I am once against asking you to watch the entire video before commenting.

Nuclear’s defamation may just be the greatest thing that the coal lobby has ever gotten through

One important note regarding aging nuclear reactors. Before a nuclear reactor start operating the power plant has to get a license from the country's nuclear regulatory authority to operate it for a fixed number of years, let's say 20 years. Before this license expires the plant has to make a choice to renew the license or decommission the reactor. If they choose the former option they have to prove to the regulators that the reactor can safely operate for the next period, let's say another 20 years, which includes upgrading control and safety systems, replacing aging equipment, doing extensive inspections on critical components, etc. Just because a reactor is 40+ years it doesn't mean it only conforms to safety standards from 40 years ago.

France is like that one team member that does 70% of the presentation and Germany is the person who says "mhm I'll get around to it" and never does.

France did not fight to label natural gaz as green. Germany did that.

Hi there - French-trained nuclear engineering graduate here. A great, balanced video as always. There was one detail that I think needs clarifying though. The cracking did not happen because the reactors were old. In fact, it happened in the younger, “N4” type reactors. In the case of the Penly-1 reactor (the one in which the crack you mentioned happened) the previous welds done beside the crack were likely improperly heat treated when done, leading to internal stress in the pipe, causing the crack. So case of bad workmanship and/or lack of quality control rather than ageing.

One day the anti-nuclear folks will have to answer for setting us back in the fight for decarbonization.

My grandfather worked in Germany's first nuclear power plant; the Versuchsatomkraftwerk Kahl (the 'test nuclear power plant Kahl'. Built in 1961.). Though it wasn't actually build in Kahl, but right outside of it. In the neighbouring town of Karlstein, where I grew up. To this day, the town's coat of arms displays an atom to commemorate that. Bonus fun fact about that town: Karlstein is named after 'Karl dem Großen', better known as Charlemagne. The "father of europe" would often travel through the town to get to his favored hunting grounds in the nearby Spessart woods. And ~1200 years later, the nuclear power plant was built right by the river he had to cross to get there. Crazy to think about that.

There are a few german political specifics missing. The first phase out was planned similar to what you named as the "middle way". A slow reduction of nuclear power, while ramping up renewable power. The problem was than reversing this plan and later making a new phase out which had no real plan behind it (the one Merkel is responsible for). Instead the renewable industry was systematically destroyed (Germany was leading in the tech for solar and wind energy before Merkel) and a switch to natural gas was favoured (with massiv lobbying). When they than relized that was a shit idea, both from the view of climate change and the dependency to dictatorships like russia, it was to late for both ways. Going back to a slow nuclear phase out was not possible anymore and the the renewable energy was also not build up good and fast enough.

Small comment on the crack from a french welding engineer : it's not thermal fatigue, it's stress induced corrosion. It's a much more complicated topic ! But as someone that worked on the repairs, I can say that it's well under control, and just the fact that it was detected before being critical, it shows that the safety procedures are working

Closing down working plants that are not in immediate danger or in need of a service while at the same time approving open-pit coal mines to increase "energy independency," now that's progress right there.

To add two points: a) the nuclear power plants was always state of the art of this generation, they were continously updated. b) the generation was among other choosen by FJ Strauss, 'cause he speculated at atomic weapons. So the NucPowPlants wasn't as efficent as they could be.

Actually, even after Cernobyl and Fukushima I don’t worry so much about meltdowns (though they are bad enough and I’m not even talking about Sellafield and the likes), but about nuclear waste. Decades of nuclear energy generation and still there no way to get rid of that stuff. It’s like flying and hoping someone will invent the landing strip anytime soon.

Small correction: 0:43 The fallout spread on easterly winds, not westerly. The wind's name is where it came from, not where it's going.

The worst part here is that Three Mile could hardly even be considered a disaster. A disaster in PR maybe, but nowhere near a nuclear disaster, yet had such a massive impact nonetheless.

