• French minister of ecology resigns, citing incompatibility with neoliberal govt.
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just happened on live radio, will update with a source when one appears differents cited on air : -no transition out of nuclear power -prioritization of economical enforcement over environmental safety by govt. -lack of economic cooperation with Africa -govt’s caving in to lobbyists on all environmental issues -no will to paradigm change from govt to an ecological transition Nicolas Hulot was pitched for his EU greens campaigning and Ushuaia show in Macron’s center-right government. He was vehemently criticized for his silence on cigeo nuclear dump, gonesse mega-mall « europacity » and Nôtre-Dame Des Landes airport project occupation raid. He came out of his silence, painting a broad picture of his isolation within the govt and lack of cooperation on all questions of ecology, and a dissonance between the vocal support on ecological issues and the lack of measures taken.
Resigning is not gonna help, the guy who replaces you is probably going to be more complaint with the governments wishes.
It already has and he hasn't even handed in the letter yet. Suddenly people aware of the following issues.
That list is eh, but the bit about nuclear power is odd considering it's the #1 source of power for France and has very little to do with global warming or damage to the ecology (besides maybe uranium extraction and storage or powerplant construction and location).
It's an incredibly complicated and expensive process to maintain safely. Simpler is better, nuclear power has amazing uses, there are just better ways of going about it. I'm aware FP has a massive boner for it, and I understand after arguing with anti nuclear retards since the forum began but it's not all that practical after other alternatives are offered.
Well, I mean, apparently not since 70% of their electricity in produced by nuclear power.
Your statement is only true until 70% of their power comes from clean renewable fuel sources int he future, I'm not sure I get your logic here.
It’s obviously not his words verbatim but I typed along as he spoke. The points were not as contained or concise as I put them and were not necessarily enunciated in this precise order. He did call nuclear energy « a folly ».
The problem is wind, tidal and solar power is unsustainable as primary power generation. You NEED a significant backbone of power generation, solar/wind/tidal etc are fine for supplemental use and peak hours, but your choice is either coal/natural gas or nuclear. Hydropower works for countries like Norway, where we can store a lot of power in water reservoirs. For the vast majority of other countries, hydro power isn't feasible. The only way to be completely dependent on renewable energy, would be to have massive MASSIVE battery farms all over the world, and taking efficiencies and the amount of maintenance into account, it'd be a 100 times easier to just use a nuclear power plant or conventional coal/gas plants. This video explains the major issues with solar power in particular, but the same can also pertain to tidal or wind power. Because until we have a way to properly store the excess energy, it can be more damaging to the environment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYLzss58CLs
I know we won't be completely dependent on renewable in our lifetime, not unless there is a huge breakthrough in energy production tech, it doesn't mean we shouldn't fade it out as much as humanly possible though, it's not only for us, but for 3rd world countries and war-prone regions where nuclear power is not only impractical cost-wise, but just downright dangerous to have. Right now these countries are running on fossil fuels and we all know that isn't sustainable. In response to the battery situation, it's a cool topic for engineers and architects to handle. Perhaps it might be more feasible to have power storage within the building itself for it's own contained use. The PowerWall is one of the first commercially viable techs, or at least the first popular mainstream one, they will only get better, why have giant farms when you can transfer the power directly to a storage unit in the building itself? I'm shooting ideas on that one, but there are options.
The thing is nuclear power is a huge investment. Our power plants are old now which means they've been paid for a long time ago so we can enjoy cheap electricity. But, for a lot of them, some key, non-replaceable components are nearing the end of their expected lifetime and producers are trying to prove that they can be run safely past that expected lifetime. There's a lot at stake here, and I'm not too confident about the lack of conflicts of interest between EDF and the regulating parties.
We also aren't talking about new wireless power transfer technologies that will, in time once certain hurdles are overcome, allow us to put solar panels in a locked orbit and get 24/7 sunlight which we can transfer down to earth, it's really not all that far away.
Does he mean he wants the government to transition out, or is he opposed to France transitioning out?
What technology would that be?
Wireless Power Transmission of Solar Energy from Space A nice summary of some viable methods.
New nuclear production tech is on the horizon to make new reactors more efficient by at least one order of magnitude compared to previous ones. As a matter of fact the tech is already proven but as you mention making the legislation and infrastructure to accommodate those powerplants is gonna take a while. Still, France is king when it comes to nuclear tech and they certainly have the capital to afford those new plants so I don't see why they wouldn't go for it especially since in practical terms they're produce no greenhouse gases.
