France has 56 reactors, of which 29 are currently shutdown.

My understanding is that they are closed for maintenance rather than due to the on-going heatwave.

It has been described as the perfect storm: some reactors have reached the 10yr mark (so extensive maintenance is to be done on these), lockdowns have slowed the progress of regular maintenance (possibly introducing a backlog?), and finally corrosion was found in secondary cooling systems used during emergencies leading to further (12) shutdowns.

This is basically what happens when the entirety of western governments is run by lawyers, teachers, and BA consultants. There is a massive lack of critical infrastructure engineers that should be welcome in government or at least close advisors of the government but no longer are. Note that for all the terrible parts about China they have a lot of engineers in their government, leading to a lot of critical investments in infrastructure.

Yeah all those people with their degrees in constitutional law should be banned from congress! /s

To make a claim that lawyers can't be useful at all at running a country really requires a citation at least... Large associations of people are going to have a lot of different skills so to say that there aren't ~500,000 competent teachers / lawyers / consultants in a population of ~3 billion (claim is about the entire west) seems a bit of a stretch.

There are at least some engineers in China that aren't competent [1] so _just_ because somebody is an engineer doesn't mean you'll have a good outcome.

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/05/1096810346/survivor-found-alm...

How much of an influence does constitutional law really have on the government? There is a minor-moderate crisis in US politics at the moment about whether the constitution protects abortion based on a tortured reading of the text, so it doesn't seem like the physical documents are an important factor. I respect all the positions in that debate, but if that is a serious point of contention then there is a real question as to why a constitutional scholar would have any advantage at all in Congress. For anyone.

Not saying they'd necessarily be bad, but a good cross section of community members would be better than a good cross section of the legal fraternity.

> How much of an influence does constitutional law really have on the government?

Well, ideally it would matter a little bit. Kind of like you want a contractor to be well versed in local building codes you'd want a politician to be well versed in the local laws.But considering most of the law isn't actually in the constitution the use of knowing the constitution very well isn't that useful.

> Not saying they'd necessarily be bad, but a good cross section of community members would be better than a good cross section of the legal fraternity.

For an elected congress critters I think there should be a bias towards lawyers and other law-adjacent professions considering they're going to create laws that that field needs to use. However, for appointed officials I think is when the cross section would need to start coming up. I suspect a random teacher is a much better pick for DoE than a loan officer. I think it would be more important that their staff is a cross section of the community than the actual figurehead.

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> There is a minor-moderate crisis in US politics at the moment about whether the constitution protects abortion based on a tortured reading of the text

Quick aside, we got to this point because one party (Democratic) has ran previously on passing laws that would protect abortions and never did while another party (Republicans) have ran previously on passing laws that would restrict it and never did. Which leaves the two branches of government that can weigh in and they both have. Of course they will weigh in how they can and for the Supreme Court that's via Constitutionality.

It's nice that you brought up constitutional law, since Bill Barr, Ted Cruz, and many others were in fact constitutional lawyers.

That's why you have a self made failed coup d'etat in the US. Crazy nutjob granpas that are threatening chemical weapon attacks, collapsing governments in Europe with what seems to be a looming energy and food crisis as well as failing transportation in Canada. Just the other day the Netherlands decided on a "climate" policy that looks very similar to the policies that caused Sri Lankas food supply to collapse.

I don't know if these people are just incompetent or just domestic terrorists, but either way it's not good. Nobody will care about your constitution when you have neither food or energy. It will just be anger and law enforcement. Already you have clashes in a lot of European cities and more than 5 times as much gun deaths in the US a year than civilians died in the Ukraine war.

Ted Cruz has a Mathematics [1] degree so probably should count him as an engineer. (Engineering is just applied math after all). There doesn't seem to be much on Bill Barr so I'm not too sure where you've gotten that he's a constitutional lawyer as opposed to any other one [2].

The USA has been "falling apart" for centuries now, just look at its history. Race riots, oil shocks, stagflation, world war 2, pandemic, world 1, civil war, etc. The idea that anything happening now is "novel" is unfounded.

> 5 times as much gun deaths in the US a year than civilians died in the Ukraine war.