When our bavarian brothers would not be that dump, we'd already have enough storage by the north-south relation for wind energy

"green party" lol

It’s crazy that the two greatest nuclear disasters were caused by utter incompetence and cataclysmic natural disasters. And then that every other nuclear disaster had a higher death rate by suicide than by cancer and radiation sickness

French here who's working in for EDF in a nuclear power plant. Few things to be said: Firstly, the safety of french reactors is immensely better than any russian or Japanese technology. The technology involved is different and the AIEA (the independent nuclear control organism) imposes on us a lot of control even if the slightest non dangerous fault is detected. After Fukushima we had to improve all of our facilities' safety in regards to earthquakes and tsunamis eventhough the threat is basically non-existent in France Secondly, you didn't mentioned how we ended up with an industry with a critical lack of investment. This was largely due to the European integration that imposed on us some ludicrous competition policies. EDF has to sell at a loss one third of its production to the competition. We are the only energy producer in France but we finance a flock of privately owned company who are supposed to develop their own production site, which they do not. So basically, we got the French taxpayer who paid for the construction of the powerplant, who subsidies private entities, and who buys to these company the electricity providing them a huge margin. This policy was pushed by Germany in order to get a European energy market where all of the competitive advantages of France have been nullified. It is a complete rip off

10:10 Magnox? Britain kept ones running until the mid 2010s, and North Korea uses them to this day.

france is the leader here. acquiring the skills needed for new nuclear power stations has been a painful process. there has been a lot of development of materials science since the 1950-70s. with this new technology studies are being done how to extend lifespans to 75 years. there are also molten salt reactor designs being developed. these can use existing waste as fuel while also reducing the total amount of waste. its not so say that all alt energy is useless. thanks to fracking technology, deep geothermal energy may be able to provide significant amounts of energy to the grid as well. when i was a kid at school and the narrative was that nuclear = bad, waste = bad, i always wondered why not invest in studying for solutions. scientists are quite good like that.

I think there is an error at 11:33 regarding the cracks found in French nuclear reactors. Error might be too strong a word but something important is missing: While the cracks were indeed found, they were found on a backup security system which is meant to be used in order to inject water under high pressure to cool down the core in case of an emergency. This is by no mean something you should ignore and backup systems should be in perfect working condition because you want them to be working when you need them. Cracks were however not found on the primary circuit in which water circulates under normal operating conditions. If your French is good enough, there is a lengthy parliamentary enquiry on this topic you can find on youtube,

2:10 "very real" well you should put thing in perspective. The mortality rate for nuclear power is a few deaths per trillion kwh. The mortality rate of coal power is 10 000 to 170 000 deaths per trillion kwh. And coal power plants actually releases more radioactive emissions than nuclear power plants.

@0:46 "spread on Westerly winds" Westerlies are from the west to the east... the image shows winds from east to west...

One of the things you missed, and I hope you cover in your next video, is that SMRs aren't just easily replaced because they're small, they're easily replaced because they are designed to be built and assembled in a factory, instead of being assembled in-situ.

What I don't understand is how the France of the 1970's was able to construct all these reactors that have apparently performed quite well, yet modern day France seems unable to equal even a fraction of these past accomplishments. It's also quite baffling that France would go all in on nuclear power and then completely abandon it so quickly, these potential problems should have been quite obvious.

But are those new expensive nuclear reactors high pressure - explosive - water / steam? Or are they low pressure molten salt with a totally easier to manage safety profile? Anyway - great background material - love it.

People tend to forget that Germany is one of the safest countries for nuclear Powerplants. No majpr environmental Problems (like Tsunamis). One of the highest Safety standarts in the world,... it just doesnt make sense for the "green" Party to shut the worlds most advanced nuclear Reactors while, 3km behind the French border, there is one of the oldest Nuclear plants in the World (Tihange) for ex.

I was extremely into environmentalism even from when I was young, and the opposition of major green parties, environmental groups etc to nuclear power was always the thing that confused me the most. Sure, once I learned about Chernobyl I was scared of nuclear fallout and treated nuclear sources with the respect they deserve, but it seemed so strange to want to ban that entire form of power generation when thousands and thousands of people die every year of coal mining related injuries and illnesses and we were acknowledging that we had to use less fossil fuel.

One Problem of re-stating nuclear power in germany: There's noone to work at those reactors. The old guys are entering their pensions now or work to safely dispose of the old reactors. Since everybody thought the exit was coming, there are no universities teaching nuclear engineering etc. anymore. We lost the know-how. Not to mention the general lack of workers in this country...

Yeah, I notice how 'cheap' wind and solar is - especially when they are not producing any output, which is more often that people think, and 100 % backup of renewables is required mainly these days by CCGT gas turbines - which are the only things fast enough to keep up with the roller coaster unreliable output of renewables, and keep the lights on.

I have an essay about this in about an hour from now. You gave me great ideas to form or to give attention about renewable energies thanks man

I feel an immense amount of dread every time I remember the nuclear shutdowns and reinstating of Russian gas and very dangerous brown coal plants, as a German.

4:41 For everyone who is confused by the solar energy in France from 2PM to 3AM, the x-axis does not show the time, it shows the past 24 hours, so it begins somethere during a summer afternoon. You make very good and well researched videos.

