Today they produce a lot of subsidized power that when everything operating correctly produces an excess of power. However we are not talking about today, we are talking about the future. The average plant age is 30 years. Some plants are so old that frances neighbors accuse it of risking another Fukushima incident.. Germany closed its plants for precisely that reason. It will like cost close to 100b if not more to decommission and untold amounts to replace whatever they take offline. My point is that just for France to unwind it’s aging nuclear it’s going to have to build and spend a lot and that is just to get back to even... much less expand to cover new sources of electricity like electrification of the car fleet. Germany in contrast has been building new transmission lines and production for a decade and still has a decade to go. Norway actually has a true surplus which is expected to be a multiple of france’s entire output, etc etc. My point was that the author was saying nuclear has an expected age of 40-80 years... I call bs on that lifespan and point to France as an example: there’s just no way we see them continue their existing plants for 80 years when their existing plants are already showing signs they may be at risk or not be able to operate much past 35-40...