Water-rich Switzerland controls Western Europe’s taps — and wants it to stay that way. Its drought-ridden neighbors are getting nervous.
At the western edge of Lake Geneva, where the mighty Rhône river squeezes through a narrow dam, a blunder of French diplomacy is carved into stone for all to see.
The inscription, mounted on the walls of an old industrial building, commemorates the 1884 accord between three Swiss cantons that have regulated the water levels of this vast Alpine lake ever since. It does not mention France — even though some 40 percent of the lake is French territory.
“France, for some reason, wasn’t part of the contract,” said Jérôme Barras as he unlocked a gate below the epigraph to inspect a hydropower plant under the dam he has managed for more than a decade.
When the agreement was renewed and a new dam was built a century later, Paris still wasn’t interested.
The French government now regrets that.
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And France has suddenly realized it can’t control that tap as it battles water shortages, destructive droughts and baking heat.
1884 accord
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When the agreement was renewed and a new dam was built a century later, Paris still wasn’t interested.
If France wasn’t interested in water rights as recently as 1984 – well within the era of decent understanding of both hydrology and climate change – that’s squarely its own damn fault.
Dam fault
They were dam idiots
Then there’s the issue of how that water gets used. Switzerland, which has decided to phase out nuclear power, is miffed about guaranteeing water supply so France can cool its expanding nuclear fleet.
It’s possible to drastically reduce how much cooling water a nuclear power plant requires by taking a little water out and fully evaporating it, rather than running a lot of water in and heating up the whole river a little bit. My understanding is that French power plants use the second approach, which is older.
The Rhône’s waters are vital to the Bugey nuclear plant, which sits just across the Swiss border — much to the dismay of Hodgers, a Green Party politician fiercely opposed to atomic power.
Well, if he just doesn’t like nuclear power generation at all, there’s not much that can be done.
I imagine the third option is that they could run the cooling water in a loop with some really big radiators and not take water from the river at all if they wanted, but it would be very expensive.
I don’t think you’d want to tie your ability to cool the reactor to outside air temperatures. Bodies of water do warm up, but are generally a much better “ultimate heat sink”.
Most of French power plants are using evaporative cooling. Only 4 out of the 18 are rejecting water into the river.
Swiss green party might not like nuclear power but Switzerland is producing less than 30% of their electricity, the other 70% is imported from neighbors, mostly France.
Soooo they should probably be nice with their neighbors.
It’s possible to drastically reduce how much cooling water a nuclear power plant requires by taking a little water out and fully evaporating it, rather than running a lot of water in and heating up the whole river a little bit.
Ah yes. Great idea. That water wouldn’t influence the local climate at all, right?
You’re concerned about a cooling tower that literally just evaporates water? You realize those aren’t nuclear specific?
How much water? What effects will have on the river and the local water? And yes, these are questions one needs to be concerned about in any project of this size.
