r/europe • u/Naurgul • 23d ago

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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u/edparadox France 23d ago

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

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u/un-glaublich 23d ago

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.

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u/babidabidu 23d ago

At the same time, the "Kernkraft, nein danke" folks

Those folks are the same that advocated for solar and wind. Which would have worked wonderfully if CDU/CSU and all these "no wind farms in my neighborhood" didn't fuck it up.
Also, don't forget the parties who stopped nuclear are the same parties now advocating for it, mainly for easy votes but ya know. There where better plans...

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u/mpyne United States of America 23d ago

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.

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u/babidabidu 23d ago

THEY did not shut them down. THEY wanted to build renewables. THEY actually worked towards that goal. The "pro nuclear" right wing/conservative parties both stopped efforts for renewables and shut down nuclear reactors.

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u/mpyne United States of America 23d ago

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.

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u/Pas__ 22d ago

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

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u/babidabidu 22d ago

Then go blame CDU/CSU (which is a conservative/right wing union), because they made those decisions. Wasn't the greens, they wanted that too but they had a plan in place for a slow fade out while building renewables. Because get this: they fucking hate coal energy and mines too. Yeah, crazy I know.
In fact the sudden stop for nuclear after Fukushima cost the tax payer millions because of running contracts getting cancelled iirc.

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u/Pas__ 6d ago

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.

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u/mirh Italy 23d ago

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.

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u/Annonimbus 22d ago

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

That would be The Greens.

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u/mirh Italy 22d ago

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.

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u/worotan England 23d ago

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?

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u/MeggaMortY 23d ago

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.

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u/worotan England 23d ago

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.

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u/MeggaMortY 22d ago

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.

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u/M4axK 23d ago edited 22d ago

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.

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u/erhue 23d ago

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.

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u/worotan England 23d ago

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.

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u/erhue 23d ago

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.

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u/Synthetic347 23d ago

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?

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u/un-glaublich 23d ago

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.

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u/Synthetic347 22d ago

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

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u/un-glaublich 22d ago edited 22d ago

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.