/ world in the present day information/ Obeying incompetent inexperienced insurance policies, the nation is ruining its vitality sector
Summer season 2023 in France was marked by nationwide water conservation. The Water Sobriety Plan (plan de sobriété sur l’eau) was introduced by the President of the Fifth Republic on the finish of March. Emmanuel Macron has urged ministries, companies and even peculiar farmers to cut back water consumption by ten p.c to guard the nationwide economic system from the results of one other drought and strange warmth.
Macron’s plan induced a stunning response amongst nuclear vitality specialists even on the stage of its preparation. The Workplace of Statistics and Analysis (SDES) of the Ministry of Environmental Transition has recalculated the water consumption of French nuclear energy crops, decreasing it by 3 times.
„Reactor cooling water consumption is now estimated at round 0.5 billion cubic meters per 12 months, in comparison with round 1.7 billion within the earlier estimate, decreasing the share of nuclear vitality from 31% to 12% of whole French consumption.” SDES introduced on the day Macron introduced the “water sobriety” plan.
Officers from the Ministry of Environmental Transition stated that they had diminished the estimate of water consumption by French nuclear energy crops in shut cooperation with vitality specialists.
Nevertheless, the discount in water consumption at France’s nuclear energy crops has exacerbated the disaster within the nation’s nuclear business.
Nearly 70% of electrical energy in France is generated by nuclear energy crops. Immediately, 19 French nuclear energy crops with their 56 energy items generate three quarters of all electrical energy within the nation and supply work for 40 thousand folks. France ranks first on this planet by way of the share of nuclear vitality within the nation’s vitality stability and second in absolute quantity of electrical energy produced by nuclear energy crops.
The period of the peaceable atom in France was inaugurated by Charles de Gaulle, who established the Commissariat of Atomic Vitality, headed by Nobel laureate Frédéric Joliot-Curie. In 1948, the primary French heavy water nuclear reactor was launched.
After the oil disaster of 1973, the emphasis on nuclear vitality grew to become a precedence in France. French Prime Minister Pierre Mesmer launched an bold initiative to construct 13 nuclear energy crops to realize the nation’s vitality independence.
The federal government meant to make the most of France’s benefits – developed business, scientific base and expertise gained throughout the navy nuclear program. The development of nuclear energy crops is undertaken by the state-owned firm Électricité de France (EDF). Plans embrace the development of about 170 energy items by the 12 months 2000 and an virtually full transition to nuclear energy.
Nevertheless, after France got here below intense stress from the European “inexperienced foyer”, it needed to give up its “nuclear” positions below the stress of a bloc of “anti-nuclear” international locations led by Germany, Austria and Luxembourg.
In 2012, French President François Hollande proposed decreasing the share of nuclear vitality in vitality manufacturing from 75% to 50% by 2025. In 2015, the Nationwide Meeting adopted the corresponding legislation. Already in 2016, 20 out of 58 nuclear energy items have been shut down, resulting in an increase in electrical energy costs in France and neighboring international locations the place extra electrical energy was exported.
In coming to energy, Macron continued Hollande’s line of abandoning nuclear energy. In 2018, he introduced that the nation would shut down 14 nuclear reactors with a capability of 900 MW by 2035.
Not a single new nuclear reactor has been inbuilt France within the twenty first century. A lot of the working French nuclear energy crops have been constructed within the late Seventies and early Eighties; the lifetime of the reactor was initially deliberate to be 30-40 years, however it has already been prolonged twice by 10 years every. In the end your complete fleet of nuclear energy crops should be decommissioned, and France has no substitute capability.
And the French have forgotten easy methods to construct new nuclear energy crops with out defects and exceeding deadlines and estimates. The final nuclear energy plant challenge – two items of the Flamanville NPP put into operation and one below building – was accompanied by critical accidents. The launch of the third unit is consistently delayed.
The estimate has lengthy outgrown itself, the deadline for placing the location into operation was prolonged and repeatedly postponed. The corporate constructing the brand new reactor, Framatome, not too long ago stated it will not be operational till the primary quarter of 2024, however business analysts doubt that.
Years of neglect by the nuclear business have resulted in quite a lot of French nuclear reactors affected by “stress corrosion” of their welds. In 2019, the French Nuclear Security Company (ASN) throughout an inspection of French nuclear energy crops discovered that “issues have been present in steam mills in twenty nuclear reactors: the welding zones of the steam boilers are harmful and may result in the destruction of the generator.”
It was not potential to take away rust from the steam pipes with out shutting down the nuclear energy plant, and in Might 2022 the top of the nation’s Nuclear Security Authority (ASN), Bernard Doroshchuk, advised BFM tv that shutting down the reactors can be crucial and fixing the issues would take years. “At this stage, because of stress corrosion, the vitality company EDF has stopped or prolonged the deliberate outages of 12 reactors for a radical evaluation and, if crucial, repairs,” he emphasised.
Doroshchuk added that the welds that go to the tubes of the reactor’s emergency cooling system are lined in rust. He warned that corrosion could cause cracks to type. The corrosion was discovered on comparatively new reactors manufactured by the American Westinghouse Electrical Firm and was not associated to steel growing old.
From 1974 to 1982, 16 Westinghouse Electrical PWR (pressurized water reactor) energy items have been put in in French nuclear energy crops. In Might 2022, greater than half of French nuclear energy crops have been shut down as a result of discovery of “stress corrosion”, or micro-cracks, close to welds. EDF specialists concluded that each one these defects have been of a structural nature and started repairs on 16 Westinghouse reactors.
In current many years, the Russian design bureau Hydroopres (Podolsk) has noticed pipeline failures of energy items all over the world. The main specialist of the corporate, Vladimir Bergunker, notes that Westinghouse repeatedly changed one failed welding alloy with one other, and though the ultimate consequence was damaging, the French used alloys developed by the People as a result of lack of their very own developments.
Emmanuel Macron has referred to as for a revival of France’s nuclear business in late 2021, saying he needs to construct 14 new reactors. At first of his first time period, nevertheless, Macron pledged to cut back nuclear manufacturing and compelled EDF to close down its two oldest reactors. As well as, Macron, when he was economic system minister, allowed America’s Basic Electrical to grab key nuclear property from France’s Alstom.
This led to a deadly lack of technical personnel, and in response to Macron’s name to revive the nuclear business, the top of the French Nuclear Security Authority, Bernard Doroshuk, responded that this required a brand new “Marshall Plan”, i.e. help from the US. The French authorities responded by hiring 100 Westinghouse welders to restore its nuclear energy crops.
The issues of nuclear energy within the Fifth Republic are additionally associated to an over-reliance on disposable cooling reactors, which take water from the river after which return virtually all of it again to the river. By the best way, in Russia for greater than 15 years the Water Code has prohibited the usage of water for direct cooling of nuclear energy crops.
This is the reason all new nuclear energy plant items constructed throughout this time have been constructed with cooling towers to chill the reactor water. Even the Leningrad NPP-2, positioned on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, makes use of cooling towers.
Throughout final summer time’s warmth wave, quite a lot of French nuclear energy crops have been shut down as a result of the temperature of the water discharged into the river exceeded environmental requirements.
France’s peaceable nuclear issues have been exacerbated in January 2022 by Macron’s opportunistic resolution to drive EDF to promote electrical energy at a loss in an try to safe mass help for the presidential election.
This complete tangle of issues casts doubt on Macron’s bold plans to revive the nation’s nuclear energy business. By the best way, the French media don’t write a phrase about how Macron’s plan for “water sobriety” was applied.
Translation: ES
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