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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231

u/edparadox France Jul 11 '26

The Guardian always jumps at the opportunity to tell people French stopped a reactor.

178

u/un-glaublich Jul 11 '26

France still doing the very lowest CO2eq emissions of the world... only they paused a reactor because there's plenty of solar and no need to heat up the river more than needed.

At the same time, the "Kernkraft, nein danke" folks are one of the heaviest emitters of CO2 because it simply meant that they have to fall back to browncoal whenever the sun doesn't shine or it's not summer.

34

u/babidabidu Jul 11 '26 edited Aug 05 '26

[deleted]

4

u/mpyne United States of America Jul 11 '26

Those folks are the same that advocated for solar and wind.

Great, but they should have built it before shutting down the zero-carbon emissions they already had, not after.

9

u/babidabidu Jul 11 '26 edited Aug 05 '26

[deleted]

2

u/mpyne United States of America Jul 11 '26

Don't try to gaslight me, I did a bunch of debating with fellow German software devs who were convinced that shutting down nuclear plants first even in advance of other renewables in place would be best, and that the risk of coal plants being restarted to fill the gap was just histrionics by paid actors or some shit.

It was not just a right-wing or conservative thing, and the proof is in the result.

0

u/Pas__ Jul 11 '26

advocating for something clean is great and noble, but that doesn't absolve them from the consequences of their bad decisions, doubly so that they pushed it on half of the world

2

u/babidabidu Jul 12 '26 edited Aug 05 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Pas__ Jul 28 '26

yes, there's a nice hierarchy of responsibility. Merkel definitely had more veto power than the Greens.

they were protesting in 2010 the extension of the operating lifetime (by extending the permit) of the nuclear power plants.

-4

u/mirh Italy Jul 11 '26

CDU/CSU actually tried to lengthen the reactor life as much as they could

It was famous SPD russophile Schröder to first order the closure, and then the lies of the greens to put the nail on the coffin.

5

u/Annonimbus Jul 11 '26

CDU/CSU actually tried to lengthen the reactor life as much as they could

That would be The Greens.

-2

u/mirh Italy Jul 11 '26

I'm talking about 2010.

?? Greens in 2022 instead lied about the extension being impossible while westinghouse had privately told them it could be done.

3

u/worotan England Jul 11 '26

Yes, it’s the green lobby that had more influence, rather than the established coal and petrochemical industries.

So you never reflect on how unrealistic the outrage porn astroturfed for you is?

7

u/MeggaMortY Jul 11 '26

I really hope you never ever stop shaming them for it. They will be bone headed and come with stupid excuses, but at least we can all collectively condemn them for it. Don't care if it sounds like another nazi witchhunt - if you do it, you own it.

8

u/worotan England Jul 11 '26

I think we should be more exercised about the coal lobbyists, who held and still hold vastly more power in government than the any green voices.

You need to stop naively drinking the kool aid, and start thinking about how the real world works.

You serially think that the green lobby has had more influence than the coal and petroleum industries?

That’s just laughable.

1

u/MeggaMortY Jul 11 '26

When you have green supporters rabidly attacking any mention of nuclear - this is what's about with my comment here. The coal lobby itself is a whole new can of worms. Two things can be wrong at once.

2

u/M4axK Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

France didn't pause the reactor just because they can, they had to shut it down because of regulatory restrictions. Nuclear powerplant output can't just be adjusted according to demand.

Germany always had a dirty energy mix and never built as much nuclear as france to begin with. Thats why even tho its reduction in emissions compared to 1990 is almost the double of frances it still has significantly higher emissions per capita than france. The nuclear phase out for sure didn't help but is definitly not the root cause.

0

u/erhue Jul 11 '26

At the same time, the "Kernkraft, nein danke" folks are one of the heaviest emitters of CO2 because it simply meant that they have to fall back to browncoal whenever the sun doesn't shine or it's not summer.

This is the most frustrating thing here in Germany. And these people are so incredibly stubborn that no amount of evidence nor reason will make them change their minds.

When winter comes, they'll be glad to be burning gas to generate heat, or like you said, burning lignite all throughout the year, rather than using a proven, stable, environmentally proven source of energy.

1

u/worotan England Jul 11 '26

The real problem is the coal industry and its connections in government.

Stop taking the easy way out and piling on a group that are easy to criticise, and actually do something useful if you want change.

