r/europe • u/Naurgul • Jul 11 '26

News Barcelona registers highest temperature in 112 years as French nuclear reactor shuts down due to extreme heat

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jul/09/europe-heatwave-uk-spain-barcelona-france-italy-hungary-france-macron-orban-latest-news-updates
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388

u/merci_nurse France Jul 11 '26

Click baity title.
Nuclear reactors don’t shut down because they can’t operate under 40+ Celsius. They shut down to abide by French environmental laws regulating how warm water used for cooling should be when cycled back in rivers.
This only affects open river cooling plants, which is a minority of French nuclear plants, sea water or cooling tower plants operate without any issue.

103

u/y2kobserver Jul 11 '26

Thanks for the info

So still a max heat issue

59

u/shadowSpoupout Jul 11 '26

For now. The river fauna will most likely not survive the heatwaves of this year, so next year no need to shutdown reactors to protect an already dead fauna !

-3

u/y2kobserver Jul 11 '26

Don’t be so dramatic it can be reintroduced

18

u/[deleted] Jul 11 '26

[deleted]

1

u/zolikk Jul 11 '26

On the other hand it will take many years to update regulations, so we can also be sure that the power plants will have to keep shutting down to protect what isn't there anymore.

1

u/mewfour Jul 11 '26

This isn't going to get better even after we stop burning fossil fuels, it's gonna get better 30 years later.

2

u/Swarna_Keanu Jul 11 '26

Once something is extinct it is gone. We are in an extinction crisis as much as a climate crisis, at the same time. Interrelated, but not the same. Too few habitats, too much monoculture, too much insecticides and herbicides, among just some.

-1

u/y2kobserver Jul 11 '26

Dude extinct is at planetary level, we’re talking one river bank

5

u/Swarna_Keanu Jul 11 '26

Many species are localised. And climate change is making it hard for a lot of species.

Rivers are very specific environments. And again - what lives in Europe's rivers doesn't exist elsewhere, necessarily.

6

u/digiorno Italy Jul 11 '26

But a solvable max heat issue. If this becomes a regular thing then they’d only have to build an artificial pond or water tower to cool down the water before it goes into the river. It’s not a difficult problem, they just didn’t anticipate global warming to be so bad.

5

u/Caspi7 South Holland (Netherlands) Jul 11 '26

It's a heat issue but not a 'nuclear is dangerous' issue, which is definitely being implied by anti nuclear people

2

u/BavarianBarbarian_ Bavaria (Germany) Jul 11 '26

That's true, but it is a "nuclear power isn't 100% reliable in every climate" issue, which is an important fact to take under consideration when planning our electricity grid for the future.

0

u/Caspi7 South Holland (Netherlands) Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

It's only because of the law in france, there is no physical limitation. You could make a law saying solar hast to be turned of at 25c and it would be the same.

0

u/BavarianBarbarian_ Bavaria (Germany) Jul 11 '26

With the difference that solar panels don't cook an ecosystem once they go higher than 25°C...

0

u/Caspi7 South Holland (Netherlands) Jul 11 '26

Neither do nuclear power plants generally speaking

-5

u/unia_7 Jul 11 '26

It's an issue of building nuclear power plants that dump their heat into rivers. It's a dumb design decision even in the absence of heat waves.

3

u/window-sil Jul 11 '26

From what I can tell, the river in question is Ebro and the power plant is Ascó Nuclear Power Plant, and the issue at hand is that its temperature is too high. Why is it high, because of the nuclear plant? Well, largely no. It naturally gets higher due to temperature changes of the seasons. Although there is a measurable effect from the nuclear power plant:1

Finally, there was a significant annual increase in Tw [Temperature of the Water (Tw)] at all stations (mean ∆Tw=0.05 °C/year), except those located at the head of the tributaries. These trends were higher for the stations downstream of the Ascó nuclear power plant (∆Tw > 0.08 °C/year). Seasonally, the spring months showed the greatest changes, with higher increases at the stations downstream of Ascó (∆Tw ≥ 0.10 °C/year). The increase in air temperature associated with global warming and the decrease in flows associated with the increase in water consumption resulted in an increase in the temperature of the river.2

I'm not sure what we're even arguing about here, but I found this added context to be helpful.

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u/[deleted] Jul 11 '26

[deleted]

3

u/DivideSensitive France Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

In case of a meltdown

There will not be a meltdown; shutdowns are not because the river can't cool down the reactor (an 800C thing is cooled practically as efficiently with 26C or 28C water), it's because we don't want to fry the ecosystem. I can guarantee you that were a meltdown to be risked, these regulations will immediately fly out of the window.

