The EU is fining France because they don’t have enough clean energy in their mix despite France having the cleanest energy in Europe because nuclear used to not count. They are also forcing the French national energy company to resell their electricity at a loss to competitor moving money which should be used to invest into the pocket of private investors. And let’s not talk about the utter stupidity of the current discussion on the dams.

Then you realise that a significant part of France new debts was due to them shielding their population for the soaring prices of electricity despite France producing cheap energy, said prices being due to Germany brain dead strategy leading to a dependence on Russian gas and the obligation to go through the European market, and you start to see the double whammy.

Well, at least, the energy market is not as bad as the ECB rules.

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ViewTrick1002 3 days ago | parent [-]

You do know that a large portion of the energy crisis was caused by half the French nuclear fleet being online when it was for once truly absolutely needed?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fr...

I also note that you didn’t have anything to say about the EPR2 program and the absolutely insanely bonkers large subsidies needed to get it off the ground.

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realusername 3 days ago | parent [-]

It was a nuclear + a renewable crisis. When the nuclear production dropped to 65% in France because of the offline plants, the wind production was hovering at 9% (bad luck) and the solar production at 5% (because it was winter).

That event was actually the final nail in the coffin for the all renewable policies of France, seeing that when the nuclear plants had a problem, the renewables failed even harder than the nuclear plants made it hard to make a case for all renewable policies

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LinXitoW 3 days ago | parent [-]

How so? Why is that a nail in the renewable coffin, but not the nuclear one? Nuclear is constantly sold as a miracle base load cure, but it can't even manage that.

Why isn't that instead a call for more storage, in general?

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realusername 3 days ago | parent [-]

Because while the failure of the nuclear plants could be solved by sending more workers, the renewable failure couldn't (and it was even more severe).

Nobody could say "you had to build more renewables" at the time because they produced even less than the nuclear plants.

> Why isn't that instead a call for more storage, in general?

There's nothing which is appropriate for a winter load yet.

As a result of this incident, France pushed for more nuclear investments and dropped the mandatory renewables share.

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ViewTrick1002 3 days ago | parent [-]

> As a result of this incident, France pushed for more nuclear investments and dropped the mandatory renewables share.

Which has not materialized. This is where the thread started:

> The EPR2 program is in absolute shambles.

> Currently the French can’t even agree on how to fund the absolutely insanely bonkers subsidies.

> Now targeting investment decision in 2026… And the French government just fell because they are underwater in debt and have a spending problem which they can’t agree on how to fix.

> A massive handout to the dead end nuclear industry sounds like the perfect solution!

	▲	realusername 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I mean, if the renewable policies didn't fail that hard, the French state wouldn't have to revive the nuclear program in 2022 Sure now it will take some time to be effective but that's what happen when you give the keys to politicians and not engineers.