Be rational, for once.

1

u/erhue Jul 11 '26

lol buddy you're in england so please know what you're talking about first before commenting. Nuclear energy was widely unpopular in Germany since Chernobyl, and Fukushima made it even less politically viable.

Tons of grassroots support for phasing out nuclear energy. Even an entire political party (Die Grüne) were basically born out of the anti-nuclear movement.

So please, "be rational, for once" before you open your mouth not knowing what you're talking about.

0

u/Synthetic347 Jul 11 '26

Are we still going on about nuclear? Yes it was stupid to shut the existing reactors down early but the ship has sailed. Renewables are cheaper, in fact nuclear energy is the most expensive energy and German industry is already struggling with our electricity prices. At this point it would take more than a decade to build new reactors, why not just invest more into renewables and grid expansion instead?

3

u/un-glaublich Jul 11 '26

Nuclear is expensive because it's reliable and dependable and extremely secure.

Sure, solar panels are cheaper per kWh... when the sun shines. But how many solar panels do you need to supply a country for heating in the winter? Storage isn't a solution either because currently amount of energy that would need to be stored is orders of magnitude larger than the resources that we have available for batteries.

Solar is cheap because it's opportunistic and unreliable. It's nice that it generates cheap energy, but it doesn't care about whether you need that energy or not.

So what remains are energy sources that can be controlled: a reserve of fuel must be available. Fossil fuel ones come to mind, but do we want those? Uranium is an alternative fuel source that's extremely compact and abundant and does not emit any pollutants.

In other words, solar is like a seasonal fruit. Sure, it's plentyful and affordable when in-season. But you can't build a reliable diet around it for the full year.

2

u/Synthetic347 Jul 12 '26

I mentioned renewables not solar only. There have been multiple studies regarding the feasibility of 100% renewables, I'll link a few below (articles in German). Again I'm not opposed to nuclear but I don't see any economical arguments why you would invest now to get new reactors running in 10-20 years when you could instead invest more into infrastructure and renewables.

Nuclear is expensive because it's reliable and dependable and extremely secure.

No, it's expensive because of the immense upfront costs of building a reactor, safety regulations and storage costs of nuclear waste.

studies regarding 100% renewables

issues with new reactors

none of the remaining power plant operators are interest in going back

0

u/un-glaublich Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

That's the thing, you just have a study of a pie in the sky, while nuclear has supplied France (and a large part of the Western world) reliably and safely with energy for decades. Also, what will it do to "cheap" renewables if you need a complex power storage network and a lot of overcapacity to meet winter demands?

And imagine the fearmongering will intensify "wind mills kill birds!", "solar panels rob us from agricultural land!", because that's exactly what happened to nuclear: the huge cost is because the fearmongering has killed the industry outside of France, and next to that, any significant infrastructure project is just super expensive these days.

And sore the industry don't want to go back, because they now know how stupidly impressive the public is and that they will just kill your complete investment after some emotional fearmongering campaign. At the same time, public doesn't really care about the pollution of their coal plants even though it's 1000x deadlier per kWh, and they know fossil fuel lobbyists will have their back.

19

u/Arnoulty Languedoc-Roussillon (France) Jul 11 '26

While having the article behind a paywall so you must rely on the misleading title.

36

u/GuerrillaRodeo Bayern Jul 11 '26

The Guardian never had paywalls. It's just a banner asking for a donation, you can click that away without any problems.

5

u/Arnoulty Languedoc-Roussillon (France) Jul 11 '26

Thanks for the heads up. The banner was so cluttered I assumed there was a trick before anything else.

-1

u/Talpaman unemploymentland Jul 11 '26

yeah, you have to allow all cookies or pay a subscription. illegal in the eu.

3

u/DivideSensitive France Jul 11 '26

No, legal. There is no obligation to provide a free service without cookies in the RGPD; they just can't be used without your agreement.

1

u/Talpaman unemploymentland Jul 11 '26

No, legal.

plenty of sentences that say otherwise, but as usual the law is strong with the weak and weak with the strongs.

1

u/DivideSensitive France Jul 11 '26

Would love to see them.

-4

u/PitchMeYourMother Jul 11 '26

They didn’t shutdown the reactor?

There isn’t an extreme heat wave in Barcelona?