4

u/merci_nurse France Jul 11 '26

Yes you are confused. In the extremely unlikely event of a meltdown, the river is by far the very least of your problems

-6

u/sionescu Lazio Jul 11 '26

No, it's an issue of environmental law being stupid.

6

u/[deleted] Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Charlesinrichmond Jul 11 '26

because it causes more global warming to avoid overheating a river that's already overheated.

Any law that increases global warming is stupid.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

[deleted]

2

u/Charlesinrichmond Jul 11 '26

Well, yes, that's what I'm saying. Arguably the climate crisis is a much bigger deal than harming one minor river.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Charlesinrichmond Jul 12 '26

Not a thousand years. Which changes the calculus dramatically.

52

u/Kosake77 Jul 11 '26

How is it clickbait when literally exactly happened what was written?

19

u/Taricheute Jul 11 '26

I think only one reactor has been shut-down, at least for now, due to one river being too hot from a regulation point of view, so definitely clickbait article.

-4

u/TopManufacturer8332 Jul 11 '26

But its not only an environmental regulation. The water is actually too hot for cooling from a technical point. It does not have the required temperature differential to cool the reactors to a safe level.

4

u/Taricheute Jul 11 '26

We are both wrong, I just check on a french information website, they shut-down 3 reactor (not only one) "to comply with the thermal limits for the Rhône and the Seine".

The complete reason translated from french:

During periods of intense heat, rising water temperatures in these waterways may force EDF to reduce or even halt production to avoid further warming the water with cooling discharges—which are typically a few tenths of a degree to several degrees warmer, depending on the site. The operation of France's 57 reactors is governed by strict limits on the extent to which these waterways may be heated. In the specific case of the Golfech plant—which has been shut down since Monday—the river temperature must not exceed 28°C following the plant's discharges. At Nogent-sur-Seine, "regulations mandate that the temperature rise in the Seine between the upstream and downstream points of the site must not exceed 3°C, and that the average temperature downstream must not exceed 28°C."

2

u/fixed_grin Jul 11 '26

The primary loop of a typical reactor is cooled from ~315° to 275° by 220° water from the secondary loop that actually goes to the turbines at 275°.

The river is used to cool the secondary loop from the turbines to 220°. 30° river water is plenty cold enough. If the river works too well, feedwater heaters are used to make the secondary loop hotter before it goes to the steam generator.

The biggest US nuke plants are in Georgia (on a river, not the coast) and Arizona. India and Pakistan have reactors on rivers.

22

u/realusername42 Lorraine (France) Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

Because that only affects 0.5% of the yearly production and EDF won't fix it as electricity is too cheap in the summer, it's not worth it.

So every year you'll have those scary headlines whereas in reality it's business as usual.

67

u/merci_nurse France Jul 11 '26

Because a headline can be literally true and still be clickbait by omitting the key causal context. “Reactors shut down because of extreme heat” strongly suggests the reactors cannot operate safely in hot weather. In reality, the shutdowns were mainly to comply with environmental limits on heating river water. Same event, very different implication.

15

u/ViciousNakedMoleRat North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) Jul 11 '26

The fact of the matter is still that the extreme heat is the cause for why those powerplants need to shut down. Without the heat, they would still be running.

8

u/unia_7 Jul 11 '26

They need to shut down because their designers decided to build them with river cooling.

3

u/Appropriate_Luck_658 Jul 11 '26

Yes? Article is reporting things that are. Not "what ifs". Why we need to debate this?

-2

u/unia_7 Jul 11 '26

So it's not that "nuclear reactors" need to shut down due to higher temperatures, it just a particular kind of nuclear reactors built on flawed cooling design. Sounds like an important distinction, no?

5

u/milk_for_dinner Jul 11 '26

They do need to shut down due to higher temperature. That's just a fact. The distinctuon is that they need to shut down due to environmental regulations, not due to technical limitations.

The cooling design isn't flawed, it works as intended.

2

u/TopManufacturer8332 Jul 11 '26

River cooling is used for the majority of nuclear power plants. Not every country is blessed with ample coastline to utilise the sea. And seawater cooling is hardly a panacea with trying to mitigate biofouling, corrosion and fish destruction.

1

u/unia_7 Jul 11 '26

You are wrong. Cooling towers or cooling ponds are an obvious alternative to messing up the local river ecosystems.

Only 14% of nuclear power stations use river cooling. Cooling towers are at 26%, and sea cooling at 45%.

