this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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Investing 25 years into nuclear allows the fossil fuel industry to continue existing for longer, which is why they're pushing nuclear.
Besides, the path France took is having to shut down their nuclear plants due to a lack of cooling water, caused by extremely hot and dry summers. Nuclear is becoming an increasingly unviable alternative, until we figure out fusion at least.
Meanwhile solar and wind are becoming increasingly more viable by the day.
France is shutting down some reactors during the hot summers. The reactors being shut down are the one that reject water directly into the river after passing through the cooling circuit. They shut down to avoid rising the river temperature, the river are already hotter than they should be so they try to mitigate this ecological issue.
Most of the reactors use cooling towers that don't have this issue since the water is not sent back.
Then they also do that because July and August are the month with the lowest electrical consumption anyway and solar is going strong. So closing few reactors will not have any negative impacts. In winter on the other hand all the reactors needs to be functional.
I don't understand the last part of your message about fusion, in this case fusion does not change anything. Fusion would use even more water so the problem would be even worst.
On the other hand climate change is impacting renewables every too. Storms are getting stronger and less predictable which can cause some serious damage on solar panel and wind turbines. Having a reliable electric production in the context of climate change is not trivial.