Yeah because Ukraine has like a 1/10 the people as the US. If we assume that there should be 1x as many gun deaths as civilians deaths then its actually good that its only 5x. However I'm pretty sure this is just not something you can compare in any meaningful matter.

People do track deaths in the Ukraine war (4889 as of July 4th [3]), Ukraine has a population of roughly 44 million, and its been 130 days (Feb 24 -> July 4) so that's a rate of 31.1 / 100k. Every US state has a death rate below 31.1 / 100k [4].

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Perhaps do a little research before making claims as there's a lot of misinformation out there.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Barr [3]: https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2022/07/ukraine-civilian-casua... [4]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/homicide_mortality...

HIS MOTHER has undergrad in mathematics. "Engineering is just applied math after all" I guess he's also a theoretical physicist cause that's also just applied math after all.

You're a wonderful example of a menace to discussions, because you didn't even bother reading the first Wikipedia paragraph you quoted properly. Ted Cruz himself studied policy at Princeton and then got a Juris Doctoris from Harvard Law. You know, the same place Obama went to.

Your math is funky by the way, I'm not sure if you're an engineer, but if you were, it would definitely prove that Software Engineering is definitely NOT applied mathematics.

You know the French prime minister is an engineer right? As well as the minister for industry and another couple.

And the top of the French civil service is jam packed with engineers

“The dictatorship of the technocratic elites” is a common taking point of the populist parties here

Since march yes, previous one was a lawyer, so was the before that, and the one before studied politics ;)

> has been described as the perfect storm

The conspiracist in me thinks the French state actually finds it very convenient. Just when it needed to announce new reactors to be built it finds the perfect justification. To me it might even had had a heavy hand in setting the threshold of corrosion for these shutdowns.

Quite a few are down for maintenance, but every hot summer, the French nuclear capacity is reduced further, due to limited cooling. They could, of course, just boil the rivers.

> which in turn makes reactors difficult to run at maximum rates, due to reactor cooling issues.

It's due to administrative fish protection issues. Cooling a 375°C reactor with 40°C water (or even 60°C) is not a big problem. Keeping water temperatures below fish protection discharge limits set decades ago is harder. In heatwaves, the authorities relax the fish laws.

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Heatwave-forces-...

As other commenters say, the big issue right now has to do with outages for checking a corrosion issue.

didn't that only apply to open circuit cooling, rather than the closed circuit cooling that you would expect in most reactors ?

> The precise situation depends on the reactor. But in general terms, water is either returned directly, which is known as an open circuit, which can lead to general downstream river temperatures increasing several degrees, or the water is returned after cooling in air-cooling towers, known as a closed circuit, which typically leads to lower rises of downstream river temperatures, of a few tenths of a degree.

A lot (not all) of cooling towers still require water for evaporative cooling. And the restrictions aren't just for temperatures of returned water they're also for the amount of water taken from rivers, during droughts that amount might get reduced quite a lot.

And of course to buy new fish after the heatwave.

Fish have become more accustomed to higher temperatures as well through the years so that kind of rule should be continuously re-evaluated and adjusted in a changing climate, as appropriate.

Thats not how biology works. With sweet water, oxygen supply is the killer at high temperatures, and as soon as more than a few fishes die, a cascade reaction is triggered. Yes over centuries, more resilient species might emerge, but short term, life in a body of water can just collectively die. There are very frequent events in the summer, where small lakes completely die, if the point of no return is crossed.

Supposedly a bunch of routine maintenance was also deferred during the pandemic and has now come due, meaning that more plants are down for maintenance at the same time than normally.

It is depressing that deliveroo drivers as well as wine shops were considered "essential" during lockdowns while maintenance of nuclear plants wasn't.

The issue with most construction (and something complex like reactor maintenance) is that by its nature it is close-quarters, team-based work. A situation that you would want to minimize during an epidemic.

I just hope it won’t affect essential activities like bitcoin mining.

I think a better TLDR is: Europe relied on fossil fuels that it can no longer obtain. Blame clean energy nuclear power which the world refused to adopt over the past 30 years.