In Austria we only build one nuclear power plant and never activated it (the vote for banning it was conducted before they started it ,but after they already build it)

"windturbine are smaller, cheaper, easy to replace", big problem, energy don't work like that: - You don't take in account that windmill produce if there is wind, most of the time they are at 20% of their max capacity even when they are placed in a good area. - Renewable like solar and windmill need a lot of connection as they produce individually less. They also need a lot more complexe material that need to be imported. - For windmill you can't sum up offshore and on land as if they were the same. They are very different in rentability, infrastructure, place taken... - Comparing renewable to nuclear as no point as they don't work the same way. Solar and wind can't be controlled so you need to produce always less than you use with them and complete with other sources like nuclear, hydroelectricity, coal or gaz. You can't compare two sources of energy if one need to be completed by another one. We speak about mix of energy because it's good to have a bit of everything to be competitiv and reactiv to any problem. I recommend this youtube channel to understand the problematics with energy: www.youtube.com/@LeReveilleur

Yeah it was great having Germany criticize Russia while simultaneously buying oil from them in insane quantities.

15:05 This is the exact reason we had so much underinvestment for years, French politicians basically said the exact same thing and first wanted to reduce France's nuclear share of electricity generation to 50% of our electricity grid. France's issue is also down to its red tape, Finland has the same EPRs 2 and they just launched their first one.

I have watched all and you havent even mentioned about melted light metals nuclear plants - the stable fission reaction

Not only aging Plants, with multiple record heat summers with low river levels, France had to Limit production and even shut down some plants during weeks in summer ... And it is getting even warmer

You missed one major fact. Germany was to be considered main battlefield in cold war times. People were not only against nuclear power but nuclear weapons, too. And both are related at least in mind. From a practical perspective. Think of captain Schettino or pilot Lubitz running a nuclear power plant as chief engineer. You will only know after something is getting wrong.

I don't know where you saw that "nuclear reactors typically have a lifespan between 20 to 40 years". Pretty much every commercial design is designed to last *at least* 40 years. As for the corrosion crisis, had you checked on your spreadsheet, you would have noticed that it typically affected *newer* reactors. The affected pipes were emergency circuits, meaning they couldn't have burst at *any moment* as you claim, but only if safety injection was used. That's a big problem for sure, but it was not the ticking bomb your phrasing implies. Sorry, but I think you could've spent a little more time researching the subject, especially as an engineering channel which should have the skills required for a more in-depth understanding of the issue. As it stands, your video ends up making erroneous statements regarding the causes and consequences of this crisis.

Even when this video is very good in parts of explaining history and status of Nuclear Power, there are some muddles in the topic of German exit from nuclear and fossil-fuel energy. Let me explain as some German that are interested in the energy transition for years. 4:26 "How could they celebrate?" As you describe, it was a long fight for some of the people against power plants in general. Additional the topic power plant was used in Germany to try to delay the energy transition pointing out to "only build power plants" in 20 or more years. "harms Germanys goals for clean energy" - no the opposite. Because nuclear power plants are so expensive, you have to use the generated power every time. This results in the situation, that we turn off regenerative power plants. Because of regulations we also have to pay for that. Without the nuclear power plants, we are now able to use more of existing regenerative energies and can import more cheap regenerative energies from Denmark or Belgium. Additional shutting down nuclear power has an end now, because no one last, so we can focus on reducing coal and gas now (it was planned to do both in parallel, but political actors delayed successfully. Investors of fossil fuels do big marketing campaigns to have as much delay as possible. 4:33 "more dependend on fossil fuels" - no, since shut down of nuclear power plant, we burn as less coal as 1965 5:09 "france is energy independend" - no, France imports all Uranium e.g. from Russia or Africa as Germany before. Germany decided to become independent from this. France get more and more problems because that dependency. 5:25 France use heaters a lot. So in summer, when France has too much nuclear power so it's cheap, Germany slows down fossil energy generation as much as possible to import from France and many others. In winter France uses cheap wind from Germany, because alone there will be not enough energy in France in winter. Import/Export beween France and Germany is +/- 0 6:54 LNG we only start to import gas, because the pipeline to Russia was closes and destroyed by terrorism. It's less for energy production (here we have many backups like coal or import), but the industry and heating needs it a lot. In future we need LNG to import H₂, because Germany is too small to produce all needed energy for all the industry alone.

