nortex97 said:
YouBet said:
one MEEN Ag said:
France is having issues with hydrogen embrittlement cracking in their pipes at aging nuclear plants. Its causing their plants to go offline at they do stand downs and inspections. The powerplants are stuck between bureaucracy and an unforgiving supply chain.

At some point there's going to be a breaking point and Macron is going to quietly demand the powerplants fix it asap regardless of cost or regulation.
Interesting because I'm confused by Macron's comments and his reaction because France gets roughly 70% of its energy from nuclear and has plans to build more:


Quote:
  • Government policy, set under a former administration in 2014, aimed to reduce nuclear's share of electricity generation to 50% by 2025. This target was delayed in 2019 to 2035.
  • In February 2022 France announced plans to build six new reactors and to consider building a further eight.
  • France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation, and gains over 3 billion per year from this.
Only 7% of their energy is from gas and inside that number it's not just Russia, so I'm not sure why France would have to take drastic measures here. Of anyone in Europe (and probably only behind the USA) they are the most energy secure country out there.

Either the data out there is misleading or Macron is just virtue signaling on Ukraine and unnecessarily putting his people through hardship. However, if what you are saying is happening maybe that's the real reason for his comments.

Far be it from me to claim to be an expert at this stuff, but as with wind here, under 10 percent of capacity can be, still, a cause of brownouts/blackouts in times of high demand.

My guess would be that this is due to the fact that central Europe isn't in fact a series of separate grids/countries, but rather it is very interconnected, and the Russian cuts have already impacted French gas pipelines/providers a lot, and further marginal impacts around Italy/Spain/Germany/Benelux/Austria etc. will also mean France has to ship a lot of gas/electricity etc. to neighboring countries leading to further austerity ("electrical/energy sobriety") within France. But again I don't really know how they load balance/manage generation, just speculating about places like Lille, the riviera, alsace etc.

"Energy Sobriety" should be a moniker the GOP labels/attacks the Dem-CCP with through 2024.
Yeah, maybe so. I have no idea what that connectivity looks like. Just interesting that some number less than 7% of their total energy needs going away can cause a national lights out program. That's a thin margin of error.
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