The hallmark of a losing argument is having to attack the messenger. Just look at your own words. "Pathetic." "Idiot." "Stupid." "Bullshit."

Search this thread for how many times you said those words. Search for how many times I said those words. And you still think I am doing "all of the name-calling or pretty damned close to all of it"?

If you are this wrong on easily measurable objective facts then I don't even want to know the rest of your purported argument.

Can you make a single argument that addresses any of the actual issues?

I have never attacked you personally in this thread. If you think otherwise prove me wrong with a quote.

If you are willing to resume a serious discussion and stop the name-calling (which you're obviously not), then let's point out (no more exaggerations here, every number below is well-sourced and easily checked):

• Nuclear energy currently accounts for approximately 1/6th of worldwide electricity production.
• Wind energy currently accounts for approximately 1/25th of worldwide energy production.
• No country currently produces a majority of its electricity output via wind. Denmark is the highest at 41%. Note that Denmark's population is 5.5 million. Germany (population 80 million) derives roughly 13% of its electricity production from wind. Spain (population 46 million) is at 18%. There's a couple of smaller countries (Portugal and Ireland) up there as well.
• Meanwhile France (population 66 million) derives roughly 75% of its electricity production from nuclear power plants.

No politics, no hidden agenda, just the cold hard facts, which you don't like. (By the way, I post under my real name with my real email and real homepage. It's absurd for you to accuse me of hiding anything.)

When it comes to nuclear power, it's clear that we can scale up far beyond present production. We can build more power plants just about anywhere. Functionality-wise, there are no technical restrictions like weather limiting nuclear power plant location. Safety-wise, there is a concern, but it is not an existential threat to humanity like global warming. We as a species can survive (indeed, have survived) one power plant meltdown every 25 years. Hell, we as a species could survive one deliberate nuclear attack every 25 years.

When it comes to wind power, it's not clear that we can scale up. Wind power requires favorable weather. How many of these locations are there? Are they all used up by now? Maybe present-day production is close to the upper limit of production. More to the point, if it could be done at a larger scale, why hasn't it been done already? I look at wind power and I see a huge litany of unsolved engineering challenges that need to be solved (storage, transmission) to make the idea practical. Nuclear power also involves engineering challenges, but those have been solved already.

I do think wind power can be done, and we should try. I'm just saying it hasn't been done yet. We can easily get wind up to where nuclear is now (~20% of worldwide electricity consumption). No evidence exists that we can expand beyond that level; certainly only one small country (Denmark) has managed it to date. On the other hand, if we actually tried with nuclear power, we can easily get nuclear power worldwide up to where it is now in France (~75% of consumption). I guess you haven't noticed, but France has a pretty good safety record with their nuclear plants. If proliferation is a concern, then fine, I'll happily take 75% of (USA, Russia, Great Britian, France, China, India).

Do you actually continue to dispute the simple and proven statement that ~75.8% of France's electricity (excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me for using the wrong word before, as if you couldn't figure it out) is from nuclear sources? By the way, 75.8% is not "slightly less than 75%".

A simple Ctrl-F on this thread proves that I never uttered the word capacity on this thread until yesterday's post. I was never talking about capacity. You imagined that.

Oh good, so you admit you can read French.

According to your Wikipedia article, Cordemais has: "two coal-fired groups with a capacity of 600 MW each and two oil-fired groups with a capacity of 700 MW each, thus totalling an installed electric generation capacity of 2,600 MW." This is a direct quote.

According to the report I linked to (http://www.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/Ref_-_Bilan_energetique_France_2012.pdf), on page 28 of the PDF (page 26 by the document's own page numbering), in the table titled "Production totale brute d’électricité", you see clearly that nuclear power accounted for 425.4 TWh of electricity production in 2012, and coal generation (Thermique classique) accounted for 53.8 TWh in 2012. You can read the table even if you don't know any French. The total amount of electricity generated in France in 2012 was 561.2 TWh. Nuclear power is 75.8% of this total (425.4/561.2 = .758), exactly as I claim.

Now, time for some more math: 2,600 MW * 1 year equals 22.8 TWh, assuming 100% operation with zero downtime.

Note that 22.8 TWh is comfortably less than 53.8 TWh.

There is no contradiction. You lose.

Having made the suggestion, you are now obliged to live with the results. Are you now disclaiming your own suggestion? If you can't understand French, knowing full well that you asked for a primary source, and that any primary source on this topic will be in French, then that's on you.

The difference is, I admitted wrong when I was wrong.

That was before you laid down the ground rules that only primary sources count. I'm happy to go back to free-for-all rules if you'd like. But these are your rules, not mine. Pick your rules and stick with them.

Oh, obviously, slashdot is a primary source when it comes to French utility power generation.

Are you this stupid?

<reads>

Still looking for that link to a primary source ...

<reads>

(Is there a link? Nope.)

"Link to a primary source." Your rules, not mine. A pity you can't live by them.

"Link to a primary source." Your words.

75% is not an extraordinary claim. Shut up with the 100% nonsense. I already admitted that was wrong.

75% is well documented in multiple places in both English and French, including in official publications by the French government's statistics bureau. Your "2.6GW hole" claim is entirely based on unreliable secondary sources. It is totally invalid.

You can't claim one set of rules for yourself and a different set of rules for everyone else.

Give me a primary source or shut up.

I ask again, are you here just to insult the messenger, or do you have any technical contributions? But I need not ask, the answer is obvious.

A secondary source is not a technical contribution. Wikipedia is not a technical contribution. Even you yourself ridiculed secondary sources. Nice try.

Exactly how do you expect me to provide a primary source pertaining to France that's somehow not in a different language?

You're being absurdly obtuse. There are plenty of secondary sources in English, but you rejected all of them out of hand, insisting on a primary source. Well guess what, a primary source about France is going to be in French. Tough nuts.

I could translate it for you but you seem to have no confidence in that, and besides, the whole point of a primary source is that it is PRIMARY, and you are supposed to refer to it directly rather than through an intermediary.

You asked for a primary source, you got it. It's not my fault you can't handle it.

You "showed" me using Wikipedia, which is a secondary source. Your secondary source does not trump my primary source.

You can't insist that I am not allowed to use secondary sources and then claim that your secondary source beats my primary source. That's totally ridiculous.