From IEEE Spectrum, February 11:
France re-ups aggressive fission policy; Poland and Romania expand theirs; EU frameworks will treat some nukes as sustainable
In the depths of the 1970s oil crisis, French prime minister Pierre Messmer saw an opportunity to transform his country’s energy supply. His plan’s legacy is the dozens of cooling towers rising from the French landscape, marking the nuclear power stations that produce over two-thirds of France’s electricity, by far the highest proportion of any country on Earth.
Yet in a world where Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi smolder in recent memories, France’s cooling towers might seem like hopeless relics. Philippsburg, an old fortress town in Germany just 40 kilometers from the French border, once hosted a nuclear power plant with two towers just like them. A demolition crew brought both down on an overcast day in early 2020. The event was abrupt and unceremonious, its time kept secret to prevent crowds from gathering amidst the first wave of COVID-19.
Following somewhat in Messmer's footsteps, French president Emmanuel Macron announced a plan earlier this month to build at least six new reactors to help the country decarbonize by 2050.
At first glance, there’s little life to be found in the nuclear sectors of France’s neighbors. Germany’s coalition government is today forging ahead with a publicly popular plan to shutter the country’s remaining nuclear reactors by the end of 2022. The current Belgian government plans to shut down its remaining reactors by 2025. Switzerland is doing the same, albeit with a hazy timetable. Spain plans to start phasing out in 2027. Italy hasn’t hosted nuclear power at all since 1990....
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