How dependent is France on Niger's uranium?
How dependent is France on Niger's uranium?
The military coup in Niger has raised concerns about uranium mining in the country by the French group Orano, and the consequences for France's energy independence.
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The question is more like: "How dependent is France on uranium which is a finite resource?"
"The demand for uranium continues to increase, but the supply is not keeping up. Current uranium reserves are expected to be depleted by the end of the century, and new sources of uranium are hard to find. As a result, uranium prices have been steadily rising, with some estimates predicting a doubling of prices by 2030. This is causing a global uranium squeeze, where the demand for the resource is outstripping the supply."
France: Let's build more nuclear plants, also do not invest into renewable energy, also since we are used to wars for oil, why not having wars for uranium in the future too?
Well, "By the end of the century" is almost 80 years away, that is significantly longer than any normal nuclear power plant lasts.
Also it is very difficult to know which exact price someone pays for uranium because they normal dont buy on the spot market, but via long lasting contracts.
So from my point of view we don't have sufficient information for a proper estimation of the situation.
The end of the century at current rates of use which means about 77 years. At just 10% increased use annually that would double roughly every 7 years which means it won't last nearly that long.
The real key factor is as the cost of uranium continues to go up and suffers potential shortages and supply issues the cost of installing solar and wind continues to drop - they got planning permission for a solar farm near me about a year ago and it's already half way through having pannels installed, the speed they can do it is only going to keep increasing especially as more automated tools get developed. Then there's the almost certainty of a breakthrough in chemistry reaching market which significant reduces cost and increases the range of locations suitable which would again drastically lower price per kWh while the price of running nukes continues to rise and they're locked into decades of economic loss or they'll choose to close them and all that investment and effort will be for nothing.
You realize 4th generation reactors make it a near infinite renewable resource, right?
Look up the Super Fenix project.
We stopped investing in it due to Uranium being too cheap and misinformed political pressure.
Solar ans wind power will never ever be a good baseline energy production méthod. It's complementary.
Solar ans wind power will never ever be a good baseline energy production méthod. It’s complementary.
No, it is a perfekt baseline energy production method. France is buying our renewable energy, because it can't produce enough with its broken nuclear power plants and the ones not producing full because of the drought. The numbers do not lie.
Also, what I see in that graph is that your grid's baseline isn't renewables, but fossil fuels. That's shameful.
Is that why you're reopening coal plants?
You have heard of the war in Ukraine, right?
Yes, and if you hadn't closed your nuclear plants you wouldn't have needed to rely on carbon-emitting russian gas-burning power plants.
Renewables are great. But like anything else, they're not suitable for all use cases. And where they're not suitable you have to use greenhouse gas emitting power plants. Wouldn't it be much preferable if those were instead NPPs?
People arguing against nuclear power are arguing for oil/gas/coal, whether they know it or not.
Ah yes, 4th generation nuclear reactors will save us, as will fusion reactors. We could make stuff work with existing technology, but that's somehow not good enough. The whole future plans section of the wiki article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor reads like the technological challenges of these type of reactors are not as solved as you state it in your post.
Nuclear isn't useful as a 'baseline' energy source. This is misleading.
Nuclear has a similar problem to renewables. It can't be scales up and down following need. So there needs to be a storage solution for peaks.
Solar, wind and battery systems can produce all the energy we need. We just need to boost capacity massively and add batteries.
Renewables are much quicker and more cost effective to set up. And produce far cheaper energy.
Well, you can potentially design them in a way, that you can control the energy output more easily. However, then they will be even less economical than they are now. If you run at lower output, you waste more fuel.
To be honest I think nuclear is a red herring. It only works due to subsidy. And don't even ask about insurance. Meanwhile, wind and solar are free and cheap.
The only problem is storage for peak demand. And batteries are getting bigger, the tech is improving and batteries are coming down in price.
Why bother with #nuclear ?
Also, it takes 20 years to build a fission, reactor and the joke is fusion is 20 years away...
Free and cheap?!?
You are one deluded individual. Go do your research. Also, nuclear never had subsidies, only wind/solar did.
I don't think of myself as deluded but then I wouldn't know would I? 🤔
Always open to facts
Always open to facts
Well, looks like you replied to the right person for that.
It may be different where you live, but in the UK nuclear is subsidised.
https://www.iisd.org/story/the-united-kingdom-is-to-subsidize-nuclear-power-but-at-what-cost/
@MattMastodon @Sodis Only about 40% of demand can be directly met from volatiles (wind and solar), i. e. no intermediate storage. The rest has to come from »backup« or »storage« or however you call it.
