[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by JManc

i wasn't aware of the french having issues with their nuclear plants. Renewable energy is a great and all but it could never fully support a country the size of France the way nuclear power can. In the near future perhaps but we aren't there yet.

There are a couple of new types of nuclear power plants that are safer, cleaner and we really need if the dogmatists will let it happen.

One is the molten salt reactor:

Molten Salt Reactors
By Nick Touran, Ph.D.

Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) are nuclear reactors that use a fluid fuel in the form of very hot fluoride or chloride salt instead of the solid fuel used in most reactors. Since the fuel salt is liquid, it can be both the fuel (producing the heat) and the coolant (transporting the heat to the power plant). There are many different types of MSRs, but the most talked about one is definitely the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR). This MSR has Thorium and Uranium dissolved in a fluoride salt and can get planet-scale amounts of energy out of our natural resources of Thorium minerals, much like a fast breeder can get large amounts of energy out of our Uranium minerals. There are also fast breeder fluoride MSRs that don’t use Th at all. And there are chloride salt based fast MSRs that are usually studied as nuclear waste-burners due to their extraordinary amount of very fast neutrons.

https://whatisnuclear.com/msr.html

Another are the small modular plants:

This new technology could save the troubled nuclear power industry
Small nuclear reactors, funded by investors like Bill Gates, are emerging in the US as cheaper, safer alternatives to traditional nuclear power plant designs
Debbie Carlson
Sun 16 Oct 2016 09.30 EDT Last modified on Wed 14 Feb 2018 12.56 EST

Unlike other nuclear reactors that usually produce about 1,000 megawatts of carbon-free electricity, the small modular reactors, like the ones Utah is planning, are designed to be a fraction of the size at 50 to 300 megawatts. Rather than using electrically operated pumps and motors to circulate coolant and keep the core of the nuclear reactor at a low temperature, as happens in traditional plants, small reactors use no pumps and motors and instead rely on passive means such as gravity and conduction ­­to cool the reactors

The compact size and other new improvements, including the ability to assemble all the components in a factory rather than on a project site, in theory make the small modular reactors much cheaper to build than traditional nuclear power plants that cost about $10bn and take a decade to secure permits and build . . . .

. . . the small reactor design eases the challenge of using nuclear power to complement the group’s intermittent renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar. Current nuclear plants are designed to produce electricity without interruption; adjusting the levels of energy output quickly in response to any sudden increase or drop of renewable energy generation is difficult to do. Small reactors can operate independently, allowing a plant to vary its output more dynamically, McGough said . . . .

https://www.theguardian.com/sustaina...ant-technology

Both types mentioned have the huge advantage that if they lose electrical power, they don't melt down Fukushima-style. The molten salt plants just start cooling down under such circumstances and the modular plants might even continue to operate.