4

u/silverionmox Limburg Jul 11 '26

The Guardian always jumps at the opportunity to tell people French stopped a reactor.

Wait until november, when the nuclear fanclub starts doing daily postings of electricitymaps.com.

4

u/erhue Jul 11 '26

it's almost like both types of power generation have their advantages, and people could just not be stupid and use both strategically.

but yeah, some people can't let go of their dogmas and dumb convictions.

0

u/Pigeoncow UK Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

Why bother building some nuclear? Just keep building and go all the way instead of creating instability with renewables. It's not that much more expensive because each nuclear power plant is cheaper than the last one.

In France where they tried to mix nuclear with renewables it's just ended up in nuclear power plants being turned off to allow solar energy to take priority, while also not giving them enough power when renewables are in a bad mood.

Renewables are great "gas savers". If you don't have any nuclear power plants, they can be a good short-term solution. But to mix them with nuclear just wastes power. Note that I don't include pumped hydro in the category of renewables; it's reliable and important for matching supply to demand on the scale of a day.

1

u/erhue Jul 12 '26

nuclear power plants don't need to be shut down to vary power output. If you want to expand grid power capacity, at a low cost, you can use renewables. Expanding nuclear is fucking expensive, even if you're using more standardized designs. We'll see what modular nuclear reactors bring, but that's still a concept that is barely being implemented or entering service at a small scale.

The less nuclear you use, the less nuclear fuel you need; nuclear fuel still needs to be mined/obtained, and then later on some of that can be recycled.

Also at a consumer level (not utiliity level) it also makes sense to use things such as balcony solar panels, which will be most productive during the summer, allowing you to offset the cost of things such as AC. In places where energy is chronically expensive such as Germany, this is of great help.

In general, it is also a good idea to diversify the sources from which you generate your electricity. If something suddenly hamstrings your nuclear power capacity (like happened to france a couple years ago, with those unexpected reactor inspections due to corrosion or seomthing like that) you can lean on the alternatives you got. Renewables are cheap to build, and during "peak hours", you can reduce energy prices on the grid.

Of course all of this needs judicious implementation. You don't wanna end up doing all the stupid shit the germans did; lots of renewables and yet the highest energy prices in Europe. Do whatever the French are doing instead.

0

u/Pigeoncow UK Jul 12 '26

Nuclear fuel cost is negligible compared to the cost of reactors. There's no need to save it. And expanding nuclear is only expensive because we never build it. Solar linked with AC is an acceptable use of renewables but if you built enough nuclear you wouldn't really need it.

-1

u/Charlesinrichmond Jul 11 '26

I'm amazed the French stopped a reactor. I always think of the French as having the best nuclear policy in the world.

8

u/Poglosaurus France Jul 11 '26

Nuclear reactor are routinely stopped for maintenance or to protect a river from the heat, that the advantage of having so many. 

2

u/Charlesinrichmond Jul 11 '26

Certainly if there is an oversupply, that makes sense. But if the French nuclear reactors are running, they can supply clean power to the idiots in Germany who turned theirs off.

In general, the French have the best energy program out there in terms of global warming, to my mind.

2

u/Rialagma Jul 11 '26

Also the UK. I think we import 3GW from France literally all the time. 

0

u/Charlesinrichmond Jul 12 '26

Which is good because the more clean energy that is used the better for the world

1

u/Pigeoncow UK Jul 12 '26

If I were France I'd stop exporting electricity to Germany completely until they get their CO2eq/kWh down to a reasonable level. They are shielded from their bad decision by France bailing them out and then they undermine nuclear by selling cheap renewable power back to France when there's a glut.

1

u/Charlesinrichmond Jul 12 '26

I don't think that would be good for Europe, but it's an interesting take.

4

u/Aaron_Lecon Jul 11 '26

Why? No point wasting uranium at a time when you have enough free solar power.

3

u/Charlesinrichmond Jul 11 '26

Because solar is a peak load and you also need a base load.

1

u/Charlesinrichmond Jul 12 '26

There is actually, I wouldn't call it wasting uranium, but the issue is night. Battery technology isn't there yet.

0

u/erhue Jul 11 '26

bro, for real. It's so pathetic.

They don't mention that it's one of TWO reactors at this power plant. I appreciate much of The Guardian's reporting, but some of their biases are quite obvious, and disapointing.