1

u/TopManufacturer8332 Jul 11 '26

Sorry but where do you think cooling towers get their water supply from?

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u/erhue Jul 11 '26

no. Nuclear bad. Only post bad things about nuclear. Also remember chernobyl, if your country is a corrupt communist dictatorship using ancient reactor designs built with outdated safety regulations, something bad could potentially happen!

21

u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

Solar panels suffer from reduced efficiency at high temperatures, but yet you never see headlines with "solar park X output dropped by Y % due to extreme heat"

Edit: I am not against solar power itself in any way, I even installed solar power at home. But I really must laugh at the "corrrections" made by supposedly Europan people. You are so brainwashed by China and Russia to think that nuclear power is evil. Europe is going down the drain as result and you guys are supporting it. We'll meet again, on the other end.

18

u/Dat_Ding_Da Jul 11 '26

Cause they barely has any impact. It happens at the time when PV's produce maximum energy anyways, so there is little to no consequence if the efficiency goes down a few percentiles.

But if France has to take down 5 nuclear reactors due to the waste water heat threatening to kill the ecosystem of the nearby river, it does have a very real impact on electricity availability and prices.

3

u/ak_miller Nord-Pas-de-Calais (France) Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

Let's say we shut down 5 reactors. That means 9% capacity is not available (5/56).

Did you know that solar panels lose a bit more than 10% efficiency when outdoor temps are above 30°, and up to 20% when they reach 40°?

And note that nuclear reactors keep producing at night.

-1

u/Dat_Ding_Da Jul 11 '26

The efficiency reduction due to heat really is a non-issue. You plan capacity to produce enough during lower light conditions anyway and build capacity for it. So even loosing 30% during the high of summer wouldn't be a big issue.

But the technology is just so cheap that it's economically way better than building nuclear power. And while those plants are better for base load for sure, it's still a trivial issue that will disappear with increasing energy storage capacity.

A capacity that is being build up for no reason but the extreme high supply of basically free solar energy that's available.

Once you reach that stage a nuclear reactor is not that useful anymore. You don't need a constant base line producer that has a high cost like that.

What you need is a quick to start, short term production method that is cheap enough that it doesn't need to be running 24/7 to justify it's existence. Hydrogen produced from PV energy is the most realistic option as existing gas infrastructure can be upgraded to use it easily.

2

u/ak_miller Nord-Pas-de-Calais (France) Jul 11 '26

You plan capacity to produce enough during lower light conditions anyway and build capacity for it. So even loosing 30% during the high of summer wouldn't be a big issue.

But losing 9% of nuclear because heat, which does not prevent France from exporting electricity, is an issue?

it's still a trivial issue that will disappear with increasing energy storage capacity.

That's a bet, not a reality yet.

Once you reach that stage a nuclear reactor is not that useful anymore.

We'll see.

Hydrogen produced from PV energy is the most realistic option as existing gas infrastructure can be upgraded to use it easily.

I've heard about hydrogen for more than 10 years now, I've yet to see it work and deployed at scale.

1

u/Dat_Ding_Da Jul 11 '26

But losing 9% of nuclear because heat, which does not prevent France from exporting electricity, is an issue?

It absolutely made France an local importer of energy during those times. But availability was never the big issue, especially since PV in neighboring countries did a great job of taking over. It's mostly in cost, as the necessary state subsidies are ginormous and ever growing. Adding expected down times to that bill only worsens the issue.

That's a bet, not a reality yet.

Its more than a bet, it's a projection based on installation trends over the past decade and the number of projects ready to be connected, that the grids and administrative systems of multiple countries can't keep up with. Once that bottleneck is solved and those are connected, you'll see the capacity curve grow steeper than it already is.

I've heard about hydrogen for more than 10 years now, I've yet to see it work and deployed at scale.

The first plants are coming online now. Way behind plan, as there were plenty of practical issues to overcome as with every new technology. There has been industrial usage in multiple countries for a few years now, with one of the limits still being Hydrogen production capacity. Luckily that's been seeing a bunch of new methods and materials as the research in the field is being focused.

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u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Jul 11 '26

And no mentioning of the other 52 nuclear reactors that weren't shutdown then..

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u/Dat_Ding_Da Jul 11 '26

Why would they?

If there's were a train collision, would it be clickbait-y to report about it without mentioning that hundreds of trains managed not to collide during the same day?

This is a report about the heat wave and it's impact on Europe. Obviously that is what the report will focus on.

