this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
153 points (96.4% liked)

Europe

9009 readers
2297 users here now

News and information from Europe ๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ

(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)

Rules (2024-08-30)

  1. This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
  2. No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
  3. Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
  4. No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
  5. Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
  6. If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
  7. Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
  8. Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
  9. No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
  10. Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.

(This list may get expanded as necessary.)

Posts that link to the following sources will be removed

Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com

(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)

Ban lengths, etc.

We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.

If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.

If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the primary mod account @EuroMod@feddit.org

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] JensSpahnpasta@feddit.org 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

There are several reasons: Those reactors were planned for a runtime of 30-40 years. And you can't prolong those runtimes by "proper maintenance" due to some hard facts introduced by the radioactivity. The steel in the containment & pressure vessel will get radiation damage with time. That is something you can monitor - but the pressure vessel is the reactor and if that is damaged, you can't simply replace it. So there is a hard limit on runtime. You might get a few years more out of them, you might be lucky, but that really is not a safe way to run a reactor.

You can take a look at what that actually means when you look at France: They have build nearly all of their reactors between 1977 and 1994 and that means that most of their reactors have reached those 40 years they were designed for. France totally failed to start building replacement reactors - Flamanville III is not enough and was extremely expensive and way late. And they need to run those reactors - if there are problems with too many reactors, they have not enough capacity. We already saw that a while ago when too many of those old reactors developed cracks. So if there is a big issue, french politics need to ensure that there is enough electricity generation. And that political pressure is something that is not compatible with a safe way of running nuclear reactors, esp. when you're running old reactors.

[โ€“] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 hours ago

Ontario has this issue and we are building SMRs for this reason.