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Cake day: February 1st, 2026

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  • Yes, unknown. You do not care about when the reactor went online, but when the reactor design was finalized. This happened with CP0 design in 1970, 4 years before the messmer plan.

    We knew about climate change in 1970, but we lacked reliable models and computational power to create good predictions at that time. Climate change was an hot scientific debate, not an applied principle in civil engineering design.

    The only reactor not part of the messmer plan (1974) that was throttled down is the Chooz B on the Meuse river. In this case it is more of a political issue: under 1998 treaty between Belgium and France, the plant must curtail power if the river flow drop. Not as safety measure, but to preserve downstream flow to Belgium. This was not taken into account in the reactor design. The operation of the plant was restricted retroactively. The Chooz B plant uses evaporative towers to minimize heat discharge.



  • You say lot of things that are correct and some that are not:

    • nuclear is not good at following fast changes in demand (battery are the best technology for that) but are very good at following the grid load. Nuclear fleet in France can cycle down to 30% daily. And they do that when needed.
    • nuclear is safe in the same way that airplanes are safe: very few incidents with lot of consequences, but still very few incidents. Nuclear is one of the safest form of energy, and new design are even safer then the already safe old designs that are currently running. Given the current alternative to nuclear with similar characteristics (dispatchable steam turbine with cheap fuel) is coal, which is responsible for millions of dead, we need to keep nuclear efficient and competitive to save lives.
    • renewables, batteries and nuclear are complementary technologies that works well together. In places with lot of wind and hydropower the need for nuclear is vastly reduced. Not all places can enjoy the same conditions, and nuclear saves lives
    • the reason why we do not put the necessary effort in finding a solution for nuclear waste is that nuclear waste is very little, so, as all human do, we procrastinate as this is not really a problem.

    We need to invest in renewable technologies, batteries technology, and nuclear technology. We want all of them to succeed in decarbonizing the grid, as those technologies insists on different industrial bottlenecks on their deployment. China knows this, and is building nuclear reactors at rate never seen before, while doing the same for solar, wind and batteries. Renewable will be the bulk of energy production because they are cheap. Nuclear role is not the same as renewable. Nuclear is to provide dependable baseload when wind and solar do not produce enough. Nuclear, renewable and batteries together are cheaper and faster to deploy then any other combination, so it is good to continue investing in all of them.


  • Nuclear is certainly ready for climate change ahead. Nuclear is one of the tool to use to solve climate change. There is no doubt from the technical prospective. 1970 nuclear is still a tool, given they continue to extend the usable lifespan of the plan. This is not a technology problem: Palo Verde nuclear power plant works in the desert, by evaporating sewage water. This is not a problem at all for power plants near the sea.

    I will be explicit: we should use nuclear to fight climate change, we should not destroy local environment to cheap out on building more carbon free power generation.

    Nuclear produce tons on stable carbon free electricity. This stabilize electrical grid. Without it, we have to use something else to compensate renewable instability. Hydropower (if you are lucky), batteries (still expensive but becoming more and more viable) or fossil fuel plants.


  • We are talking 1970. Scientists lacked the numerical models and the computing capacity to make these predictions. To accuse civilian engineers to not take into consideration recent hot topics of environmental science that lacked, at the time, rigorous models is disingenuous.

    The design lifespan for those reactors was 40 years. We are extending those past lifetime because it is cheaper to do even if we need to shut them down more and more often.

    The infrastructure have not adapted because it is cheaper to build a new power plant or to shutdown existing one occasionally then to adapt old existing design.

    I do not understand what is your point here.