Hi, oldish German with a physics degree here. After watching the entire video I still know precious little about why Germany supposedly hates nuclear power. I had speculated that, as the Green Party started as a Cold-War fueled peace movement and Germany would have been where all those tactical nukes that were built during the nuclear arms race were supposed to stop the swarms of Soviet tanks, turning Germany into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, Germans might have become extra critical of anything nuclear. Even earlier than that, when the new post-WW II German army was created, there were calls to arm it with nuclear weapons. The German government rejected that idea, for pretty obvious reasons - that would not have looked good to anyone a mere 10 years or so after the end of the Third Reich. And then there was (or should I say is, and ever will be?) the search for a national long-term storage facility for highly radioactive waste. It was ongoing when I learned about it as a boy. Now I'm almost ready to retire and they still haven't found one. Maybe they will all agree on one before I die, but I am not holding my breath. I also hoped for more background on Merkel's decision to get out of nuclear energy after Fukushima. At the time there were discussions about "reworking" and slowing the previously decided "Atomausstieg" (nuclear phase-out), not least of all in Merkel's own party, and Angela Merkel herself had until then not shown any enthusiasm about saying goodbye to nuclear power. Then Fukushima happened, and suddenly she was spearheading a new effort to reverse the reversal and get out of the nuclear power game even faster than previously planned. It was pretty striking to observe. I always suspected that she, as the head of German government and one of the very politicians with a science education, might have learned more about the real happenings in Fukushima, and something about that non-public information might have spooked her. Let me be clear, I personally do not hate nuclear power or radioactivity. If you can build a nuclear powerplant cheaply and safely enough, and you succeed in convincing enough of the neighbors of where you want to build it to not sue the hell out of you, then more power to you, figuratively and literally! But from what I am seeing, nuclear power won't save anyone from climate change - it will simply take too long to implement. Traditional nuclear plants are monstrous money pits that now take forever to build, thanks to the nuclear industry's past sins that have required more and more regulation. SMRs (small modular reactors), Next-gen reactors and fusion power are still at least 50% hype, and the final 20% of any problem are the hardest, right? But let's say we miraculously build all those nuclear power stations, and we get another problem: we need to buy fuel for them. I don't need to spell out what it means when demand exceeds supply. Plus, the current main provider of uranium is Kazakhstan, delivering about 40% of the world's demand. What if Russia decided they'd like to re-acquire the thinly populated yet resource-rich former Soviet republic to make Mother Russia great again? Not so great for the rest of the world.

Great video, as always. Just a few things I'd like to add : 1) There is currently a massive overhaul of the older reactors, known as "Grand Carénage". The objective is to get on the same level of safety as the newest plant, the EPR2, by heavily upgrading almost every aspect of the process : a new "tub" to collect corium is being added, all the piping and hvac systems are being checked to be sure it'd resist a massive earthquake, all the cableways are reinforced, and so on and so forth. The main goal is to be able to push the reactor to 60 years, and perhaps even beyond that, while maintaining safety standards among the best in the world. 2) FLA3, or the new EPR being build in Flamanville, costs discrepency mainly comes from a policial issue : all the others reactors are made in pairs, which allows for a much better "scale effect" than building one reactor after the other. For exemple, if you are stuck on a problem while building the first reactor, you can use the knowledge to modify the second one while building it, and in the end you'll end up with 2 reactors in less time that it would take you to only build one. 3) FES, the nuclear plant of Fessenheim in France, was closed ahead of its time because of political pressure by Germany and Switzerland. This was a huge blow to EDF economy during the corrosion episode, and is still something that is resented in France (I work in the field in France, all the views above are mine and not my company's).

remember burning lignite also emits radioactive particals in the air. A nuclear plant contains its nuclear radiation, but a lignite plant trows all its nuclear radiation in the air

One important thing which is not highlighted in this video is where France's nuclear reactors get their uranium from. This is very important with regards to total associated emissions as well as from an energy security point of view.

5:46 Calling that first bar "coal" is actually flattering. The majority of that is Lignite, which is just about the worst you can use for electricity generation. Thank you so much, 'Green' party.

Im a MechEng student, and just took a discipline about piping engineering. The teacher lecturing worked on one company that built some of France's and Belgium's Nuclear Power plants. Pipe fatigue and stress rates and cycles are thoroughly studied and are easily measurable. Pipe maintenance should be the top priority in maintenance plans. If the responsible entity let the pipes crack to breaking point, they are slacking, and may be acountable for millions of deaths

As someone working in the nuclear field, the video is very accurate about the importance of continued focus on nuclear. After a 30 year of neglect, it can be extremely difficult to continue operating and constructing nuclear plants. Nuclear benefits from scale and society knowledge. Both Germany's plan and France's plan are good. Full nuclear or zero nuclear are best. The lukewarm commitment is the most expensive and least beneficial. As the workforce gains knowledge and designs are standardized, additional nuclear plants shouldn't be vastly over budget.