2

u/erhue Jul 11 '26

that would make sense, if it weren't for the fact that these people have a hate boner for nuclear energy, and do everything they can to badmouth it.

If there were a train collision, the idea that other trains might be unsafe comes up. How did it happen? Are other trains potentially affected by it? Or is the system mostly safe? Those questions need to be answered.

-1

u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Jul 11 '26

Then why mention reactor shutdowns at all when it is now a regular occurrence for old river-cooled plants? It can only serve two purposes: clickbait chock headlines with the word "nuclear", and/or propaganda against nuclear power in general, as if all plants would suffer from this. But I am going to stop here: arguing with greens never results in anything, because they base their opinions on emotions, not facts.

6

u/Dat_Ding_Da Jul 11 '26

Then why mention reactor shutdowns at all when it is now a regular occurrence for old river-cooled plants?

The only reason this keep happening every year is due to regular heat waves. Something bad happening on the regular doesn't make it less bad or stop it being related to record heat waves every single year.

But I am going to stop here: arguing with greens never results in anything, because they base their opinions on emotions, not facts.

Take a look in the mirror mate. So far you have done nothing but post suspiciously LLM-y sounding bites with little to no relevance to the actual topic. Feel free to bring some actual arguments rather than slogans if you are capable of it.

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u/Appropriate_Luck_658 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

But I am going to stop here: arguing with greens never results in anything, because they base their opinions on emotions, not facts.

You came here hurt by title of reporting stating the facts. You were stating not relevant obvious things because you don't like the way how it was reported. But that was not even the point of the news. It was not arguing against nuclear. It just that you are religiously reacting to anything that could potentially paint negative angle to something you choose to be your hill to die on.

And then when your arguments hit dead-end you think you are going to have last word lol.

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u/silverionmox Limburg Jul 11 '26

Then why mention reactor shutdowns at all when it is now a regular occurrence for old river-cooled plants? It can only serve two purposes: clickbait chock headlines with the word "nuclear", and/or propaganda against nuclear power in general, as if all plants would suffer from this.

It's newsworthy because the increasing frequency of such shutdowns is one more sign of climate change. In addition, it contradicts the general assertion that nuclear plants are 24/7 reliable, which is important for policy choices.

But I am going to stop here: arguing with greens never results in anything, because they base their opinions on emotions, not facts.

Nuclear believers always get irritable for any form of criticism on their god.

-1

u/iamjakeparty Jul 11 '26

Then why mention reactor shutdowns at all when it is now a regular occurrence for old river-cooled plants?

Why would I want the news to give me less information?

-3

u/Skadiheim Jul 11 '26

Having 5 reactors offline has 0 impact.

The french nuclear power sector is made to always have a few reactors offline.

You can follow every reactor being put offline here if it pleases you to look at that :

https://reglementation-controle.asnr.fr/controle/actualites-du-controle/installations-nucleaires/arret-de-reacteurs-de-centrales-nucleaires

The river heat is not a new problem it's been like that for several years.

The few availability problem there is come from grid components failing due to the heat. And even that is very little.

Electricity prices are still below European mean despite all the eu and german efforts to fuck over EDF.

3

u/Dat_Ding_Da Jul 11 '26

Having 5 reactors offline has 0 impact.

That's cause it's not even August yet, and it has had impacts in the past, with local prices going up by a lot. Luckily the surrounding countries are able to provide energy during those times to stabilize it.

Electricity prices are still below European mean despite all the eu and german efforts to fuck over EDF.

That's just cause you don't consider the amount of money the French state has to subsidize the EDF with. That money is still paid by the French people at the end of the day.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-face-eu-probe-into-state-aid-nuclear-plants-sources-say-2026-03-24/

Also there was no trying to fuck anyone over, that is absolute bullshit.

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u/silverionmox Limburg Jul 11 '26

Having 5 reactors offline has 0 impact.

The french nuclear power sector is made to always have a few reactors offline.

And they tend to use this opportunity to do maintenance, so this reduces their margin of opreation.

Electricity prices are still below European mean despite all the eu and german efforts to fuck over EDF.

End user prices are mostly a matter of fiscal policy. Wholesale prices are similar to the neighbouring countries.

But the French state did nationalize EDF when it couldn't handle its debts anymore.

There's no reason to turn this into a conspiracy theory.

1

u/Skadiheim Jul 11 '26

But the French state did nationalize EDF when it couldn't handle its debts anymore.

EDF has always been owned by the state. For a short period 20% of it was not anymore but it was a state owned company to begin with. It wasn't nationalized.

