@jwildeboer solar panels also reduce in efficiency as temperature rises; the "temperature coefficient" is one of the many considerations in which panel to buy. panels with too-high temperature coefficients will need to be replaced with newer more efficient panels over time to cope with warming temperatures, much like nuclear power plants and indeed all energy infrastructure requires.

@jwildeboer solar panels do indeed require less up-front government investment than nuclear plants, so if you don't like governments investing in their own sovereign infrastructure, then delegating the responsibility of solar panel installation to individuals and offering handouts to corporations as subsidies is a great way to lead the country into austerity.

@jwildeboer would be curious how long it's been since those nuclear plants have been replaced or updated and what technology they're using. surely comparing 50-year old reactor technology to subsidized solar panel tech from current year isn't quite apples to apples. no way to verify this from your post though.

@hipsterelectron @jwildeboer I believe the issue here is mostly unrelated to the technology per-se, it's more to do with location. The reactors at risk of needing to reduce capacity are built on relatively "small" water sources where there's risk of impacting ecology and other users of the river. Note though, we're talking about "a few tenth's of a degree" for a reactor, it's not exactly boiling the river. The issues in France in 2022 were mostly due to so many reactors already being offline.

@hipsterelectron @jwildeboer also France has pretty modern reactors, and a very low carbon footprint for electricity due to that huge nuclear generation. (2/3's of electricity generation in france comes from nuclear power, 1KWh in France "costs" ~44g CO2, compared to say, the US where 1KWh costs ~384g CO2, or Australia, where 1KWh costs ~552g CO2)