Tag Archives: France

Solar panels or plants must be on new commercial roofs in France

No different than requiring proportions of parking spaces: here’s one way to push the solar deployment curve up faster and hasten the year that most of the world’s power comes from the sun.

Agence France-Press 19 March 2015, France decrees new rooftops must be covered in plants or solar panels,

Rooftops on new buildings built in commercial zones in France must either be partially covered in plants or solar panels, under a law approved on Thursday.

Green roofs have an isolating effect, helping reduce the amount of energy needed to heat a building in winter and cool it in summer. The argument for divesting from fossil fuels is becoming overwhelming Read more

They also retain rainwater, thus helping reduce problems with runoff, while favouring biodiversity and giving birds a place to nest in the urban jungle, ecologists say.

-jsq

Chinese nukes in Britain

Bad news from Britain. Let’s hope U.S. NRC doesn’t take this as a precedent.

The Telegraph, today, Chinese companies to buy big stake in next generation of British nuclear power,

George Osborne, the Chancellor, has announced that the UK will allow Chinese companies to take a stake in British nuclear power plants.

The decision could lead to China taking a future majority stake—and even be allowed to own up to 100 pc—in the development of the next generation of British nuclear power.

Mr Osborne made the announcement on Thursday the last day of a week-long trade visit to China after a visit to Taishan nuclear power station on the coast near Hong Kong.

Taishan is a collaboration between French energy company EDF and the China General Nuclear Power Company.

EDF is at the heart of UK Government Continue reading →

France unfracked

No fracking France, affirms France’s highest court. No, silly utilities, fracking is not like geothermal power. Yes, utilities, you’ll have to write off a lot of fossils in the ground. But there’s far more money to be made in clean energy, so get on with it!

Mat McDermott wrote for Motherboard yesterday, You Can’t Frack France

After a constitutional court review, France's ban on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas and oil has become "absolute," in the words of Environment Minister Phillipe Martin. In its decision, the court found Continue reading →

European utilities scared of renewable energy

Another reason Southern Company needs to get on with a smart grid, using its biggest private R&D outfit in the U.S. Now that solar has reached grid parity with everything including natural gas (and years since it passed nuclear), if the utilities don’t get out in front, they’re going to be left behind.

Derek Mead wrote for Motherboard yesterday, European Utilities Say They Can’t Make Money Because There’s Too Much Renewable Energy,

Renewable energy has been on a tear the past few years, with growth in many countries spurred by subsidies for wind and solar power. Now the heads of 10 European utility companies say EU subsidies should end, because they've got more renewable energy than they know what to do with.

The 10 CEOs in question, who refer to themselves as the Magritte group because they first met in an art gallery, represent companies that control about half the power capacity of Europe. The group gave a press conference today— Reuters says that 10 such executives giving a joint public statement is “unprecedented”—to hammer home a message they’ve been trumpeting ahead of an EU energy summit in 2014: There’s too much energy capacity, which has driven prices down so far that they can’t make any money.

As long as there are nukes or coal plants, there’s too much capacity. European utilities need to get on with things like Continue reading →

Twice French GDP and soil contamination as big as France plus Germany: the real cost of a bad French nuclear accident

Sixty hurricane Katrinas or 112 Sandys is the cost EDF, the French company that wants to build a new nuke at Calvert Cliffs in Maryland, avoided revealing through “fabricated” reports that “very seriously underestimated the costs of” a potential serious nuclear accident in France. The real cost would range from 0.76 trillion to 5.8 trillion euros ($1 trillion to $7.62 trillion dollars). For comparison, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of France is about 2.11 trillion euros, according to the World Bank. So a Chernobyl- or Fukushima-style accident in France would cost ⅓ to 2¾ times French GDP. No country can afford that.

Not even the U.S., whose GDP is $14.99 trillion or $11.41 euros, so such an accident, esp. if it happened in the densely populated eastern U.S., as for example in Maryland, could cost half the GDP of the United States. That’s way beyond the $68 billion cost of Hurricane Sandy or $125 billion for Hurricane Katrina. One nuclear accident could cost more than twice the $4 to $6 trillion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.

Wolf Richter wrote for Business Insider 14 March 2013, French Nuclear Disaster Scenario Was So Bad The Government Kept It Secret,

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French, German, and Spanish nukes unreliable in heat

Invest in nukes for hot water in rivers damaging plants and animals while there’s less water for agriculture and cities and droughts and summer heat waves cause power shortages. That’s Europe’s experience. Or we could profit by their experience and get on with reliable renewable solar and wind power.

The Guardian, 12 August 2003, Heatwave hits French power production,

France has shut down the equivalent of four nuclear power stations as the heatwave eats into the country’s electricity generating capacities. With temperatures in French rivers hitting record highs, some power plants relying on river water to cool their reactors have been forced to scale back production.

Julio Godoy wrote for OneWorld.net 28 July 2006, European Heat Wave Shows Limits of Nuclear Energy,

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The wind from the Cattenom nuke in France blows into Germany

From France to Berlin is as close as 32 nuclear reactors to here. Here’s a scenario for “Core meltdown accident in the nuclear power plant Cattenom (France) contamination of leafy vegetables by radioactive iodine with wind from the southwest”:

I was in Germany shortly after Chernobyl, when all the cows were inside so they would not eat the radioactive grass, and all the salads were frozen.

Here’s a scenario for radioactive iodine in mother’s milk, with a similar map: Continue reading →

Fire at nuclear reactor in France

Not just for Plant Vogtle anymore: this nuclear reactor site fire was at one of EDF’s flagship plants at Cattenom, Lorraine, France, on the Moselle River.

ENENews quoted MarketWatch yesterday, Photo: “Fire broke out at nuclear reactor” — “Plumes of black smoke could be seen from a considerable distance”

French state-controlled power group Electricite de France SA said Friday a fire started on a transformer at its nuclear plant in Cattenom, eastern France, adding that it was outside the nuclear-processing area.

A picture tweeted from France: Continue reading →

Nuclear is over —Jeremy Rifkin

Economist, author, and advisor to governments Jeremy Rifkin told an agent of the world's largest uranium field operator at a conference of global investors that there's no business future in nuclear power.

Jeremy Rifkin answered a question at the Wermuth Asset Management 5th Annual Investors Event 26 September 2012, Nuclear Power is Dead,

I don't spend much time on nuclear technology, unless somebody asks me about it, because frankly from a business perspective, I think it's over….

Here's the video, followed by more transcript and discussion.

Nuclear power was pretty well dead in the water in the 1980s after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. It had a comeback. The comeback was the industry said "we are part of the solution for climate change because we don't emit CO2 with nuclear; it's polluting, but there's no CO2".

Here's the issue though,

Continue reading →