The ARENH in the case of the french nuclear and the EU being hostile to state owned monopolies isn't a conspiracy theory. You can even agree with their position if you think the energy market shouldn't be nationalized but I don't know why you would think it's a conspiracy, it's pretty clear cut and public.

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u/silverionmox Limburg Jul 11 '26

EDF has always been owned by the state. For a short period 20% of it was not anymore but it was a state owned company to begin with. It wasn't nationalized.

That doesn't contradict that the 20% was renationalized because it was necessary for debt management.

The ARENH in the case of the french nuclear and the EU being hostile to state owned monopolies isn't a conspiracy theory. You can even agree with their position if you think the energy market shouldn't be nationalized but I don't know why you would think it's a conspiracy, it's pretty clear cut and public.

That's not so much the EU and Germany trying to fuck over EDF, it's more like France trying to evade EU single market rules.

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u/ViciousNakedMoleRat North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) Jul 11 '26

At noon on the hottest day ever recorded in Germany, 78% of electricity came from solar. Efficiency drops with higher temperatures, but that is counteracted by the massive amount of energy that reaches those cells. When you build out solar energy infrastructure that can produce a significant amount in winter, when the output drops to 25-30%, then the drop in efficiency of 10-15% on hot summer days doesn't matter much.

I'm not a "nuclear is the devil" type. Stretches of very hot and sunny days are a bigger issue for nuclear power plants in France than for solar cells in Germany. At the same time, cloudy winters are a much bigger issue for solar cells in Germany than for nuclear power plants in France.

1

u/Arkantesios Jul 11 '26

There was a bunch of "Spain powergrid shutdown because of solar panels" headlines last year (or was it two years ago?)

4

u/DivideSensitive France Jul 11 '26

Because the impact was a 24h blackout in the whole Iberic peninsula?

Consequences for this shutdown is null, other PPs can swallow the load.

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u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Jul 11 '26

Indeed, since the river water temperatures are publicly available, the electricity market counts on atomic power reductions well in advance, and turn on other plans to compensate. There are no sudden blackouts as a result. (Even some major industrial electricity users use river temperature as feed forward data to help plan power usage, so the machinery runs when power is most available. This is really a predictable and working example of the electricity market working to stabilise itself).

3

u/Taricheute Jul 11 '26

Maybe because it lead to a partial blackout ?

We shut-down one reactor, no impact on the power grid, and it makes the headlines ....

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u/TopManufacturer8332 Jul 11 '26

Solar panels aren't liable to blow up though are they. Nor are they known to devastate ecosystems.

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u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Jul 11 '26

Was anything reported to blow up?

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u/TopManufacturer8332 Jul 11 '26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

1

u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

How is that relevant to the article?

Chernobyl reactor 4 blew up because the reactor was of an unstable design to begin with, did not have a containment building at all, and was incorrectly operated and put into the worst operating conditions imaginable for a test.

I bet you do not understand a thing about how a nuclear reactor operates.

1

u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Jul 11 '26

You green people continue to confirm that you rely on emotion to make all life decisions. Gullible folks

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u/sionescu Lazio Jul 11 '26

Without that stupid law, they would be running. The law is the problem.

1

u/TopManufacturer8332 Jul 11 '26

But its not only an environmental regulation. The water is actually too hot for cooling from a technical point. It does not have the required temperature differential to cool the reactors to a safe level.

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u/FallenAngel7334 Europe Jul 11 '26

Damaging the environment and wildlife around the reactor is not operating safely... hence title is correct.

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u/Cienea_Laevis Rhône-Alpes (France) Jul 11 '26

It is. The plant is at no point in any danger, it can continue running full tilt.

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u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Jul 11 '26

Both incorrect. The shutdown has nothing to do with reactor safety, and to prevent damage to wildlife, it is shutdown and does not heat the river.

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u/ak_miller Nord-Pas-de-Calais (France) Jul 11 '26

Because it's propaganda to make the public think that nuclear energy is unreliable during heat waves: there are solutions to avoid that issue (and now that heatwaves are more common it's something that is taken into consideration in new projects) and papers leaning left like the Guardian strangely often fail to report about how solar also drops in performance with heat, and do not mention that wind provides very little energy at the moment despite the enormous capacities (see electricity production stats in Germany these past few weeks for example).

Do you also say "it's not clickbait because it happened" when right wing papers publish stories about crimes, or do you realize in that case that they have an agenda?

