Most of the news coming out of France these days has been dealing with Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to singlehandedly negotiate a deal with Vladimir Putin over the situation in Ukraine. But at the end of last week, there was another development that didn’t generate many headlines, though it probably should have. On Thursday, Macron announced that his country was going to aggressively step up construction of new nuclear power plants, adding at least six new facilities in the next thirty years. This is being done in part because of France’s commitment to the greenhouse gas limits set forth in the so-called Paris Climate Accords. But receiving far less coverage in the media is the fact that parts of Europe that have shut down coal and oil power plants in favor of wind and solar energy have been seeing blackouts when the energy grid simply doesn’t have enough juice to cover all of their needs. (Daily Caller)

French President Emmanuel Macron announced Thursday that his government would add at least six nuclear power plants to its arsenal in the coming decades.

“We are fortunate in France to be able to count on a strong nuclear industry, rich in know-how and with hundreds of thousands of jobs,” Macron said during remarks in the city of Belfort earlier in the day, France 24 reported.

“What we have to build today is the renaissance of the French nuclear industry because it’s the right moment, because it’s the right thing for our nation, because everything is in place,” Macron said.

On top of those six plants that have already been approved, France is studying proposals to build eight additional ones. The country already generates more nuclear energy than nearly anyone else in Europe, but this level of construction could see them achieving complete energy independence in the coming decades. And despite the objections being raised by some of the supposedly concerned green energy advocates, France would indeed be approaching zero emissions because nuclear power generates no greenhouse gases. Macron is also studying additional carbon capture plans, including carbon sequestration technology and bans on mass deforestation, with an emphasis on planting massive numbers of new trees.

Other European nations should probably be watching what France is doing and preparing to make similar plans. Countries that have moved to primarily wind and solar for their energy have rapidly run into problems. Great Britain recently experienced a steep spike in utility prices along with rolling blackouts when the winds on the North Sea (where most of their wind farms are located) suddenly entered a period of dead calm for several weeks.

Other recent studies have identified a predictable rise in the price of both coal and natural gas as areas in both the United States and Europe have scrambled to restart their more reliable energy production sources in the face of insufficient solar and wind power. These trends were predicted by energy analysts for several years, and yet everyone seemed to act surprised when it actually happened.

I’m not here to criticize Macron’s plans at all. If you don’t want to use coal or natural gas to generate electricity, nuclear power is a great alternative. And new technologies such as those used in Small Modular Reactors (SMR) are making nuclear energy safer, cleaner, and more affordable than ever. Also, no matter where you stand on the climate change debate, planting massive numbers of new trees and preventing massive deforestation is going to be beneficial to the entire world. So there’s really nothing wrong with Macron’s approach, provided he can get the liberal majority in his country to go along with it.

I’m also not here to knock wind and solar energy either. When it comes to the energy puzzle, I’m an all-of-the-above sort of guy. But wind and solar remain the most unpredictable and unreliable sources we currently use. That’s because of the obvious truths that the sun doesn’t shine at night and the wind doesn’t always blow when you need it to. A properly constructed and maintained nuclear plant will keep on pumping out electricity for decades without interruption. But until we can get a sufficient number of nuclear plants up and running (a process that’s still almost impossible in the United States because of regulatory hurdles), the reality is that we’re going to need to stick with our reliable sources of natural gas and oil for the foreseeable future.