I work in the nuclear industry in Canada for the only Nuclear level 2 cleared corporation and build components for many various outfits. Nuclear is very potent, the only catch being that the waste management solution needs to be figured out.

France had a huge crisis in electricity in the dry summers 2018 and 2019, when the nuclear power plants had to be throttled or switched off due to cooling problems. There is still no solution for the waste problem. In Germany both Germanies tried to dump that waste at the block border. France, UK and Russia have some wild deponies and dump a lot in the sea. Decentral nuclear power means having nuclear fuel and waste everywhere making it easy available for people who will do no good with it. It also means there will be a lot of illegal dumps like in Russia. As you said renewables are already cheaper and faster available. Summing up all those facts investing in nuclear power is a bad idea. And one more: nuclear power has the same problem as renewables. It has to be stored. Switzerland is buying a lot of French nuclear power at night to pump water up the mountains and they sell a part of it back at daytime when it runs down through turbines. As there are losses they buy more as they sell back but they still make money by it. Germany has to convert the coalmines to storage ASAP with caverns on the bottom of the lakes that will be there. Those caverns will be pumped empty when there is surplus renewable energy and fill them through turbines when energy is needed. The grid has to get intelligent. Freezers can cool down to deepder temperatures when there is surplus energy and then turn off when it is short. Washing machines can start running when energy is cheap...

I went to the largest pit mine in Germany on a school trip as a kid, it was insanely large and destructive, the huge on-site tracks for coal and the monstrous excavators were cool to see but even 25 years later I still remember the scale of it all. There really does need to be a mix of SMR's and clean alternatives for any real goal of future energy demands, but to completely rule out nuclear because of a couple accidents (some from bad design and/or placement) is shooting ourselves in the foot.

I know it was part of a sponsor plug, but from an ex-engineering student, the advice at the end was bang on, particularly if you take Python a step further and learn how to use anaconda virtual environments, notebooks (google colab, jupyter, ipython, etc...), numpy, scipy (especially optimize and integrate) , pandas, matplotlib/seaborn, etc... I had to do a hard pivot two months into my undergrad dissertation because my original plan wasn't working, because I already knew Python and the above libraries from previous work I was able to apply the research I had already completed and quickly write and debug a program to automate nuclear fuel geometry design, which saved my degree. I also used Python and the above packages extensively in my MSc to write a hypersonic flow solver for basic geometries in just a week or two. Even just knowing the basics goes a long way, I recently used my knowledge of Python to write an Excel macro in TypeScript, a language I'd never used before, that automated data scraping from spreadsheets that would have otherwise taken a team of people weeks, saving a project that needed that data to inform a decision from going over its deadline.

5:24 correction on that map: France doesn't export to Britain. What happens is that the French company EDF is in charge of a lot of the UK's power planets (especially nuclear ones) and the French government has taken over EDF and as such gained its contracts. Another point of contention between the two nations, unfortunately, as the French government keeps demanding the UK pay more than contractually agreed for the continued construction efforts of its new nuclear plants.

As a german, i was never a huge fan of nuclear energy. But the problems of the other energy sources like coal are way higher. France has even some nulear power plants a few kilometers away from the german border. If they would blow up, we would have the same problems, as if they were standing in germany directly. A big problem is the missing long time storage space for nuclear waste, we don't have suitable locations for it in germany.

Just for the record: Today, France is producing 25g of CO2 for every kWh it produces. Compare that to Germany’s 200g in summer. You can track that in real-time on electricity maps.

Very important factor to bring about: Coal is the MAIN emiter of radioactive material to the nature; air, soil and water. Thats because all soil have some radioactive material mixed in. Mining is a really insuring way to actually pull radioactive soil from earth and spreading it all over.

There is no energy storage. The best thing we have so far is lumping water up and down, and it's nowhere near enough to store more than a drop in the ocean of the power needed to run a country.

German politicians: what does the dosimeter say, 440 grams CO2 instead of 30 ? Well, not great not terrible...

Nuclear reactors are like bridges. Big expensive. But their supposed to be reliable. The reactor should work from the time you were born until you have a midlife crisis. Much like bridges tho. They’re grossly underfunded. And a lot have hit that midlife moment. But nuclear reactors are permanent infrastructure. You have to have the cooling ponds. The on-site storage, the millions of miles of copper. Shutting down nuclear is the antithesis to the green energy future we deserve. Another thing. Is that nuclear is the only power source with an energy density to make extraterrestrial mining even the slightest bit worth it. Trust me when I say, that if they find uranium in the astroid belt it’ll be gone faster than you can say Chernobyl.

