And even with these reactors shut down, France still exported 5-10GW of power at the time.
So yeah let’s not propagate the anti-nuclear propaganda trying to paint the situation as “nuclear can’t handle global warming and will cause blackouts”, when in reality it’s just us having so much decarbonated electricity that we can afford to produce less as an ecological precaution.
That twists it to “protecting nature raises your electricity bill” where it’s just that that the plant, when built, did not take into account water levels could drop this low. As if they assumed climate change wouldn’t be this influential or something.
It is not twisting it. It is exactly like that. The problem is not the water level. The nuclear power plant can work in these condition. The hot water discharge would raise the temperature too much on top of existing higher temperatures in the river for the flora and fauna to survive. We are doing this to protect nature. There is no twisting here.
To my knowledge, but I did not look this up, these constraints were known at design time. I don’t recall these changing. Hence the statement may be true, but pointing at the known constraint after the fact shifts the blame to nature conservation rather than infrastructure and climate change. This at a time where climate change focus is of utmost importance.
Hence, albeit factually correct, it is disingenuous to give it the focus.
If these constraints were added in the past 10 years then that could be considered different depending on the reasons for the change.
What has changed are the water levels and base temperatures. Our environment has changed and the infrastructure has not been adapted to it. Luckily we have other tools for generating electric power ready to be rolled out.
We are talking 1970. Scientists lacked the numerical models and the computing capacity to make these predictions. To accuse civilian engineers to not take into consideration recent hot topics of environmental science that lacked, at the time, rigorous models is disingenuous.
The design lifespan for those reactors was 40 years. We are extending those past lifetime because it is cheaper to do even if we need to shut them down more and more often.
The infrastructure have not adapted because it is cheaper to build a new power plant or to shutdown existing one occasionally then to adapt old existing design.
It’s not twisting anything, it’s verifiable fact. Water temperatures in rivers in the current heatwaves we’ve had in Europe that are more than 10 degrees celsius above mean average temperatures has meant that the temperatures in rivers and lakes are already reaching levels that are causing severe issues to the wildlife and plants within them. Dumping millions of litres of hot water from power stations into them just makes a critical situation worse.
Several nuclear reactors had to shut down because there was not enough water for cooling.
In France, Hungary, Romania
Reactors in France are shut down not because of lack of water, but as an ecological precaution because the effects of warming up rivers even more is not well known (even if it seems to have not much more impact than the heat wave in itself )
And even with these reactors shut down, France still exported 5-10GW of power at the time.
So yeah let’s not propagate the anti-nuclear propaganda trying to paint the situation as “nuclear can’t handle global warming and will cause blackouts”, when in reality it’s just us having so much decarbonated electricity that we can afford to produce less as an ecological precaution.
In France, sure. In Hungary the water level actually dropped below the intake valves so they physically couldn’t pump enough water into the reactor.
From euronews:
That twists it to “protecting nature raises your electricity bill” where it’s just that that the plant, when built, did not take into account water levels could drop this low. As if they assumed climate change wouldn’t be this influential or something.
It is not twisting it. It is exactly like that. The problem is not the water level. The nuclear power plant can work in these condition. The hot water discharge would raise the temperature too much on top of existing higher temperatures in the river for the flora and fauna to survive. We are doing this to protect nature. There is no twisting here.
To my knowledge, but I did not look this up, these constraints were known at design time. I don’t recall these changing. Hence the statement may be true, but pointing at the known constraint after the fact shifts the blame to nature conservation rather than infrastructure and climate change. This at a time where climate change focus is of utmost importance.
Hence, albeit factually correct, it is disingenuous to give it the focus.
If these constraints were added in the past 10 years then that could be considered different depending on the reasons for the change.
What has changed are the water levels and base temperatures. Our environment has changed and the infrastructure has not been adapted to it. Luckily we have other tools for generating electric power ready to be rolled out.
We are talking 1970. Scientists lacked the numerical models and the computing capacity to make these predictions. To accuse civilian engineers to not take into consideration recent hot topics of environmental science that lacked, at the time, rigorous models is disingenuous.
The design lifespan for those reactors was 40 years. We are extending those past lifetime because it is cheaper to do even if we need to shut them down more and more often.
The infrastructure have not adapted because it is cheaper to build a new power plant or to shutdown existing one occasionally then to adapt old existing design.
I do not understand what is your point here.
It’s not twisting anything, it’s verifiable fact. Water temperatures in rivers in the current heatwaves we’ve had in Europe that are more than 10 degrees celsius above mean average temperatures has meant that the temperatures in rivers and lakes are already reaching levels that are causing severe issues to the wildlife and plants within them. Dumping millions of litres of hot water from power stations into them just makes a critical situation worse.