The chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the French National Assembly, Jean-Louis Bourlanges, calls on his country to change its doctrine and no longer prohibit Ukraine from striking Russian territory. — Ukrinform.
20 May 1420: Henry V reaches #Troyes#otd to sign a treaty of marriage & amity with #France. He & Catherine of Valois would solemnise their marriage there on 2 June
Second of the three European EPR ( Evolutionary Power Reactor) #nuclear projects - #France#Flamanville - will be shortly connected to the grid. The projects caused many controversies due to long delays… but they are getting completed:
🇫🇮 Olkiluoto 3 ✅ connected in 2023
🇫🇷 Flamanville ✔️ finished, will be connected by end of 2024 : 🇬🇧 Hinkley Point C 🕓 will be completed by 2027
The moment these projects get connected, they start delivering gigawatt-hours of low-carbon electricity to the grid, which is desperately needed for #ClimateChange prevention and mitigation.
Each of these has been criticised for delays (which is factually true but unfair) and “huge cost” (which is unfair and untrue).
Talking about the total investment cost in case of clean electricity sources that may live up to a century is a popular manipulation but what matters is LCOE.
It’s the cost of investment and operations divided by value of electricity produced over its life time. In case of nuclear power LCOE is quite low, in the range of $60/MWh because the relatively big initial costs is divided by decades of delivery of huge amounts of power. This is exactly the same case with very costly off-shore wind farms (e.g. the Doggerbank project) or huge solar farms (e.g. Ouarzazate in Morocco).
The reasons for delays are… complex. This article[1] by Joris van Dorp is probably the best explainer to why exactly Hinkley Point C was delayed so much. It’s a mix of reasons, starting from “first of kind” scale of the project to prohibitive and often absurd safety requirements lobbied after Fukushima by countries who saw an opportunity in replacing EU nuclear by Russian fossil gas. And they were absurd, for example because you don’t get earthquakes and tsunamis on the La Manche Channel.
And the reasons are complex, for example due to general UK attitude to funding infrastructure projects - they exclusively opt for private funding, which means the investors need to get a direct financial profit. Most people see the absurdity of private ownership of UK water utilities (which leads to no investments in the network and dumping of sewage into rivers by underregulated companies) but nobody sees the same absurdity in funding the electricity grid (which is in turn overregulated).
"En #France le maïs est un gros consommateur d'#eau d’#irrigation, une plante qui a besoin de beaucoup d'eau en juillet et en août quand il y en a le moins", "C'est suite au plan Marshall et l'accès des semenciers américains au marché français ; pour ne pas devenir dépendant des semenciers US, l’État a crée l'INRA, devenu INRAE, développé un maïs hybride, et l'a distribué gratuitement ainsi que l'eau d'irrigation aux agriculteurs, qui n'en voulaient pas", "la PAC donnait une prime à l’#agriculture irriguée du maïs", "c'est un modèle piloté, qui n'est pas durable", "On peut changer de modèle"
#StandingStoneSunday a #Neolithic human-shaped stela with a necklace and a belt, carved in limestone. Found in Montagnac, #France. Dating 3200-2400 BC. In the late neolithic period several cultures living between the Atlantic Ocean and the Caucasus erected human-shaped stone sculptures showing clothing, weapons and jewellery. The stelae were symbols of power and status and were used for ancestor worship and rituals.
A French draft law, passed Monday, would let citizens vote in local elections after 10 years' residency in New Caledonia, prompting opposition from independence activists worried it will dilute the representation of indigenous people. The violent demonstrations that have ensued in the South Pacific island of 270,000 have killed at least five people and injured hundreds.
In response to the protests, the government suspended the popular video-sharing app — owned by Beijing-based ByteDance and favored by young people — as part of state-of-emergency measures alongside the deployment of troops and an initial 12-day curfew.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal didn’t detail the reasons for shutting down the platform. The local telecom regulator began blocking the app earlier on Wednesday."
"Essentially, staging an Olympic Games is about improving how the world thinks of you. With an absoluteness hard to describe, Parisians don’t give a stuff what the world thinks about them. It is, by far, their best feature"
#France admits it’s lost control of parts of #NewCaledonia, the world’s third-largest producer of critical EV metal nickel
The French government is moving to regain full control of the Pacific territory of New Caledonia, High Commissioner Louis Le Franc said, as extra security forces arrive in the archipelago to end a week of violent protests by pro-independence groups.
Le Franc said new security deployments, after French President Emmanuel Macron’s government declared a state of emergency, would help reassert control following violence that left behind burned cars, torched stores and improvised barricades along roads.
PS. It's truly disgusting to see them refer to a country only based on their export./Farhad
French parliament calls for "lifting taboo" on Kyiv's ban on strikes against Russia (www.ukrinform.net)
The chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the French National Assembly, Jean-Louis Bourlanges, calls on his country to change its doctrine and no longer prohibit Ukraine from striking Russian territory. — Ukrinform.