Twenty years from now, France may be the only western country still standing (if it hasn't surrendered to the caliphate)
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French President Emmanuel Macron announced Thursday that his government would add at least six nuclear power plants to its arsenal in the coming decades.
“We are fortunate in France to be able to count on a strong nuclear industry, rich in know-how and with hundreds of thousands of jobs,” Macron said during remarks in the city of Belfort earlier in the day, France 24 reported.
“What we have to build today is the renaissance of the French nuclear industry because it’s the right moment, because it’s the right thing for our nation, because everything is in place,” Macron said.
Nuclear power, which France has relied on more than most Western nations, is at the center of the country’s net zero ambitions, according to France 24. (RELATED: British Researchers Smash Nuclear Fusion Record Using Machine 10 Times Hotter Than Sun)
Macron said the government would study plans for another eight reactors, potentially increasing the number of new plants to 14 within the coming decades, France 24 reported. The first new-generation plant would reportedly begin generating power by 2035.
And what are we doing, besides shutting down our energy industry and heading into a cold, dark future?
IF YOU’RE ANTI-NUCLEAR YOU DON’T REALLY WANT TO FIGHT “CLIMATE CHANGE.” The Nuclear Industry Argues Regulators Don’t Understand New Small Reactors: Advocates say the plants offer a climate fix, but opponents decry them as dangerous.
The nuclear power industry is betting its future on a new generation of reactors small enough to fit on a truck—an emerging technology that mostly uses alternatives to water for cooling, runs at lower pressure than traditional units, and costs far less than the behemoth power plants and cooling towers that define the nuclear landscape today.
But advocates of the idea insist that the folks in Washington who police their business have no idea how to assess it. Today’s rules are “really a square peg in a round hole for these advanced reactor designs,” says Amy Roma, a partner with the law firm Hogan Lovells who’s worked on dozens of license applications. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, she says, is “largely divorced of actually understanding—in depth—the technology.”
Well, they’re bureaucrats.
Congress has ordered the NRC to write rules to replace a regulatory framework that dates to the 1950s. The new guidelines aren’t expected until at least 2025, so for now the agency is operating as it has for decades, evaluating plants that bear scant resemblance to those the regulations were meant to assess. To prove the safety of designs, for instance, the commission demands data from similar plants, but none of the smaller installations have been built in the U.S., so there’s no performance history. And the rules are geared toward so-called light-water reactors, which split uranium atoms to create steam that drives turbines. The newer technology typically uses substances such as molten salt and lead, or gases like helium, to keep the core from overheating. No company employing these technologies has won a construction license, and only one design—a water-cooled model from NuScale Power LLC—has been approved. The NRC declined to make any commissioners or staffers available for an interview on the subject.
“That’s because they don’t know anything and don’t want it to become clear. And environmentalists are opposing these mostly out of habit, and because ignorant Boomers will donate.”
Meet one of the experts overseeing our nuclear program. Sam Brinton, who, besides his expertise in nuclear fuel, is an animal lover in the worst way.