As a german, i say its wrong to completely phase out nuclear fission power. Using the old existing reactors to increase the time we have to shift to better alternatives is WAY better. The german reactors are for the most part at end of their expected lifespan, but that is no reason to simply shut them down all at once. They were phased out bit by bit, but still way faster than they shouldve, and the investment in alternatives hasnt facilitated this kind of process. There is no question, that increasing the use of coal powerplants is hipocracy in regards to the plans for "carbon neutrality". The accidents of chernobyl and fukishima were two very specific incidents where there was alot of human error involved. Thats not to say, that this couldnt happen somewhere else in the world, but the fact remains, that the biggest actual issues with nuclear power, are humans and radioactive waste.

The regulation in France is very different and extremely conservative than what happens almost everywhere else. Each reactor is entirely stopped every ten years for a thorough inspection. Even if it's its first decade, it can be stopped as long as things aren't fixed and updated. The crack that is mentionned here was detected by one of these "inspection décennale", and on the newest generation of reactors. They ALL got immediately inspected (as fast as personnel availability could allow), and every time a crack was detected, the reactor was stopped untill further notice. Not to mention that the entire park is undergoing the "grand carénage", a very large plan to rebuilt old reactors to last 30 more years. I.e. not just making them suit current regulations (that's the job of the repairs and fixes during the "inspection décennale"), but to prepare them for the future. Sure, decades of under-investment put strain on the French nuclear scheme, but zero corner have been cut regarding safety. In fact, safety actually vastly prevails over functionnality, and EPR (EUROPEAN pressurized reactor) was basically Germany deliberately cranking up safety standards, knowing it's the priority of the French system, to destroy what it perceives as an unfair advantage in the cost of energy (nuclear energy isn't the cheapest at any time of day and year, but it's the cheapest on average as a baseload, what Germany doesn't get with renewables despite the astounding amounts of money it poured in). In France, despite the neoliberal trend that's been destroying public services, Gaullism is still running strong. Gaullism is an extremely peculiar ideology, with the idea of a strong state and mixed economy (a mix between capitalism and socialism, with mostly free enterprise and private ownership of the means of production, except in fields deemed of strategic importance, traditionnally energy, transports, the bulk of healthcare and education), ruling the country for the common good. The very creation of the nuclear system is a result of applied Gaullism, called the "plan Messmer", from the name of Pompidou's Prime Minister. Just like Germany's Energiewende, France's nuclear system is the result of a very specific political ideology, but a wise one that works. Mitterrand, who was a neoliberal in disguise (his "tournant de la rigueur" appalled all communists and most socialists who had voted for him), put an end to that, also closing down Superphénix, the experimental fast neutron reactor to prepare for a new generation that would have run mostly on spent fuel and was 30 years ahead of its time, to please the Green party. How efficient, safe, and looking towards the future your nuclear system is, is nothing but the result of sheer political will.

Nuclear plants are like industrial cathedrals, they can easily last 100 years if managed properly. 60-80 years is now the new normal in the US. The age of nuclear plants in France should not be a concern. Remember, the containment buildings are the strongest, most robust buildings in the world. They will contain most if not all of any of the dangerous radioactive material that may be released in an accident. Just like TMI did in 1978.

i have another thing to comment on: the part where you said a nuclear power plant has a life expectancy of 20 to 40 years i think is wrong because thats just the amount of time before the license for a power plant has to be renewed and repairs have to be made.

People in Germany were mostly protesting because of the long term storage of nuclear waste was mishandled and not because of the fear of nuclear meltdown. One of the old salt mines designated for long term storage had water flow in in the first couple years, showing that it wasn't safe to contain the nuclear waste.

I like how this video keeps getting recommended every now and then and the comment section gets more heated everytime

Slovakia with just 2 nuclear powerplants generates 60% of its electricity. Sure, lot smaller country but it really shows you the potential of the technology.

In Finland we need 1 extra nuclear power plant of traditional scale to make ourselves completely energy independent. This was cancelled because Rosatom wasn't to be trusted anymore as plant deliver & fuel provider. Then again we need to replace 4 reactors (80%) like France, so in total we should start during this decade 5 new reactor projects. We have first EPR2 reactor running, so when we have run it a few years I think we should copy-paste reactor replacements from it. After that Finland should use localized smaller modular reactors on city level to provide heat and baseline energy for cities to replace gas/coal for heating during coldest winter days.

