Quote:
Nuclear Power in France
(May 2008)
* France derives over 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy. This is due to a long-standing policy based on energy security.
* France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation, and gains over EUR 3 billion per year from this.
* France has been very active in developing nuclear technology. Reactors and fuel products and services are a major export.
France has 59 nuclear reactors operated by Electricité de France (EdF) with total capacity of over 63 GWe, supplying over 430 billion kWh per year of electricity, 78% of the total generated there. In 2005 French electricity generation was 549 billion kWh net and consumption 482 billion kWh - 7700 kWh per person. Over the last decade France has exported 60-70 billion kWh net each year and EdF expects exports to continue at 65-70 TWh/yr.
The present situation is due to the French government deciding in 1974, just after the first oil shock, to expand rapidly the country's nuclear power capacity. This decision was taken in the context of France having substantial heavy engineering expertise but few indigenous energy resources. Nuclear energy, with the fuel cost being a relatively small part of the overall cost, made good sense in minimising imports and achieving greater energy security.
As a result of the 1974 decision, France now claims a substantial level of energy independence and almost the lowest cost electricity in Europe. It also has an extremely low level of CO2 emissions per capita from electricity generation, since over 90% of its electricity is nuclear or hydro.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf40.html
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Too bad Carter decided to go with Coal instead. Funny, I don't see the French glowing in the dark, in fact they rank 12 in cancer rates per capita behind a lot of non nuclear power countries.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/he...th-from-cancer
Too bad there is a bill in the House Energy committee just sitting there since Jan 2007 that would establish nationwide standards and access to "on grid" solar for home and businesses. What large retail outlet wouldn't jump at the chance to make $.8 a kWh while the sun was shining, IF it was cost effective and home owners too. Schools, government buildings all adding power to the grid during the day along with wind, then transitioning to the idling nuclear plants at night. The money spent on CO2 research would be far better spent on the ideas I specified above, the drop in CO2 would just follow naturally. The beard scratching eggheads have more of a vested interest in saying they don't know for sure because should the day come where they come up with definitive answers, no more funding. A total waste after 10 years. If you took all the billions of research dollars spent, backed up 10 years and spent it on solar, wind and nuclear, we'd be close to energy independence with a low CO2 output too..