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The strike price for nuclear power from Hinkley Point C when it becomes operational will be £92.50/MWh. This has received a lot of criticism for being too high. With current wholesale rates at £385/MWh, suddenly Hinkley Point C doesn't look so expensive any more.
“ In Germany, for example, during the first two weeks of September wind-power generation was 50% below its five-year average.” I wonder what folks in the past would have thought about the concept of ‘wind draughts’. Maybe they experienced similar things with their grain mills?
Dunno about grain mills, but sailers have long known about trade winds and the doldrums.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But also in terms of cost? Nuclear power plants are not exactly cheap.
A NPP is an order of magnitude more expensive than a combined cycle power plant of the same power output. So even if electricity prices are high now because of gas constraints, that doesn't mean a NPP would have been a good idea. Europe should perhaps have diversified their gas suppliers, with more LNG.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, if you want: Not building twice as many (wind/anything) was a major mistake. Nuclear power plants fail sometimes, just like the wind fails. In 2016 almost a third of the plants in France were offline at the same time, some for planned maintenance, some unplanned, and the peak prices were higher than now. All these things are fixable by overbuilding enough. There's nothing special or magic about nuclear.
Building more nuclear helps de-risk wind droughts. This isn’t specific to nuclear; building more of a different kind mitigates the risk.
What would make sense is larger local stores of hydrogen, to be burned in combustion turbines during the rare wind outages.
[0] https://www.easygreenenergy.at/dam/jcr:a5800c50-948e-43e9-90...
We're working on reducing gas dependency, shortages and price fluctuations are one factor, but dependency on Russia is another. I do wonder how much our gas import from Russia is helping us keep the peace.
And keeping Russians and their "dominion" oppressed. Just shows how morally bankrupt Europe is, and with how smug Europe is that is really cringey.
“ In Germany, for example, during the first two weeks of September wind-power generation was 50% below its five-year average.” I wonder what folks in the past would have thought about the concept of ‘wind draughts’. Maybe they experienced similar things with their grain mills?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A NPP is an order of magnitude more expensive than a combined cycle power plant of the same power output. So even if electricity prices are high now because of gas constraints, that doesn't mean a NPP would have been a good idea. Europe should perhaps have diversified their gas suppliers, with more LNG.
Its more expensive to build because you know... a nuclear meltdown is a thing to avoid.
Not building new nuclear power plants in the last 30 years was a major mistake, in terms of energy supply security as well as CO2 emissions.