Current storage tech is still almost 100% pumped hydro. Batteries have not made a real dent there yet. But pumped hydro is not enough by far, even potentially, and batteries have a long way to go to be even as scalable as pumped hydro.
So, backup. The only clean, scalable backup is nuclear.
@MattMastodon @Sodis Careful about labels. »Renewables« often includes biomass (which is just fast-track fossil tbh) and hydro (which is not so volatile). I'm talking about wind and solar specifically (volatiles).
40% is roughly the mean capacity factor of a good mix of volatiles. This is what you can directly feed to the user from the windmill/panel, without storage. You can expand a bit by massive overbuilding, but you can't overbuild your way out of no wind at night.
Mostly we don't use energy at night. In the UK there is a peak in the morning. In the UK we mainly use gas to fill this. We will have to find a storage solution as nuclear can't be upscale that quickly. Gas was meant to be used just to fill the gaps but it's quickly become a staple.
We need to find a way of smoothing the graph. Energy storage is the best option in the short term.
Or we can vary use.
@MattMastodon @Sodis Again: that demand is lower at night is already factored in. Roughly 40% of demand can be directly met by volatile sources. You may think nuclear is slow to deploy, but it's still much faster than anything that doesn't exist.
The gap is 60%. Gas is a fossil fuel. Varying use is mostly a euphemism. If you hurt industry, you won't have the industry to build clean energy sources.
Wind power is hardly new technology.
And let's say we treble wind power and solar and add battery and hydro storage we can upscale our energy mix to meet demand. And continue to reduce demand.
The amazing thing about this is for most of the time we will have a superabundance of energy. So energy on most days will be crazy cheap.
Our industries can use the energy at superlow cost. We could have free energy days where charging your car or washing is free.
@Sodis @MattMastodon Nuclear power plants can quite easily do load following. It happens regularly e. g. in France. However, since it has the lowest running costs, other sources are usually cut first as far as possible.
Load following only works by turning the output down the energy is still produced. France is very unusual.
#Nuclear isn't cheap. Again each country is different. But usually risk is underwritten by governments as no insurer will touch it.
In the UK the provider is given guaranteed price for 35 years.
If #renewables start producing at scale then my children will be paying for expensive #energy we don't need, until they are pensioners.
And we haven't even talked about #tidal.
@MattMastodon @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel
The optimum imho is:
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The bulk of the generation from wind and solar, and nuclear for 15% - 20% base load. Also some Geothermal where cheap but it's potential is small.
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Grids improved to cover local and intermediate renewable generation, and extended to facilitate import/export.
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Variable electricity pricing for demand shifting.
The result is vastly reduced need for storage, probably batteries used intelligently in a hierarchy of grid and home, compared to the naïve "just build wind and solar and batteries."
Then add in:
- A 90% transition from personal cars to free green public transport (#FGPT), taxis, e-bikes, bicycles, and walking.
This all needs no new technology (although for nuclear there are several advances not yet used at scale: molten salt, small, modular, U238, thorium), it needs a fraction of the rare earths, and delivers a huge in reduction steel production courtesy of car recycling.
#Energy #Renewables #ClimateCrisis #Climate #Nuclear
[P.S. Dams damage eco-systems so I'm not in favour of more hydro generation, and pumped hydro storage needs the spare water too.
Biomass not "net zero" and obviously not "zero" which we actually need. It's just more carbon burning plus extra pollution from the agriculture and other products of combustion. It increases land use, and at present the industry is full of corruption with trees being burned sometimes alongside shredded car tyres... and subsidised!]
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@Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Ardubal @Sodis
So
One #nuclear power station will buy about a million #electric cars. Most #EVs have a 300km range but most days go <30km.
So the mean available #energy capacity of all these cars would run the #UK for 24 hours using #V2G (Vehicle to grid)
This could be a massive #car share scheme with a couple of EVs on every street
All the energy could come from #wind or #solar and the #battery fills the gaps when there is no wind
@MattMastodon @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis
A few points to factor in:
- A nuclear power station has a much longer lifetime than batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines.
- You need not only the batteries, but also the panels/turbines to fill them.
- Conversion and storage losses are significant. Attached is a rough overview for H₂.
- Transmission infrastructure costs to/from individual cars are significant.
- 24 h is not enough by far to balance out usual fluctuations.
@Ardubal @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis
What do you think of this?
"Most recently, state-run Enova awarded EUR 61 million for five green hydrogen production plants, referred to as hubs, along the Norwegian coastline from north to south. The hubs will be an essential part of #Norway’s clean hydrogen infrastructure and connect Norwegian players with the #EU #hydrogen valleys emerging in #Europe"
https://businessnorway.com/articles/norway-invests-big-realise-clean-hydrogen-future
@MattMastodon @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis
Without klicking anything, 61 million € is practically nothing, so I do not expect this to be a big, impactful project. It might be a nice little extra income from surplus hydro power (Norway is almost completely running on hydro).
