October 20, 2014

France moves towards reversing reliance on nuclear energy

Christian Science Monitor -   French President Francois Hollande has promised to limit the growth of the country’s nuclear power, many older reactors have been targeted for decommissioning, and Greenpeace and other environmental groups have been relentless in their anti-nuclear campaigning. But until now, it seemed unlikely that France would ever truly rethink its love affair with nuclear power.

Last week, it did. On Oct. 10, France’s parliament voted to begin moving to undo decades of nuclear growth and to reduce its importance to the country’s energy mix. Over the next 11 years, France will reduce the amount of electricity coming from nuclear by one-quarter -- from 75 percent to 50 percent. To do that, estimates are that as many as 20 of France’s 58 reactors would have to be closed.

The vote was part of a package of legal reforms in France’s long-awaited energy transition law, a main pillar of which was slowing nuclear power production and then maintaining it at the new lower level before progressively lowering it over the next 10 years.

1 comment:

Capt. America said...

There can be no excuse for continuing with maintenance of fission power plants or with building them. Practical fusion power is accomplished science
now. (The French have built a huge fusion plant that is already obsolete.) The US should internationalize fusion power, and the first generation plants should go to those countries according to their investment is fission power, to hasten its elimination, which should be a priority. Iran especially should receive help on condition of abandoning fission power. Second and third generation plants should be dealt out fairly to every nation on the globe, but a failure to maximize solar power should be counted against any nation's share, because solar gives no heat pollution. The US should be totally committed to the end of fission reactor power and fossil fuel power in the shortest possible time. Failure to share would be stupid. We should not put ourselves in the position of having all of our plants go obsolete at the same time.

It's hard to keep up, isn't it?