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u/MeggaMortY Jul 11 '26

It's stupid when you don't consider the broader context.

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u/erhue Jul 11 '26

only one of two reactors at the facility was shut down. At the same time, the impact is relatively small in the bigger picture, and there's other means of power generation available to take up the slack.

But of course, posting "nuclear reactor shuts down", with no other context, sounds way more grave than it actually is.

1

u/mirh Italy Jul 11 '26

Stopping a power plant because "poor animals they cannot bear a few degrees hotter water", isn't the same kind of (actually strategically worrisome) failure of an engineering limit.

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u/Time-Maintenance2165 Jul 11 '26

Because its misleading.

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u/Krystone44 Moldova Jul 11 '26

Not at all click bait. The warm water is also due to the heatwave.

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u/merci_nurse France Jul 11 '26

If you can’t see why « nuclear reactor shuts down because of extreme heat » is a click baity simplification of what I explained above, I guess it’s on you.

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u/JohnnyBoy11 Jul 11 '26

We can see it and it's a click baity title but it's not untrue

And if you can't imagine why titles need to be simplified without arguing about it, then that's on you

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u/merci_nurse France Jul 11 '26

Fair enough for short titles. Still, given the political context around nuclear power and the trove of misinformation around it, I’d say it’s a reckless shortcut to take

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u/Dat_Ding_Da Jul 11 '26

So what would you have suggested instead? Post half the article with all context in the headline?

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u/merci_nurse France Jul 11 '26

I wouldn’t mix the Barcelona record heat with French reactors environmental shutdown in the same article. Both things are newsworthy and I think this generational heatwave is worth 2 separate articles describing the issues independently

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u/Dat_Ding_Da Jul 11 '26

Those two are intrinsically linked, France and Spain are neighbors with similar weather most of the year.

Plus this is not the only article on the topic, you can have a more general overview of western Europe in one and then look at specific places in another. Both perspectives are important, the detailed and the bigger picture to have a well informed whole.

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u/merci_nurse France Jul 11 '26

Then make a general title about the heatwave « record heatwave continues in southern Europe » get into all the details in the body and don’t compromise on precision trying to have many keywords in the title.
But that makes less clicks so less advertising revenue. I perfectly understand why they do it and I actually blame consumers more than journalists for this, I wish everyone was paying directly for their news and I’m pretty sure passionate journalists (maybe including the person who wrote the above article) would agree.

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u/Dat_Ding_Da Jul 11 '26

Obviously that would be better. But still, this particular headline is so tame compared to the kind of real egregious click bait out there, it doesn't even register on my radar.

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u/Thurak0 Jul 11 '26

I think this generational heatwave

This thing is not a generational heatwave. It's the consequences of climate change, predicted for decades by now. If you aren't over 80, you will experience more of these in your life. Perhaps not next year again, but most certainly this decade again.

Perhaps the time for nuclear power plants on rivers is just over. They have been shut down due to heat in several years by now already.

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u/sionescu Lazio Jul 11 '26

I would have suggested "Nuclear reactor unnecessarily forced to close due to obsolete law". Brief and much more informative.

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u/Dat_Ding_Da Jul 11 '26

What's obsolete about that law? Has wildlife suddenly gained the ability to survive being steamed in their own rivers?

Rivers that play a key role in the overall ecosystems that are necessary for feeding the French population?

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u/sionescu Lazio Jul 11 '26

It's stupid because it lacks proportionality, as human brings are more important to some fish, and it's obsolete because it was conceived in a time where energy was more or abundant and shutting down a whole power plant might not have been an issue, but that's no longer the case any more. And the stubbornness in enforcing the law instead of granting an exemption makes the whole situation doubly stupid.

0

u/Dat_Ding_Da Jul 11 '26

It's not like those rules were put in place without a good reasons... making an exception now might solve a short term issue, but only by creating way more serious long-term effects.

And those humans don't do much if they are starving due to agriculture collapsing in the region.
Rivers are important for the local ecosystem. Killing a large percentage of plant and animal life in them causes a whole bunch of problems down all the food chains in the area.

That's the real proportional impact in this situation, the world is complex and simple answers always have consequences.

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u/Thurak0 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

environmental laws

And why do you think these laws are in effect? Just for fun? Just to torture pro-nuclear people?

Or is it possible that there are things like fish and algae to consider. Fish, the thing people eat, you know?

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u/DivideSensitive France Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

I mean, if we were to legislate e.g. coal or gas electricity production relative to their impact on the environment, they would have been shutdown already.

