1. France has a very powerful elite system and one specific route to get there (I'm not saying the engineering schools are that way). That's not controversial, that's just how it is.
2. This leads to a specific orthodoxy, symptomatic could be the centralism that leads to a strong centralization of power in Paris.
3. At the same time there is a very strong pro-nuclear sentiment that gets instilled into engineering students (conflicting and in context with a recent strong popularity of ecology), whatever mechanism specifically is responsible for that.
4. And France has (and even more so: had) a pro-nuclear government, linked to the enterprises running the power plants.
I'm not saying the engineers are incapable or specifically corrupt and to distrust your doctor, thanks you very much for the cancer thing, but that in this situation it is reasonable to have some distrust for security assessments of nuclear power plants in France.
2. Most nuclear engineer are from Grenoble/Saint-etienne or Lyon. Some are from polytech (so Paris) but this is rare.
3. If you say so. It might conflict with greepeace's vision of ecology, but not with the IPCC's and for multiple reasons, i think i would rather follow scientists than ideologists. I also stopped donating to greenpeace around 2015 so i might be biased.
4. Way more complex than that, but true.
I think you should read ASN documentation before evaluating them as untrustworthy. I can find a lot of untrustworthy pro-nuclear sources. Those are not ran by engineers. Also nuclear power is a distraction until we fixed our real ecological issue, as are renewable power sources.
I don't care if we stop nuclear power in 2080 if we successfully limit the average warming to 2°C (hint: hope for a silver bullet).
I'm ready do donate everything i have (not that much) to any anti-nuclear association that explain to me how to effectively reduce our CO2 emission by 4% a year until 2050 (compounds are hard but this is the number i got) while focusing on replacing nuclear plant by solar panels and wind turbines. Really. Covid will be between 2 and 9% for 2020 [0] so i'm waiting for solutions for the following years.
Wait! i have multiples solutions. Give every french household using oil or gas a heatpump. Forbid new individual cars sold in France to weight more than a metric ton. Put a carbon tax (start with a small amount 10k€/ton) on transportation instead of a 20% VAT. Not on car gas, on the product directly. This will kill most plane fret, but honestly? i don't care. Forbid plane if the trip can be made in less than 4 hour by train (i think they recently did this, good).
But closing a nuclear plant to replace it by gas (and coal, even if temporary) is easier. Gazprom and Total really have more hitting power.
I think those are reasonable measures.
> But closing a nuclear plant to replace it by gas (and coal, even if temporary) is easier.
I assume you'd be less angry if you were aware that I oppose that as well. I think it's in general opposed by the people wanting nuclear energy to end.
Talking mostly about Germany here. The process basically was 1) Have a strong agreement that nuclear energy is bad, fueled by its insecurity, costs and the waste it produces. This is driven by grassroots movements and green parties. 2) Conservative politicians say "Okay, then we replace them with coal. Oh, and we cut the subventions for renewable energies." 3) The same people that organized the successful protest against the nuclear plants now organize protests against the coal plants.
No one is happy about that process. The only good thing that came out of it is the higher usage of renewable energies. And that because of that the coal plants now are unprofitable. But that is partly despite what the conservative politicians wanted. They even blocked the building of new wind turbines because they look bad. Exactly the contrary of what had to happen the last two years.
Yes, Germany has already more renewable energy sources than it can use, due to protests against building new power lines. From north to south and west to east. When I drive to my in-laws, I come along at least a hundred large wind turbines, often in rows of ten or more. Usually, half of them is turned off because, the grid cannot take more energy.
At the German energy exchange, the price of electrical energy already dropped below zero several times, because of that.
That's not correct. The Nord-Süd-Trasse for example was blocked by the CSU, which is a classic nuclear/coal-proponent. See https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suedlink.
I will just criticize the "pro-nuclear propaganda" bit and ignore the other anti-elite stuff about the engineering schools, after all "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
What is called in France ENR (new renewable energies, basically solar and wind power) are backed by gaz companies, and now even French oil companies (Total) have a hand in the game. Areva (Now Oreno i think), the biggest company ever in the nuclear industry recently had a 6 billion turnover (around 2016 i think since this was the time i took interest on this particular subject). For scale, Gazprom, heavily invested in wind turbin in Denmark and Germany, had a 130 Billion turnover around the same time. I did not check Total cause frankly, i'm tired of spending energy against this "argument". Who do you think is putting more money on the table?
Also (because this anti-engineer stuff is frankly broking me), if you don't believe the ASN and the people working there, then you should vote or manifest to replace the ASN and its sisters organisations that are taking care of the electrical network, bridge and tunnels in France. Surely they weren't considered amongst the best in the world for a long time, barely more than 50 years!
And if you think the UNSCEAR rapports (like the one on the effect of Fukushima) are lying, well then don't be picky and choose to reject all scientific products of this corrupt organisation that use the same compilation method, like the IPCC. And if you or your familly have cancer and have to go under radiation, refuse every doctor that wrote on the subject whose paper where used by the UNSCEAR scientist.