Just feels like it's a tiptoe type progress when really we need to be making huge leaps forwards away from the energy, it's nice but it has some really nasty side effects to even a fully safe operational power plant, mining that shit is seriously nasty business. I'd prefer we leave nuclear to ships, subs and spacecraft personally.
This is a pipedream if we're talking about putting enough solar panels up in space to actually make a dent in the energy demands of the world over the next 30 years.
Over the next 30 years? Of course not. Over the course of 100-200 years, the entire earths energy demand could be met threefold under the right enocomic conditions (if space travel becomes cheap and energy companies actually allow this to happen.) In the meantime, just stick them on the ground and reduce nuclear dependency in the meantime, only good can come of it.
Way more people die to cancer due to fossil fuels than nuclear energy. Uranium production is pretty nasty but nothing compared to coal and fuel extraction. Also, the next generation of nuclear plants are not only safer (e.g. a total loss of power will not cause a meltdown) but will require less nuclear material or use a more abundant source like thorium on top of breakthroughs in recycling methods that will enable us to reuse up to 90% of spent nuclear materials. The future is a mix of renewables and nuclear. The fact that you find nuclear plants "icky" due to a few events resulting from gross human negligence isn't approaching the situation the world is in and the solutions needed from an objective standpoint but rather feels instead of reals.
We don't have 100 years to wait for solar to become that viable. In the meantime, nuclear is the best option until we can build out better renewable systems for reducing pollution.
If we want to mitigate the worst possible outcomes of global warming, we can't wait more than 30 years for solutions much less a century.
I'm not saying to any of you, or at all that we should not use nuclear, and I"m most certainly not saying we don't build any more nuclear power plants. I've stated myself above that the issues with nuclear were all due to human negligence however that in itself is THE problem, for a few reasons. I just don't have a love for it, it's just necessary for now while we primarily phase out fossil fuels, and then phase out nuclear energy. The problems are real but worth the risk, I'm just quite sick of people have faith in humans not to fuck it up, we haven't been responsible with just about anything, and I don't expect us to be responsible for this. This is primarily for countries that will follow us in nuclear energy that are unstable, an unstable country has an unstable reactor, and these buildings can be weaponized by foreign states, as the US tried to test with Iran. Of course I'm not favoring fossil fuels, climate change comes first to tackle, just don't walk around claiming that nuclear is clean, it has the POTENTIAL to create large inhospitable zones, and I'm sure we will see future incidents to come. Murphy's Law.
I think France's problem with nuclear starts at waste disposal. This is what people take issue with most often. There's grave concerns that our current nuclear waste disposal infrastructure is not durable and is dangerous for the ground. Waste dumps have had a spell of bad PR after clashes between activists and security at Andra Forest, Cigéo nuclear dump in Bure, and ensuing lawsuit.
Finland have a beautiful storage facility coming up for their waste. It's colossal in size and built to last for hundreds of thousands of years. The plaque they have made for it, incase of some form of extinction event is written in every popular language on the planet and serves as a warning for those that might venture there after we are gone. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/237427/dea700be-1087-42d8-a5f6-33eb7d2ad9e9/image.png Pretty cool if you ask me.
Could have fooled me. Several new Chernobyl-like incidents (which would be essentially statistically impossible by any useful metrics for new reactors) would be preferable to the effects of uncontrolled global warming. Only nuclear energy supplemented by renewables has any chance in hell of stopping runaway global increase in temperatures from destroying modern society as we know it.
Why are you polarizing me as some sort of pro global warming cunt because I'm voicing caution on nuclear tech, it's ridiculous.
So I guess the estimates of our top experts in the field doesn't mean shit then? Also, it's not a matter of technological breakthrough but pure logistics. Unless an orbital elevator is built (it won't) the sheer amount of materials we'll need to bring up there to enact your so-called plan would completely dwarf the costs of simply building newer safer more efficient nuclear plant (or literally any single other method of energy production). Calling it impractical doesn't even begin to approach it.
What you're asking for is a world dominated by nuclear power, this is when things get nasty, nuclear power is only applying for first world countries at the moment, and fucking low rate at that. Phase out fossil fuels and you have a large void to fill with nuclear energy, talk about a series of disasters waiting to happen.
People die from fossil fuels too, nuclear doesn't have to be a disaster waiting to happen - especially newer reactors or alternate reactors like thorium (or so I hear, I'm no nuclear d00d)
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