Then looking into the links, this supports just a small fleet of up to 40 ships. Which is good.
I think it can be a good way for this niche, and it might be one little thing less to worry about.
@Ardubal @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis
Thanks for this. You have raised many interesting points and are obviously very knowledgeable.
I think #H2 may also be a read herring also. At the moment the cost of green hydrogen is so much higher than blue hydrogen, the cynic in me is wondering if this is just an excuse to rebrand fossil fuels
If my calculations about battery tech are correct we will have lots of #batteries very soon.
More than we would need for a few days
Very soon
@MattMastodon @Ardubal @Pampa @AlexisFR @Wirrvogel @Sodis
Batteries are great for short term storage (Hours to Days), but the further you are from the equator, the more you need seasonal storage.
Hydrogen possibly fits part of that, if it is produced by electrolysis when wind / solar are in surplus.
Problems are:
how to store it, it leaks through most storage containers, requires vast amounts of energy to liquify and
The round trip from Electricity via H2 to Electricity is very inefficient.the cynic in me is wondering if this is just an excuse to rebrand fossil fuels
That's exactly what it is. Hydrogen power plants are just trojan horses for methane. Since they can burn one as well as the other, but CH4 is much more economically convenient.
This is interesting in terms of demand side measures
"Globally each tonne of steel produced gives rise to an average 1.85 tonnes of CO2 (tCO2), accounting for around 7-9% of global emissions."
Building overcapacity of renewables means Europe can smelt for free most days. Other industries and households use can also be demand side managed for low wind days.
#Renewables are the gift that never stop giving.
There are a lot of really good ideas there. I only get 500 letters so briefly:
The priority is damage minimalusation. We are heading towards a very bad future where civilisation collapse is very possible.
#nuclear uses lots of energy to build. Even windmills use fibreglass.
#nuclear investment may take funds from #renewables which can provide an energy overabundance.
We need all Storage options, hydro, H2 and battery and demand side measures.
nuclear uses lots of energy to build. Even windmills use fibreglass.
It may be more expensive to build, but not because it's more energy intensive. Especially when you look at capacity. It is by far the most efficient source, requiring much less material and energy per generation capacity.
That's a big claim, and having watched a #nuclear power station being built I struggle to agree. Especially if you look at full life cycle from mining uranium to disposal.
Also most of the work with a #windmill is establishing the site. Once done repairs and upgrades are cheap.
And #renewables are quick. Chuck a spare at it and you'll have useful energy in a few months. The main problem in the UK is government obstructing them.
And they're still being built.
I'm challenging the claim about energy use, not cost. Uranium mining is a rounding error in this regard.
What you're missing from seeing a power station being built is how much energy it produces. Being conservative, a single reactor generates as much energy as around 1000 wind turbines. And that's without taking into account the full life cycle, which can probably 3-4x that number.
The energy density numbers of nuclear power are such completely different orders of magnitude to other energy sources that people usually have trouble understanding them in real world terms.
Well zeros can make a big difference and the cost is not to be sniffed at. Our local reactor is looking to cost 40 billion. You could run every school and hospital in Wales for 2 years with that amount of money and have spare change to build a couple of tidal lagoons.
You can easily build 1000 wind turbines for the cost of one reactor and do it in less time.
Of course, when they get fusion going...
Again, I'm not talking of costs, that's a whole different discussion. Only pointing out the environmental impact. Although I very much believe in a few decades we're going to find out the hard way how much more expensive it is not to have spent the money now, and we're going to be wishing we did.
We certainly need to spend the money now on #renewables to get #ZeroCarbon and mitigate #climate breakdown.
I assume you are talking about #embodied energy and found this.
But I would say embodied energy of renewables or #nuclear is almost irrelevant as it is a one off. It's an investment so will reap a massive reward in CO2 reduction year on year.
However, cost is a real problem for nuclear. And in terms of scaling up fast, #wind & #solar seem best.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-wind-nuclear-amazingly-low-carbon-footprints/
For example Sweden are investing in nuclear but they have massive #hydro so they have the storage problem nailed. But politics means they are spending money on nuclear rather than a Solar Wind Hydro solution.
#nuclear energy is mainly a scam by big business rather than a cost effective or sensible energy source. It takes funding from renewables and leaves it in the pockets of big banks.
The strike price on Hinkley ends in 2063 but cost overruns mean probably later
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It can’t be scales up and down following need.
Yes, it runs at full power most of the time. That's what being a "baseline energy source" means.