France has treated its nuclear fleet like literally shit. They have literally delayed maintenance because the government believed that they were just about to replace all nuclear with renewables. In addition to that, France has so much nuclear that they have become incredibly lax in operating their nuclear, they take ages to do basic shit most other countries do in just a few days. All of this is literally just related to the French government of the last 10-20 years not giving a shit about nuclear.
The reality is that in most western countries even 50+ year old nuclear plants often have an 80% uptime and usually are down at times when the capacity is not needed. If a government properly cares for their reactors, up-times of 90-95% are very possible.
Switzerland has a capacity factor of 90% with some of the oldest reactors in the world.
> The difference with renewables is that it’s even easier to manage. Their intermittency is entirely expected and the law of large numbers ensure we never have half the capacity offline due to technical issues at the same time.
The fact is that is overall much less available and much less flexible on when you do the generation and when you want more or less energy.
> Given that new built nuclear power costs 18-24 cents per kWh and won’t come online until the 2040s what you’re trying to tell me is that multiplying the current electricity cost 3-4x and creating a self made energy crisis isn’t so bad.
Nuclear is to slow is something renewable fans have been arguing since the 1970s.
The fact about cost is that on a system level its cheaper and France has been able to have cheaper energy then Germany for the last 50+ years.
Once you don't just look at generation but total cost, including all the cost of building out the grid, the cost is much higher. And if you ever want to be 100% renewable you better have weeks of battery at least, and that is a thing people barley calculate. Gas peakers plants will remain the solution for a very long time and when gas prices go up, it will cause an energy crisis.
In addition you will need to replace the wind energy far sooner.
In addition, with nuclear, a huge part of the cost is going to salaries of local highly educated people and technicians. You capture much more of the value in your own economy for the next 60+ years.
> Given that new built nuclear power costs 18-24 cents per kWh and won’t come online until the 2040s what you’re trying to tell me is that multiplying the current electricity cost 3-4x and creating a self made energy crisis isn’t so bad.
> Just look at the proposed EPR2 fleet. A 11 cent per kWh CFD and interest free loans. Summing up to over 20 cents per kWh for the electricity. With the first reactor coming online at the earliest in 2038.
The West has so totally and completely fucked the industry and did every possible thing wrong for the last 30 years. And now we are paying for it. This is what 30+ years of renewable orthodox has brought us, high energy prices and a complete collapse of the nuclear industry. France has dropped all its advanced reactor as well now we are building EPRs again. Its beyond sad.
What we could build are APR1400 units like in the UAE. If you do a proper build, yes it takes 10 year for the first to finish but after you start a new years 3 years later, and then another every year and then 2 each after that and later 3 each year. In 20 you can build pretty much as much capacity as you need and your learning curve is going to be amazing, likely you will finish a new build in less then 5 years at much lower cost. The problem is if you only look at 'when will the first reactor finish' instead of 'how fast can we build 20 reactors'.
Capital-recovery component for APR1400 alone works out to about 3.2–4.3 US¢/kWh at 5–7% financing, but this is for only 4 reactors built in with no background. But we should finance this with government bonds directly, so really capital alone is only 2 USc/kWh and less as build cost go down the learning curve. The fuel cost is also only 3-4 USc/kWh (hopefully we again have reliable European fuel and reduce the price further, another thing destroyed by the last 30 years). And operation and maintenance around 10USc/kWh isn't crazy for a proper fleet with centralized staff training and local industry.
As with everything in nuclear, one nation building 1 plant is going to be expensive and makes the numbers look worse then they are. And remember this was build in a country with no experience and no train workforce and only 4 reactors built, not the 10s of reactors people should build. A country like Poland could easily do a 20 year flash build program, and that would be much faster for them then Poland.
> The 10 GW HVDC links being built costs €20B. That’s equivalent to the subsidies needed for one new large scale reactor. Then you have the market price of electricity on top of that.
> Are you starting to realize the conundrum?
Try looking up total grid upgrade cost if you want to achieve 100% renewables. We are literally talking the same amount of money as all the generation combined. I heard interviews with people responsible for even only part of Germany where they admitted they will have to go to private markets to fund 100+ billion $ in investments. And these investors will want their money back. Total grid cost will be higher then to total cost of renewable installs. And of course wind turbines need to be rebuilt.
But I guess Germany is making it easier on itself by losing so much industry that they have fewer problems in the future for renewables to solve. Germany by the way since 2018 is spending 50 billion $ per year on direct energy subsidies. Yes that is partly heating but France because of its cheap electricity has far more heating converted to electric. So it is related to electricity policy.
What I want is rock solid energy that is reliable and served from a simple centralized grid, nuclear + 1-2h battery peak shaving with lithium or sodium batteries. Anything longer then that isn't great. Not some scheme where we somehow hope that the combination of Greek solar and Danish wind produce enough, and then trying produce hydrogen in Canada and ship it to Germany, or whatever other nonsense people want to come up with.
The current proto-market system has all the wrong intensives built in and we were much better of in a system where there was simply one centralized utility that made rational engineering choices about how to get cheap energy to everybody.
Not to mention that having a well functioning nuclear industry has lots of other advantages that 'buy solar panels from China' doesn't bring.