As a german, I feel like I have to add a few points here: 1. The decisions made around Nuclear Energy are unfortunately more politically motivated than based on the actual power-grid needs. Until around 10 years ago, Germany used to invest heavily into Solar Power, encouraging installments on residental homes. Due to political reasons (& heavy lobbying from the coal industry) the CDU-lead coalition axed most of the subsidizations and partially banned residental homes from adding power to the grid. These political changes also lead to Chinese manufacturers quickly overtaking the previously pretty strong german solar industry. 2. A big part of the debate about Nuclear Power is around the storage of the waste - a topic that's unfortunately missing here. We had some accidents with salt water damaging nuclear waste barrels, which lead to people protesting against having waste in their area. To this date, we still haven't found a suitable non-temporary storage solution ("Endlager"). Funnily enough, the state of Bavaria is one of the biggest supporters of Nuclear Power, but refuses to accept new power plants built and waste being stored in bavaria.

The typical example that the best intentions may lead to worse outcomes

France proves nuclear can be transformative, but it also proves that a puppy is not just for christmas. Consistent investment is needed, not just a bolus when setting it up.

Thank you for taking the time to explain the use of Iodine tablets. Often it gets treated as a cure all for radiation, so it was good to hear it explained right.

One of the most important factors that nobody seems to be talking about when it comes to nuclear power, is the production infrastructure for them, or rather, the lack there of. What I mean by this is essentially the fact that so few nuclear reactors are being built in the world, that there isn't really any efficient mass production for their parts. This also means that if, for example, every country in the world would start building at least one nuclear reactor every year, the market for their components would become so lucrative that the components themselves would see massively reduced prices compared to right now. Not to mention the boon to the research and development sectors for nuclear power, and for standardization.

It's almost like pushing everyone to go to universities instead of going into the trades was a bad idea...

just to clarify 2 point: 1-the cost of a reacteur depend greatly on where the money come from -if its the state it will be cheap because a real state as a greate level of control on the debte generated (thhing that france can't do anymore because the EU(on german impulse) forbids it) 2-the production cost per MW/h in france is around 50$ but there again since we are in a spot market where EDF has to give 30% of his production to falce company fo the sake of free trade market where the nucleare power is not alowed to be sold at a real price but a price that are sufocating the french pupiles (wel french are going on strik again). and for the Small Modular Reactor: basicali you take somthing that is dangerous and misenderstood by most. you put it in the hand of private enterprise that are known to cut corner for profite. and the since the S in SMR is for SMAL you multiply it by 9000X. what could possibly go wrong.

I want to make one slight criticism, as a therapist who treats college students. Actually resting and taking time to recover and avoid burnout isn't wasting time. So the correction I'll give is, identify hobbies that leave you feeling restored. If gaming does that for you, enjoy it guilt free. If you feel gross after, find a different hobby. Breaks are wasted if you're scrolling social media, but if you're engaging in restorative activities, then they are well used and rest is necessary. Part of good time management is setting limits on work time so you don't burn out. Set an end time for your work and respect it. Take a day off every week and protect it. Work hard of course, definitely build relationships with your professors, but also use those relationships to get extensions when you need it. Make sure that you are not sacrificing sleep because life is hard, it’s harder without sleep. other than that, a great video!

Afaik the Germany anti nuclear movement was most concerned about the nuclear waste and the safety of the plants. In the year 2022, when over 50% of France nuclear power had to shut down, Germany jumped on and closed the gap for France. Some of them had to be shut down because of lack of cooling. There was a huge discussion on the nuclear power as a replacement for gas in Germany. The runtime was prolonged. However one reason against a longer continuation has been the source of nuclear material to fuel the plants. The main supplier would been again Russia, which was used again as an anti nuclear Argument. I missed these details in your good summary. It will be interesting if the plan Germany has will work out.

Wind turbines don't last 60 years. And the composite parts can't be recycled either, so they still pose a problem, albeit less dangerous.

To be fair, I can understand why a nation that once fell victim to a dictatorship would be hesitant about keeping around something that could be hijacked to make weapons of mass destruction.

I live near 3 mile Island and was watching the TV news every day during that time, since that time I have spoken with some of the former workers. Human error such as post it type notes covering part of a screen used to monitor the station were a major contributing factor but almost no one mentions that.

11:39 This problem wasn't a result of decades of underinvestment but caused by entirely new technical issues, discovered thanks to new scanning technologies. French reactors have the world's strictest standards. This is incidentally why they were shut down: the importance of cracks is overstated as they were on redundant emergency systems.

