the dark, on account of giving up on reliable power sources already proven to work, in favor of speculative sources that aren't yet proven.

  78. Lets see how good France military and their new jets are show us how EU is independent of the imperial US,get the tanks and planes up to Urkraine and show Putin who's boss, that a boy Macron!

  79. Nuclear plants have wide safety margins tuns out American plants are full of counterfeit parts, shouldn't matter ,run them till they break, which won't be catastrophic.
    Just invested in NuScale they announced a new plant in Poland.

  80. Obvious to everyone the anti nuclear green agenda is financed by coal gas and oil interests mainly Russia,solar and wind are dependent on gas.On coal also in Germany.

  81. You are getting testy! You are grasping at straws! I have already won this. "trying to make excuses for why you should use an energy source that won't be there when you need it." The sun will be shining in the desert or in O'Neill Space or on Criswell LSP at all times, many places. Earth to Earth power beaming! Have you ever heard of it? Death to thermal electricity. Death to fossils. Death to nukes. Death to shipping molly queues. Get used to it.

  82. "Because" Germany can't close their plants fast enough. You get REALLY good prices selling electricity to people who are freezing in the dark.

    What's the political dynamic that allows France to make rational decisions about nuclear power, while most countries are nuts? I honestly don't know. Maybe their schools are better?

  83. I love H, but even better is electricity live on the line. Earth to Earth power beaming, as explained ppg 12-13 of Criswell LSP, allows source intermittency and load variability to be met. Criswell first thot of this to avoid moving molly queues, such as most of these plans require. Now that excess intermittent energy is abundant, we don't need no nukes at all for electricity. The free energy should be 1) power beamed, 2) if that is not paying, make H2 or ammonia, 3) make heat as Rondo will, or scrub CO2. Most storage will be non local, power beamed around as needed. Esp good in emergencies!

  84. " The nuke salesman's definition of "intermittent" is that you get the power you want only intermittently, and less the rest of the time."

    That's the definition everybody uses, who isn't trying to make excuses for why you should use an energy source that won't be there when you need it.

  85. Bunch of Numpties.

    Of course, nuclear has exceptional ability to reliably boost electrical capacity countrywide but it is not the political time for centralized, non-Greenie (read: low-tech, centralized, non-wind/ solar/ geo type of development) technological roll-out. Huge capital expenditures and widespread political uncertainty make this a prolonged and expensive/ time-consuming near-boondoggle. Hydrogen infastructure is growing by leaps and bounds in north Europe, threatening a power tech split as lines and standards spread. China is embracing heat and industrial uses. Japan has already been a leader and continues to expand.
    https://www.greencarcongress.com/2022/02/20220208-p66.html

  86. Can anyone offer any insights into why France is embracing nuclear energy, while Germany can't close down their plants fast enough?

  87. I'm not the expert, but I think that high heat is used for these sort of chemistry things. It is the heat TO electricity that is costly. Nukes are great for direct heat.

  88. I love nuclear power, but it's costs are crazy high. Glad plenty of companies out there are working on smaller modular reactors that can be build in a factory, and delivered to any site. The first company to crack that, will be super wealthy.

  89. France actually needs to quadruple its electrical capacity at existing nuclear sites with small nuclear reactors in order to produce enough excess electricity for the production of hydrogen for methanol production. The carbon for methanol production can come from a variety of sources: carbon waste from urban, agricultural, and forest waste and come from the extraction of CO2 directly from the atmosphere or from seawater.
    But centrally mass produced remotely sited floating nuclear reactors are likely to the primary source of carbon neutral synthetic fuel and industrial chemical production in the future, IMO.

  90. You should check out Criswell LSP ppg 12-13. The only thing slowing SSP has been launch costs. See Snead for tech readiness. With Earth to Earth power beaming, 80's tech radar, built on the ground, can distribute the *free* energy to where needed, when needed, unlike wire grid. The screens in orbit are pretty simple, do it NOW. Pretend it is important. "solar power satellites don't" exist is NOT MY FAULT!!!

  91. In the case he was describing, the Rondo guy had to have the free electricity near a place that needs industrial heat. The free electricity is an artifact of intermittency. The nuke salesman's definition of "intermittent" is that you get the power you want only intermittently, and less the rest of the time. The Rondo observation quoted describes a new, unexpected (see Criswell's rationale just a decade ago) drop in the cost of the collectors themselves, cells or windmills. This drop does not include the inverters or grid hook up! So, there is a new economic balance that lets Earth solar cell fields have 300% the "rated" power, so that the inverters are full *most* of the time, not just at full sunlight. So, in full sunlight, they have 300% needed and can provide the rest almost free, "intermittently". You don't live right by one of these, and you just need a hook up. Earth to Earth power beaming! Better than long distance grid because it is not fixed in place and can go 1/3 of the way around the Earth.

  92. They should first ensure their short/ mid term energy safety with proven concepts, then build more added capacity with unproven ones.

    Nuclear power plants exist, solar power satellites don't.

    Yeah, everything is relative. With the existing regulatory environment, it will be like a decade before they see one of those reactors producing any power.

    How long before anyone sees industrial grade SPSs? a couple decades? three? no thanks, try option 1 first.

    Note: I'm not in any way against SPSs, but let's be real. That tech still has everything to prove.

  93. I live in California, and I'd sure like someone to send me some of that near-free electricity! The lowest rate of the several tiers on my electric bill from a few days ago was a bit over 30 cents per kwh. My reality certainly doesn't seem to match the rosy image given in your comment.

  94. There's also some SMR work mixed in with this announcement. Though to be honest, this announcement is mostly just committing to replacing the existing french domestic fleet, as while they say they want to safely extend the life of the existing fleet, there are some misgivings over some of the forgings from the Cruesot forge.

  95. It is one thing to keep things going that are paid for, quite another to throw the money away on new thermal electricity. Esp so long into the future before built.

  96. "the cost of renewable power — solar and wind, primarily — started plummeting. In some parts of California, this has gotten so extreme that during parts of the day, generation outpaces demand and the grid's capacity to absorb it all by quite a bit. The result is that there are parts of the day where electricity is so cheap it may as well be free — but it has nowhere to go." and "What we are doing today would have been stupid five years ago — when electricity was more expensive, you'd never dream of doing this," laughs O'Donnell." Throw in Criswell LSP Earth to Earth Power Beaming idea, ppg 12-13, and say goodbye to thermal electricity.

    https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/08/rondo-series-a/

    https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4282/1

  97. Good for France.

    Do not follow Germany's example and keep your carbon free energy sovereignty.

    And I'd recommend them to check who funds their "well meaning" activists too. They'd be surprised (or not).

  98. It’s good for France to take this clear alternative position extending and increasing nuclear as part of it’s transition to sustainability in contrast to Germany shutting down nuclear plants under pressure from the Greens.

  99. EPR is the Mercedes Benz of nuclear power plants With a price tag to match. We really need to design and build the model T. They should hire the Elysium group to design it.

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