> The bizarre thing is that our government still wants to close down the remaining nuclear power plants.

That is very weird, even Germany stated recently that closing down their Nuclear Plants was a big mistake.

For a very long time, I have always said France is smarter than what people give them credit for. Spain should take a peek over the mountains at France to see what a sane energy policy looks like.

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schnitzelstoat 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Even France shut down the Superphénix. It was just built too! A waste of ten billion dollars because the government gave in to these extremist environmental groups. One of them even fired an RPG at it while it was being built.

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clydethefrog 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Strange how there are so many progressive radical groups and somehow the anti-nuclear activists are the only ones that manage to change the energy agenda in favour of the very powerful lobby of the fossil fuels. The animal activists never changed the subsidies to animal agriculture, the activists for international causes like Palestine haven't managed much either.

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kuerbel 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

... it was shut down in 1998, relevant section from German Wikipedia as the English version is lacking details:

In June 1997, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin announced the closure of the power plant as one of his first official acts. He justified this step by pointing to the enormous costs the plant incurred. In the preceding ten years, it had produced no electricity for most of the time due to malfunctions. It even consumed considerable amounts of electricity to keep the sodium in the cooling system above its melting temperature. Each pipe carrying sodium and every tank was equipped with heaters and thermal insulation for this purpose.

... so it used a lot of energy while being shut down because of malfunctions for most of those 10 years. Seems like shutting it down was the best course of action.

	▲	schnitzelstoat 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		It had problems but it was new technology. That’s always the case. Now only China, Russia and India have Fast Breeder Reactors. Plus there was the pressure from Les Verts and Sortir du nucléaire, the Molotov cocktail attacks by the Fédération Anarchiste, the RPG attack by the Cellules Communistes Combattantes etc. It was a highly political decision.

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kdheiwns 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A lot of people thought France was just being arrogant for not going all in on becoming dependent on the US and maintaining their own ways of doing things. These past few years, it's been paying off for them. Hopefully other countries will wisen up and not allow their defense and entire economy to be dependent on the US or any other big country. It always comes back to bite them in the ass. The post WW2 decades were unusually stable and assuming it'll be that way forever is not wise.

	▲	bluGill 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		You can't do everything, and the smaller your country the less you can do. France isn't doing other things because of the opportunity cost. Of course the EU is bigger than the US and there is value in duplicated/distributed effort. The EU as a whole should be thinking "partner with everyone, but have our fingers in every single pot someplace just in case".

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pantalaimon 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> even Germany stated recently that closing down their Nuclear Plants was a big mistake

Well that's because we have a new government, CDU was always in favor of nuclear power.

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embedding-shape 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> For a very long time, I have always said France is smarter than what people give them credit for. Spain should take a peek over the mountains at France to see what a sane energy policy looks like.

Incidentally, if I remember correctly, one of the causes (or things that made it worse) of the almost day-long blackout we (Spain) had last year was because France disconnected one of the links to Spain without notifying us properly.

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kuerbel 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

No, we did not. Katharina Reiche and that guy from Bavaria are certainly not "Germany" or the majority of Germans. No atom reactor is going to be built, it's just typical rhetoric from both of them.

Not even the major energy suppliers are interested in building new nuclear reactors.

I was not against prolonging the phase out for a bit, but we don't even have a permanent storage solution after all this time.

They aren't even compatible with climate change: https://www.euronews.com/2025/07/02/france-and-switzerland-s...

	▲	blackguardx 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		You don't need rivers for nuclear reactor cooling, they are just very convenient.