This was a classic “Pay now or pay later”. Congratulations, it’s 4 decades later and we made the wrong choice and waited for solar, wind, and those batteries.

https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI

Almost all of the EU's uranium also has to be imported from non-EU sources, just like fossil fuels. So it's not really better if you want actual energy independence.

But uranium is much easier to store due to its energy density, and we can rely on better sources for it such as Canada and Australia, and not questionable countries like for oil.

Yes. It is much better if Canada and Australia are left with contaminated tailings ponds, that are full of acidic and radioactive waste. Those countries are definitely nimby.

Tailings ponds exist for all mining. This is why groundwater leakage is a major issue in all mining operations. Regardless if you mine for steel, copper, coal, rare earth minerals, or uranium, operations like those will also bring to surface heavy metals, sulfides and radioactive contents.

Northern Sweden is known for its iron ore mines, and people who live anywhere near those areas are recommended to install radon detectors. The iron from those mines is then used in multiple countries, leaving behind the contaminated water and air in Sweden.

Coal, the current solution, is definitely a much better choice. No residual mess to clean up.

Kicking the climate change can down the road even farther requires a few more additional miracles. Heck, we still don’t see climate change as a major problem:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/20/us/politics/climate-chang...

France's Uranium strategic reserves are 3 years. The main supplier is Canada. France has Uranium mines, but they were closed since it was cheaper to import. They still do exist, though.

My main point was we could have avoided half a century of massive coal usage. 40% of global power is still from coal.

It appears that we still need to resort to coal instead of renewables:

https://globalnews.ca/news/8993093/german-europe-coal-energy...

Mostly because it's not financially interesting, in the same way that the US did not pump oil on its own territory for the longest time because it wasn't worth it. There are 200 uranium mines in France.

Yes, I agree. Coal was much cheaper. Back to my “pay now, pay later” point.

Uranium fuel is a non issue. It's imported because there are very cheap sources abroad and it's a tiny fraction of nuclear power cost. There are known uranium sources in France, they're just not exploited at the moment because that would be a waste of money. But they're there in case demand rises.

How many cargo planes with Uranium do you have to fly to satisfy the entire requirement of France for a year?

Compared to the same for LNG?

> the world refused to adopt over the past 30 years.

Are you pro building nuclear plats in every region on earth?

Should developing countries build their own nuclear industry or be dependent on foreign powers for their basic electricity?

What is wrong with nuclear plants in every region?

In some regions it is harder to ensure that nobody steals radioactive material or blows the plant up than in others.

Are any of these regions in the top 10 or 15 world economies?

Someone is trying to waste everyone’s time by saying “you want nuclear energy everywhere?!”

Small countries are a rounding error for global emissions.

If the world’s 10 or 15 largest economies…

> Small countries are a rounding error for global emissions.

Not if they are allowed to develop too. Are they not allowed to develop to western living and energy use standards per capita?

Nope. I’ll let you do the math.

Here’s a hint. China and India combined have 2.5 billion people

Taking before pandemic numbers of GDP and population numbers by 2100 from here https://www.populationpyramid.net/population-size-per-countr... , the top 15 of economies will only account for 40% of world population. ~25% coming from India and China as you said.

So 6 billion people living in these "small economy countries" will not appreciate your sentiment.

But at least they work all the time. Whereas solar/wind work... occasionally. And then when they work they generate too much for the grid. The EU energy situation is really in flaming death spiral. With too nany bets on solar/wind power which doesn't really work.

Portugal and Spain lived within their means energy wise, and have enormous renewables and hydro storage capabilities (and while they both burn some fossil gas; they have plans to rapidly finish moving to renewables by the end of the decade; Portugal burns no coal, Spain is phasing it out). France and Germany are in their own special hell because they prioritized politics (nuclear and coal, respectively) over energy security.

Swing by https://app.electricitymap.org for the detailed capacity and generation info.

Edit: I wrote a reply to a deleted comment, so enumerating the comment and reply here.

> France and Germany are also industrial powerhouses. They require a lot more power and a lot more natural gas specifically for chemical precursors to produce stuff like fertilizer and silicone.