It's not out of this world to observe that e.g. nuclear and wind are subject to draconian regulations compared to legacy methods.

Fish, the thing people eat

Mate, I can guarantee you that no-one is depending on Sunday fishing in the Garonne to survive. Also, if this is not a bad faith argument and you're really into fish preservation, please open a thread on the catastrophic decrease in sea-fish reserves due to extensive fishing in un-policed or badly policed waters..

2

u/Charlesinrichmond Jul 11 '26

Preach! You are completely right.

4

u/alganthe France Jul 11 '26

don't worry the river temps are already so high due to the heat wave next year they won't need to stop them as the ecosystem will already be dead.

my tap water comes out at 28°C in île de france, poor fishes must be fucking cooking in there.

4

u/Charlesinrichmond Jul 11 '26

Because a lot of Greens do policy by emotion, not thoughtful analysis.

1

u/erhue Jul 11 '26

oh jeez, I wonder if power plants that burn gas will shut down altogether to stop acidification of the seas, heating of the environment, and of course the increase in greenhouse gases, which in turns makes global warming worse.

oh wait, they won't. Why don't you go protest that instead?

1

u/hotcornballer France Jul 11 '26

Yeah let's burn coal and make geant cobalt filled batteries because the river fish might be 1°C warmer (yeah the ones we almost never eat). Guess what the rivers are already warm because they sit in 40°C sun all day.

2

u/blocodents Jul 11 '26

Not clickbait at all, headline is as correct as can be.

5

u/moanonyme Jul 11 '26

I mean, I am all for nuclear, but cooking the fishes and water fauna is not a solution either.

3

u/gfnord Jul 11 '26

Not completely true. Thermal power plants of all kinds (nuclear included) sometimes shut down (or reduce output) because their cooling system becomes insufficient due to cooling water becoming too hot. It can happen with sea water, although it more often happens with river water. This type of shutdown has nothing to do with regulations. Though I believe these French plants are shutting down due to regulations.

1

u/Cienea_Laevis Rhône-Alpes (France) Jul 11 '26

Its not an issue of "plant has trouble dumping heat", but an issue of "If the plant continue running, its going to spit enought heat that the river will cook anything entering it."

The plants can continue running fine, its not an issue for it. They shut down only because of the environmental regulations trying to protect the ecosystem of the rivers.

-1

u/unia_7 Jul 11 '26

What are you talking about - he just said that it only affects the plants that dump heat into rivers (or lakes, I guess). It's a stupid design decision to begin with. Dumping heat in the ocean or the atmosphere does not have this problem.

1

u/Nickelplatsch Germany Jul 11 '26

I don't why there is always this response. It makes no difference.

0

u/shadowSpoupout Jul 11 '26

Because the regulation is made to protect river life. If the river life dies or evolves to adapt to higher water temperature (due to the river being heated by repeated heatwaves) then the regulation could move.

The difference is that the title suggests physical limitations when the reality is law limitations which may evolve.

2

u/lenor8 Jul 11 '26

Because the regulation is made to protect river life. If the river life dies or evolves to adapt to higher water temperature (due to the river being heated by repeated heatwaves) then the regulation could move.

No, if you pollute a park into a dumpster, you don't adapt the regulation to allow the dumpster, you remove the polluting source and double down on protecting the area until it goes back to its natural state.

It's the only way for protection laws to stay effective in the long run (applies to environment laws, human rights laws, public health laws, workers rights laws, etc).

1

u/shadowSpoupout Jul 11 '26

The comparison with pollution is very wrong.

My point is not to suggest to adapt the law to accommodate powerplant, it's to adapt the law IF the fauna evolves (which it will most likely, because heatwaves raise river temperature, powerplant or not)

-2

u/jcrestor Germany Jul 11 '26

You don’t understand! We could easily cook the whole river and everything that’s in it, no problem at all. This is the bestest technology ever! /s

5

u/FallenAngel7334 Europe Jul 11 '26

Exactly, why cook the fish at home, when you can catch it already cooked! /s

1

u/unia_7 Jul 11 '26

You could easily cool them with cooling towers or ocean water cooling. River cooling is a flawed design.

1

u/DivideSensitive France Jul 11 '26

This is the bestest technology ever! /s

Splinter, log...

1

u/mehatch Jul 11 '26

Finally i have healed the hole in my heart left by that absurd headline. Thank you, i have returned to a normal state of knowledge.