15:21 You leave off with a message of how nuclear energy seems difficult to do right with these two cases, but why not compare another country that is actively building many nuclear reactors like South Korea?

My experience over the past few years, living in Germany: We want clean energy! Also Germany: But no nuclear, wind or solar anywhere close to where I live!

Also important to note that other countries have banned nuclear right after Chernobyl. Like Italy. It's not actually just a German thing

cutting out nuclear while trying to go green (especially for a major economy) is like cutting out one of your legs right before the marathon.

Scaring people out of nuclear power is a very smart way to keep selling them petroleum, natural gas, coal etc..

Because we love paying 5x for Energy

Something I never see mentioned: In Germany the storage of nuclear waste was also an enormous problem. One storage after the other was declared unsafe and the waste wandered across the country from one temporary location to the other.

Intresting video ! I actually worked at the EPR contruction in Flamanville. It's important to note that this reactor is a prototype one and we expect to use all the knowledge learned to make the EPR2 more cost effective while of course being as safe as possible. But being a prototype means often running over budget and time, and that applies not only for nuclear reactors... Look at how much money SpaceX put into the Falcon 9 before it properly worked... Also a sister reactor (also a gen 1 EPR prototype) recently started in Finland at Olkiluoto. I sincerly hope we can put the nuclear industry back on rail in France. Coupled with renewable energy, it makes for a stronger energy grid by being more diverse and less prone to single point failing or common factor failing...

I wonder why nuclear waste is not mentioned, although it is one of the topics that seems to dominate the discussion in Germany, when it comes to nuclear power and is also often brought up as an argument against labeling nuclear power as "green". Other than that, I found this Video very informative, thank you.

I personally believe in Thoriumreactors, it is a concept that the UK already practiced with and the Netherlands is going to build a couple reactors that use this.

France being an importer of electricity in 2022 is a historical first. Especially ironic as it happens at a time when French industry is minimal having been methodically destroyed over the past 40 years. The 2022 situation should have been inconceivable as the electricity issue had been solved brilliantly decades ago when France still had builders. The only causes of that sad state of affairs have to do with selling out to foreign or corporate interests, incompetence, ideological blindness and overall treason of the national interest on the part of the current French elites.

I don't think the age thing is as dire as it's made out to be in this video. Maybe beef up some maintenance and checkup practices, but a lot of western reactor designs (and hell, even RBMK reactors with modern mods) have far outlasted their initial design parameters pretty successfully. They should NOT be shut down until at least the equivalent amount of power is being output from new reactors.

The problem with “leveledized” energy graphs is that they generally fail to include all of the central incentives given to create such low costs, in reality they are much higher than your led to believe through most graphs.

The question is, are these small reactors finished in design fast enough? Before they are built and ready to produce energy in the real world, the whole world is by 100% renewal energy.

I find it interesting that Germany is so pessimistic about nuclear plants, if you were to make a list of countries most able to run them safely you'd probably put Germany at the top, they're kind of associated with industrial excellence. It's a topic for a different video but... are any of these countries anywhere near ready for the ban on petrol cars? Maybe they're expecting fusion power in 10 years...

This is not a joke Some inefficiencies are built into the system - such as a preference for paperwork over digital submissions. Earlier this year, EnBW Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG spent more than €10,000 ($10,536) to print 36,000 pages for an application to erect three wind turbines in its home state. The binders stretched the length of a conference-room table when placed side-by-side.

To put my two cent in: DeGaulle was forcing the development of nuclear power plants in French basically not to getting cheap energy (we are talking about pre-oil crisis and Algeria still being part of French here), but basically to get fuel for the nuclear-deterrence of French, so price had never been the problem at the first place. Secondly, Germany got rid consequently of its NPP, because its actively driving out base-load supply out of the equation. They won't be able utilize the cheap price of production, when it is still subsidizing all "base-load" powerplants. Why it has currently the highest electricity you ask?, well, gas turbine still needed (gas is expensive), updating the grid ("Nordlink", "Suedlink"...), ramping up the storage (e.g. pumped storage power plant, battery...) , "subsidizing" turning-off productions (wind, solar but also the coal powerplants) and evtl. shareholders dividends? (e.g. Vattenfall, Tennet,... ). So I guess it still has to manage the high energy price for a period of time. Last thing about Fukushima: I still remember when the japanese are considering to evacuate Tokyo (32mio) should the wind had been blowing to Tokyo Bay area.

His face was never what I imagined! He looked better than I imagined!