>The World Nuclear Industry Status Report is a yearly report that explores the global challenges facing the nuclear power industry. It is produced by Mycle Schneider, a professional anti-nuclear activist, and gives a detailed overview of the global nuclear industry and special analysis on key events and trends.
Regardless, the issues facing nuclear power could be quite easily solved with simple political will. Unlike those of renewable energy, which still do not have economical or technologically feasible solutions to the storage and base load problem.
We need only look to France to see the path forward. After the 1973 oil crisis, they resolved never again to be beholden to foreign oil for their grid needs. So they undertook the Messmer Plan, which mass produced a single standardized reactor design in bulk. France converted itself almost entirely over to nuclear power for its base load requirements in just 15 years, with the project coming in under budget and ahead of schedule. Now France has so much electricity it sells excess to Germany for profit.
Taking advantage of economy of scale, slicing through red tape and NIMBY-ism with political willpower, using a standardized design to expedite the engineering and approval processes of every individual plant - none of these require some amazing new technology or some new economic system be developed. We could literally start tomorrow, and have the entire first world swapped over to nuclear by the 2030s.
The recent Netflix documentary "Inside Bill's Brain" has an episode on Gates' attempts to build a safe nuclear reactor. It's been blocked by political opposition, not anything technical.
> We need only look to France to see the path forward.
I hope nobody does that. France is running several overdue reactors, has a history of under-reporting issues, the main electricity generation and distribution company EDF (owned by the state) runs with a net debt of €70 billion and is responsible for the disastrous over budget numbers for Hinkley OP mentioned above.
> Now France has so much electricity it sells excess to Germany for profit.
With the continued rise of renewable energy in Germany this development won't stop while France will at some point have to start moving some of their overdue reactors off the grid while new ones are being dropped because of the market situation outlined in the Status Report above: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-nuclearpower-astri... while the only other new reactor they build Flamanville 3 came up in the news with messed up welding seams...
"slicing through red tape and NIMBY-ism with political willpower"
Red tape is there for a reason. Red tape is the rule of law, it's emissions standards, and fines for polluters, employment rights, and safe drinking water.
Red tape isn't something to be cast aside to get your own personal pet thing done.
I mean, what's the difference between your 'political willpower' and dictatorship?
The French approach gets them TGV, Ariane, nuclear power. Surrounding nations rush to add high speed rail after TGV.
Meanwhile... The British approach makes it illegal to give government funding for the Channel Tunnel rail link. 12 or 15 years later, another Act is needed and we start bothering with HS1. HS2 and HS3 were allegedly "coming soon" while the Chunnel was being built. Hmm.
Ariane is European. According to Wikipedia "it was officially agreed upon at the end of 1973 after discussions between France, Germany and the UK" [1]
Plus the British approach has just built the biggest offshore wind farm. Why is that inferior to Frances nuclear power?
Plus France also signed up to the Channel Tunnel treaties, so its also illegal for them to fund it, but yet it still got built...
And which approach gets to claim credit for Concorde?
I'm not even sure what the French approach is. They still have to follow EU red tape, I could just as easily roll out a stereotype about long lunches, etc, etc.
The post-war British approach, late 60s, early 70s on has been much more piecemeal eschewing big national projects we used to do well. The French retained the ability to use the state for good much longer than us. Or push vanity projects through, come what may, if you prefer... We did joined up thinking much better until the 1950s.
The French were the driving force behind Ariane. Britain would most likely have walked away after the failure of Europa (Blue Streak). We did after all walk away from our space programme right after achieving orbit. Still we became a much smaller participant in ESA than we had been in ELDO. Germany took our place as the other key player with the French.
The point about the Tunnel was the British Tunnel Act specifically ruled out state aid - Thatcher's government expected the private sector to stump up the whole cost. Which it pointedly failed to do. France happily took the SNCF proposal and built a national network from it using the power and purse of the state. Britain took the BR APT prototype, pushed for far too early demo, cancelled it, sold it to Fiat then bought them later as Pendelinos. We chugged along with HST.
Concorde is a brilliant pick, thanks for the perfect example! I'm going to say 95% "The French" (politically. We contributed much more fairly technically): The British really, really wanted to partner with the US who weren't interested feeling they would be giving "their" lead to the UK. We were most surprised to find the French were the most serious about SST too, and Thorneycroft (destroyer of Supersonic Harrier) found himself with only France as realistic option. The treaty was written with very heavy cancellation penalties. Roy Jenkins tried to cancel it with TSR2 in 64. He went to France to tell them. The French responded by breaking diplomatic contact[1]. :)
Actually, scrub that, it wouldn't have progressed nearly as far as British project. Treasury were against, cabinet was against, but, we were trying our first attempt to get in the EU and de Gaulle wasn't keen (he felt we were too close to the Americans to be good Europeans. 2019 hindsight thinks he may have had a damn good point). Concorde was an EU/EEC bargaining chip. Yet still we tried to cancel it.
> The TGV was the world's fourth commercial and third standard gauge high-speed train service,[15] after Japan's Shinkansen, which connected Tokyo and Osaka from 1 October 1964, the Russian ER200 around 1974 (full service in 1984), and Britain's InterCity 125 on main lines such as the East Coast Main Line, which entered service in 1976.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Nuclear_Industry_Status_...
Hardly an unbiased source it seems.
Regardless, the issues facing nuclear power could be quite easily solved with simple political will. Unlike those of renewable energy, which still do not have economical or technologically feasible solutions to the storage and base load problem.
We need only look to France to see the path forward. After the 1973 oil crisis, they resolved never again to be beholden to foreign oil for their grid needs. So they undertook the Messmer Plan, which mass produced a single standardized reactor design in bulk. France converted itself almost entirely over to nuclear power for its base load requirements in just 15 years, with the project coming in under budget and ahead of schedule. Now France has so much electricity it sells excess to Germany for profit.
Taking advantage of economy of scale, slicing through red tape and NIMBY-ism with political willpower, using a standardized design to expedite the engineering and approval processes of every individual plant - none of these require some amazing new technology or some new economic system be developed. We could literally start tomorrow, and have the entire first world swapped over to nuclear by the 2030s.