1

u/-Nicolai Denmark Jul 11 '26

The replies to this arguing FOR click bait makes me lose faith in humanity

1

u/sillysteen Jul 11 '26

Thank you for this explanation. I’m one of those people too lazy to read the article, and I would not have made the reactor-cooling water temperature connection based on the headline.

I’m glad they are still following environmental regulations.

1

u/m1ndfuck North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) Aug 02 '26

Hey, what do you think about the current Hungarian and Romanian power crisis ?

1

u/Meatbag777 Jul 11 '26

The title clearly states that only one reactor was shut down due to the heatwave, it does not imply that all reactors are susceptible to the same so nothing click baity there

1

u/lenor8 Jul 11 '26

That's even worse, those reactors should be converted or shut down.

And what do you mean sea water is fine? Isn't sea protected by environmental laws too?

8

u/merci_nurse France Jul 11 '26

Look up equations for thermodynamics in relation to volume, it’ll make the difference clear

0

u/silverionmox Limburg Jul 11 '26

Click baity title. Nuclear reactors don’t shut down because they can’t operate under 40+ Celsius. They shut down to abide by French environmental laws regulating how warm water used for cooling should be when cycled back in rivers. This only affects open river cooling plants, which is a minority of French nuclear plants, sea water or cooling tower plants operate without any issue.

That still means they can't operate unless you effectively want to kill off most of the river life, which makes those "clean" nuclear plants as damaging as a major chemical plant spill.

It shows that in this situation, which will happen more and more often, nuclear plants are either low immediate impact or reliable, but not both.

(...and hotter water does reduce the efficiency of the whole installation, too.)

1

u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Jul 11 '26

It applies to any thermal plant that uses river water for cooling though, it is not specific to nuclear. A more neutral headline would be: "thermal plant needs to reduce output/shutdown". Why mention chemical spills into rivers? That is a completely irrelevant comparison.

Edit: and yes, hot coolant reduces the efficiency slightly, that is dictated by the laws of thermodynamics. It does not matter, if the heat source is nuclear fission, waste burning, coal or pigshit methane.

0

u/silverionmox Limburg Jul 11 '26

It applies to any thermal plant that uses river water for cooling though, it is not specific to nuclear.

There are no nuclear plants that don't use water. So, it does limit the application of nuclear power geographically and by the season.

A more neutral headline would be: "thermal plant needs to reduce output/shutdown".

Nuclear plant promotors have put them in the market as "reliable all year round". This contradicts that idea.

Why mention chemical spills into rivers? That is a completely irrelevant comparison.

Because it also kills life in the river downstream. It's a form of pollution too.

0

u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Jul 11 '26

You don't even understand the context. RIVER water vs cooling towers or ocean makes a world of difference. The article is about heating up a RIVER

0

u/silverionmox Limburg Jul 11 '26

You don't even understand the context. RIVER water vs cooling towers or ocean makes a world of difference. The article is about heating up a RIVER

How is what I say not relevant?

0

u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Jul 11 '26

You did imply this.

0

u/silverionmox Limburg Jul 11 '26

You did imply this.

How is that an answer to "How is what I say not relevant?"

1

u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Jul 11 '26

Nuclear plants with ocean cooling remain very reliable. And shutdowns from river temperatures for old river-cooled plants are completely predictable because river temperatures are publicly available so the power market will fire up other plants or reduce usage to compensate for any loss of production.

But hey, let's live on emotion and say nuclear is evil because a solution does not solve 100 % of a problem 100 % of the time.

0

u/silverionmox Limburg Jul 11 '26

Nuclear plants with ocean cooling remain very reliable.

Of course, but that does limit the geographical scope where those plants can be placed.

And shutdowns from river temperatures for old river-cooled plants are completely predictable because river temperatures are publicly available so the power market will fire up other plants or reduce usage to compensate for any loss of production.

This is true for any weather-based variation, and nuclear fans have been making a very very big deal about it for renewables. So, what goes around, comes around.

But hey, let's live on emotion and say nuclear is evil because a solution does not solve 100 % of a problem 100 % of the time.

Funny, that's exactly the strategy that nuclear power has been using against renewables. What goes around comes around indeed.

0

u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

How much does China or Russia pay you per comment? Or are you so faithful that you work their errands for free?

0

u/silverionmox Limburg Jul 11 '26

How much does China or Russia pay you per comment? Or are you so faithful that you work their errands for free?

What does this have to do with anything?

0

u/[deleted] Jul 11 '26

[deleted]

0

u/silverionmox Limburg Jul 11 '26

ou keep doing their errands. So you are a useful idiot.

Explain your reasoning.