Lionel:

The existing French nuclear reactors are all pretty old (built in the 60’s and 70’s. Any new plants (France is planning on building six more nuclear power plants) will use passive cooling, which uses convection to move the water circulating around the plant, the heat causing the hotter water to rise and radiate the heat away via the metal wall and then sinking as it cools, to repeat the cycle. This should use a lot less water from rivers and lakes and the ocean, because it is a (mostly) closed system.

Of course any country can build more renewable – but if the percentage of renewable gets to high you get brown outs and black outs when it is dark and not windy. The more baseload (less intermittent) the better. Any more than 30-35% renewable is a problem, until we can figure out how to store power at the grid level scale.

As Germany and California have shown us, having a lot of renewable which is backed up with coal and gas doesn’t really cut your CO2 emissions down. It is better to build a bunch of nuclear baseload and less renewable (say 70% nuclear and 30% renewable, for example).

It will be interesting to see what each country chooses to do with nuclear going forward. I hope we see a lot more nuclear power plants being built.

We need more nuclear power

Probably not, again.

The French energy supplier EDF is temporarily reducing output at its nuclear power stations on the Rhône and Garonne rivers as heatwaves push up river temperatures, restricting its ability to use river water to cool the plants.

EDF temporarily reduces nuclear power output as French rivers get too warm

Now where are most nuclear power plant located? On or near bodies of water. With these rising temperatures and also sea levels renewables look more stable.

The only solution I can see for that is small modular reactors, spread out so that those that happen to be in a hot spot can shut down while others take up the slack.

But that might not work if we keep getting these heat domes covering the whole Midwest that stick in place for a week or more.

We need more nuclear power. Baseload power if…

Not so baseload when things warm up:

Electricite de France SA’s nuclear-output cuts are expected to stretch into next week as a heat wave sweeping across Europe pushes up river temperatures, restricting EDF’s ability to cool its plants.

The French utility said that two power stations on the Rhone River will produce less electricity in the coming days, adding to cutbacks at another plant caused by rising temperatures on the Garonne.

Germany Solar Sets New Record, While French Nuclear Gasps in Heat

More solar and wind, although as climate changes atmospheric conditions may disrupt those too.

Eggs and baskets.

And the added benefit is that the power to charge the vehicles would be baseload (always available) – rather than intermittent (at the mercy of wind and sun in the area you are charging your vehicle).

Do your nuclear power plants move around the country to keep with electrically powered vehicles when in us?. Of course not, that would be silly besides a terrific waste of energy moving such large masses about. This demonstrates how idiotically simplistic your argument is.

Your construct of baseload is founded upon false premises and thus worthless.

I recall being involved in the production of an educational computer simulation programme that included the then known (in early 1990s) methods of electrical power generation; hydro, gas fired, coal fired and nuclear power stations. The user was expected to control all the variables, including management of the nuclear power plant (controlling levels of reactions) and the transmission network to cope with capricious fluctuations in demand brought on by such mundane, but deleterious to performance, events as the blowing of the half time whistle in a cup-finals soccer match — all those kettles suddenly switched n for a brew.

Although the simulation was necessarily simplified the programming was quite complex in order to work within the confines of an 8-bit microprocessor based system. It was a UK based system and it is unfortunate that RickA was not able to avail himself of a period immersed in its use.

Greg:

Are you saying that if all of the power plants providing power to the all electric car fleet don’t use any carbon emitting sources AND we stop moving oil and gas to stations that we would cut total power for the electric cars in half?

Wouldn’t that still be true if ALL the electricity used to charge the all electric car fleet was provided by nuclear? That to would cut the total power needed to move vehicles in half – right?

And the added benefit is that the power to charge the vehicles would be baseload (always available) – rather than intermittent (at the mercy of wind and sun in the area you are charging your vehicle).

So nuclear provides all of the benefits you are referring to AND eliminates the intermittency problem. Nuclear is the way to go (in my opinion).

Doesn’t work that way, RickA. The total amount of energy needed to move vehicles halves at the point of use if they all convert to electric. The total amount of electricity needed nationally goes down somewhere between 10 and 20% when we stop using electricity to make the fuel we burn. The total amount of vehicle-moving energy we need goes down several percent when we stop moving our energy in liquid and solid form and start moving it mostly on the grid. Grid upgrades are needed to reach energy producing sites, but major transmission infrastructure is already designed to handle high loads that tend to be rare, and those peaks will be smoothed out in an electrified economy. There will be places that will actually end up with overbuilt transmission lines once this transition happens.

The lessons to be learned from prior failures of the system are more about how to better regulate and plan clean energy. Saying we have to use nuclear because of Germany is like saying we have to stick with Zeppelins because Thomas Etholen Selfridge died in a plane crash.