France to cut oil use by 2020 with new reactor

[phantom power]

Apparently, this 4th generation reactor is pebble-bed.

PARIS (Reuters) -
President Jacques Chirac announced plans on Thursday to cut oil consumption in France, including the launch of the latest nuclear reactor prototype so that French trains will not use a drop of oil in 20 years' time.

State-owned nuclear operator Electricite de France has already launched plans to start up a new 1,600 megawatt (MW) European pressurized water reactor (EPR) in 2012, the so-called third generation reactor.

But no new large power plants have been built since 1993 and France still needs to build more new power stations to meet growing demand and to compensate for aging units, according to a study by the French grid RTE.

The more sophisticated and supposedly safer fourth generation reactors, that have a pebble-bed reactor, where graphite pebbles are filled with particles of uranium dioxide fuel, are still being developed.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060105/sc_nm/energy_france_nuclear_dc

[Coastie for Truth]

1. Post Sago Mine (Dad grew up in a Consol Company Town

and was a UMWA Lawyer) -- I say "Go Nuke Now."

(Yes- I am an Alumnus of Westinghouse Nuclear).

[Massacure]

2. Funny how they call the EPR THE third generation reactor.

In reality it is A third generation reactor. A pebble bed is A fourth generation reactor, not THE fourth generation reactor.

[Oerdin]

3. France and Japan

Seem to be the only counries taking global warming seriously. They're replacing as much of their energy as possible with nongreen house gas creating sources. :b:

Germany and Russia cheated on their Kyoto targets by setting the starting date at 1990 which was before the end of the cold war and before the closing of ancient highly polluting communist era factories. Those factories had been closed years and year before they started negotiating Kyoto so really they've done nothing but look good on paper because of accounting games. The UK is set to badly miss it's targets as is Canada.

The only ones which even have a chance to make their targets are the two making big pushes into nuclear power.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. It wasn't Gemany and Russia who chose 1990

everyone agreed 1990 was the baseline, and then individual targets were agreed on for each country. And the UK is more likely to meet its target than France - http://www.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/05/1519&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en - though that's because of a switch from coal-generated electricity to gas generation.

[NNadir]

5. While the French success with nuclear energy is a world standard to which

all other nations should aspire. I am disappointed, however, to see pebble bed technology being discussed there.

This reactor is decent, I suppose for short term once through cycles, but it is definitely not, by a long stretch, the best Gen IV reactor.

The best Gen IV reactors to my mind is the superb molten salt reactor - a reactor that is very cheap since there is no need to fabricate fuel and because one can maximize the U-233/U-234 ratio - and the lead (or lead/bismuth eutectic) cooled fast breeder.

The Pebble Bed reactors are proposed to address issues that don't really exist, to provide a "safe" nuclear technology, and provide for the "safe storage" of so called "nuclear waste." Generation II technology however is already safe, Gen III even safer. So called "nuclear waste" is already safely stored - no one has been injured by it. Thus the only thing to recommend the PBR reactor is that it is cheap to build and that it operates at high temperatures.

However Molten Salt Reactors are also cheap to build and they also operate at high temperatures. The big difference is that the MSR's are suited for fuel recycling and the PBR's are not. Moreover MSR's can be operated as thermal breeders. In fact the first MSR ever built operated as a breeder - back in the 1960's.

Uranium and thorium are very cheap today but it will not always be so. Increasingly as the centuries pass (in the case where humanity survives global climate change - which extremely unlikely in the absence of nuclear energy) humanity will demand more efficient use of nuclear fuels. This demand will require recycled fuel. Thus, since better options already exist, I would propose putting more effort into the MSR than into the PBR. The PBR is a marketing tool. It's not a great reactor. I note that PBR technology depends on access to helium. Helium will in the near future become a very expensive resource, since almost all of it is obtained from natural gas wells, and recovery from the atmosphere is very problematic and expensive. (Helium, once in the atmosphere, slowly boils off into space - a significant portion of the Maxwell-Boltzmann speed distribution for helium exceeds earth's escape velocity.)

I am surprised to learn that there are any trains in France that still use oil for fuel. I can't recall ever seeing a diesel there in my uncountable visits to the country - though I will confess to not hanging out in rail yards. They have the best electricity in the world. The TGV is fueled my nuclear power, and the TGV is a wonderful technology - far superior to aviation in convenience and environmental impact. The country is relatively small and compact, and it is economic to ship electricity from anywhere within its borders to anywhere else within its borders.