Until suitable alternatives are found, there will always be a minimum amount of fossil gas required for industrial processes. But, BUT, that doesn’t mean you can’t lean into renewables, storage, and transmission to offset as much fossil generation as possible (prioritizing fossil gas for industry, and staying within your fossil gas infrastructure and LNG import constraints).

It is even worse than that. For all the talk about my current country (France) being a nuclear power house, we have actually been buying electricity from Spain and practically every other neighboring country for about 2 decades by now.

which is highly ridiculous because during my stay in Spain around the 2000s I was definitely paying significantly more for electricity than I _ever_ have in France. Someone would really need to explain that to me...

I have recently studied that exact link which gives an extremely good insight.

Offshore wind (the main segment for large/powerful wind turbines) generates just fine throughout, including the peak consumption periods. The failures of EU (or should we say German, as the rest of the Union mainly subsidizes its power bills now) energy policy are mainly self inflicted damage of tying to hydrocarbon supply from terror states.

Yes - sometimes there is a lot of wind and then it is... fine. But actually not since then they generate too much power which can not be used (in the country) and then it is sold cheap. The main problem is it can't be stored for later use.

It's not that much of a problem. Wind in the sea is quite predictable (and in certain areas near constant) and turbines can be geared down.

It is a big problem, low wind periods can last for days, just this Feb-March, UK wind generation stayed under 20% capacity (mostly between 5-10% I believe) for more than 11 days straight [0].

[0] https://reports.electricinsights.co.uk/q1-2021/when-the-wind...

Generating too much for the grid isn't an actual problem. Modern renewables can shut themselves off quickly. Most serious national plans involve overprovisioning.

You've never seen anyone credible worry about how we'll cope with that terrible excess of cheap power because it's not a problem, merely an opportunity.

You've probably mostly been reading complaints of the operators of non-renewable plants that can't do this and are annoyed they're being asked to do it when renewables are plentiful as it costs then money to do so, even on top of the lost electricity.

> Generating too much for the grid isn't an actual problem

Yeah, tell that to people who's devices and houses you have burnt down because voltage in the outlet was not 230V but 300V.

The article is precisely about nuclear reactors not working all the time.

The reactors are mainly down for maintenance. Whereas wind/sun is very unstable like - you know - the weather.

It's not hard to build storage, it's just a bit expensive. The European grid is still quite far from the amount of renewable deployment where storage starts to make financial sense, which is why right now we don't have very much of it.

They obviously don't work all the time, look at their uptime it is not glorious. But sure they work at night solar and they work with no wind etc... That's why we need a mixed energy panel with heat storage like Finland is starting and energy storage (inertial or gravitational seem to be the best bets these days)

Nuclear isn't flexible either, sudden high demands or the opposite are also bad for the nets

You are saying wind and sun don’t work? O_o

It's less that they don't work and more that they don't work optimally in the affected areas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD0sq5GN7xc

Zeihan is a bit US-centric overall, but his energy talks are sound (or I'm too biased to realize they're just confirming my own views.)

> (or I'm too biased to realize they're just confirming my own views.)

If you genuinely care, this is the real answer.

Lignite is a poor fuel for many reasons, but that handwavey part about solar and lignite being worse than lignite and it's all a big scam that the silly greens are too stupid to notice is just totally wrong.

As is the bit about green collapse he predicts when it is discovered to "not work" in Europe.

It's a very weird argument, since he's admitting it works (sort of) in California and Texas but still has a weirdly negative tone about it and Greens.

Basically, it's just yet another fallback position for people who have been consistently wrong about energy policy for decades and still feel able to poke fun at Greens for being unrealistic, because their audience is so misinformed.

California imports 90% of its natural gas from other states. If that was somehow threatened to be cut off, California would struggle too. It would tell us nothing about renewables, and tell us everything about how your neighbours being dicks to you can be a hassle. Which is actually a selling point for renewables and helps drive Chinese interest, since they don't won't to rely on others for fuel.

Seems like good points made in the video, I’ll watch a few more before I sub.

Probably intended that there is not full warranty of output. But for other more traditional sources is the same - and this very submission is about the matter. Traditional energy plants in the North of Italy, suffering droughts, are currently emitting reduced power because less water flow decreases output.