> Right now China is building reactors at 6-7 years per reactor.

Thats China. In Europe, this building speed isnt going to happen anytime soon. The knowledge to build nuclear at that scale isn't in the coutry/continent anymore. You'd have to reteach an entire generation of engineers.

Besides that, part of the point of switching away from oil and gas is at least some independence. Europe isnt known for its nuclear fuel supply so now you're reliant on another country again.

Yes, most solar is produced in China but its about as low maintence as it gets and there is still enough knowledge to produce in Europe.

You are right to point out the astonishing developments in Chinese nuclear reactors technology most people are totally oblivious of. It has been standardized, is seemingly safe and far more efficient due to Chinese technological advancements; however you may be overlooking that the ability, the capacity to do that, to do what France did by installing 56 nuclear reactors due to the last oil shock, takes an industrial capacity that does not seem to really exist anymore in Europe to the same degree. I won’t even get into why that is, because it would simply turn into a book, but suffice to say, it’s a euphemistic, polite “challenge”, so to say.

But people also forget that it still takes nuclear fuel to do any of that, which France/Europe has now also largely lost access to, due to the Niger situation along with cutting itself off from Russia/BRICS. That will at some point become an issue for France/Europe, which the “remilitarizing” EU may even make one of its first contrived America-style military adventures to “protect democracy” or some other manipulative, emotive, contrived lie by the lying Epstein, Mandelson, Brunel Class.

It sure does look like Niger really could use some democracy, don’t you? Their women can’t even show off their orifices for money on Onlyfans! Oh, they happen to have rich uranium ore, well isn’t that just an odd coincidence of doing good by sharing Our Democracy©, as decreed by the unelected EU Commission.

Yep. Once people experience true hardship like having to keep their house just above freezing in the winter due to the cost of energy - all of a sudden impossible things become quite possible.

The only potential issue here would be if the west had collectively hollowed out its manufacturing base so much as to make surging capacity and capability a generational thing vs. immediate.

Coasting on past success eventually brings stagnation and pain. Hopefully the pain isn’t too horrible for normal folks this time around.

And now Flamanville 3 is 7x over budget and 14 years late. Online but not commercially operational.

Their EPR2 fleet are getting an enormously large subsidy at 11 cents kWh CFD for 40 years and interest free loans. With the first reactor online in 2038 of everything goes to plan.

How many trillions in subsidies should we handout to new built nuclear power to ”try for real”?

Or we can just build renewables and storage which is the cheapest energy source in human history.

The French energy sector is more than 50% fossil [1]. If France decarbonizes over the next decades, it will be due to renewables, not nuclear. While the government and population have been extremely pro-nuclear for a long time, the economics just don't work out. The current plan is to barely build enough reactors to replace old ones going off-line over the next decades.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France

Do we? I see plenty of complaints about high electricity prices and criticism of shutdown of nuclear reactors

In China there is already small-scale nuclear district heating.

"China's Haiyang nuclear power plant in Shandong province has begun its sixth heating season, covering an area of nearly 13 million square metres - 500,000 square metres more than last year."

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/chinas-first-com...

Similar plans exist for Finnland. https://thinkatom.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/rauli-parta...

In Switzerland both Beznau and Gösgen nuclear power plant produce district heating in addition to power. Beznau makes available 80 MW of heat to industry and homes over a 130 km network serving 11 towns https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

In Slovakia since 1987, Slovak power utility Slovenské Elektrárne (SE) has been producing heat for Trnava, Leopoldov, Hlohovec and the municipality of Jaslovské Bohunice from the Jaslovské Bohunice NPP. This plant produced 429 GWh of heat in 2023. The high ten-kilometre hot water pipe between the Jaslovské Bohunice power plant and the Trnava heating plant began construction in 1983 and was put into operation at the end of 1987. Heat project for Mochovce NPP is also planed.

https://www.neimagazine.com/news/mochovce-npp-heat-project-u...

There are many plans and ideas for advanced uses of nuclear heat for industrial applications.

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-nucl...

> The nuclear programme was effectively stopped in France and it is struggling to be revived.

You're describing France from 2010 to 2020, not today.