Well yea, countries keep buying nuclear from France because it’s clean, cheap, and they don’t want to suffer the political backlash from the science lacking environmentalists which come forward when they talk about building nuclear on their own land

France has been importing more electricity than exporting in 2022 because their nuclear reactors can’t perform in the heat resulting from climate change. And this is more likely to happen again as each year becomes hotter.

I’m not sure where this fetishism for France‘s nuclear energy is coming from.

• France has been a net exporter for 40 years straight before that, as well as being the top exporter most of that time in Europe.
• Also they’re back to Top 1 right now.
• Last year’s gap in electricity production was not due to heat (only a few reactors were slowed down for a few hours, and we’re talking about less than 0.5% loss due to these shutdowns over the year).

Besides, it’s not a technical limitation on nuclear power, it’s an ecological measure.

The hole in production was due to a corrosion problem detected in several reactors, which occurred at the same time as maintenance work in other reactors that were behind schedule because of COVID. This would have had no impact if nuclear power had not been left virtually abandoned for 30 years because of the anti-nuclear movement.

It’s the classic story: anti-nukes shoot nuclear power in the foot, then claim that nuclear power doesn’t work, despite reality.

Genuinely curious here… what about the concerns of nuclear waste? My understanding of it is based on the Simpsons so ELI5 how modern tech resolves the waste issues?