> neither nuclear nor offshore wind exactly match the demand profile so some kind of storage/demand-response/complementary generation assets etc. is required.
There is no requirement to adapt demand for nuclear, and even though the availability of zero-cost storage could theoretically improve nuclear's cost-effectiveness, in reality, the cost of storage is greater than potential gains from running nuclear 24/7.
> that's why they are traditionally "baseload"
The article I provided states, quote:
> Nuclear power plants in France and Germany operate in load-following mode. They participate in the primary and secondary frequency control, and some units follow a variable load programme with one or two large power changes per day.
Right after the snippet you quoted, the following sentence is written:
> In France, the impact of load-following on the average unit capacity factor is sometimes estimated at about 1.2%.
Maybe you should stop making partial quotes to support repeating lies?
Your paper says that nuclear has some limited load following abilities. I know that is true and never intended to imply it didn't.
You appear to be claiming this means that no storage/batteries are required for nuclear grids, but they are for renewables.
This is as true for nuclear as it is for renewables. If you build enough to cover the peakiest peaks then you never have to use any storage.
It would be an interesting math exercise to see whether a stupidly all nuclear grid or a stupidly all renewable grid would cost more. I'd suggest renewables would very easily win this battle, but I've not seen anyone do the numbers, because both are stupidly expensive things to do and no one has any plans to do either for real.
What people with actual nuclear on their grids have done traditionally is:
Differing rates to encourage the demand to match nuclear production better.
Storage, generally pumped hydro which uses nuclear electricity when it is cheap and then releases it later during spikes.
Export/import to neighbours (some of whom may use it for pumped hydro, like Switzerland does with French nuclear)
Have other elements on the grid, like France's 15% gas plants, or hydro to fill in the gaps.
And in the future people will do the exact same things, except they'll use wind and solar instead of nuclear because they are much cheaper. And they'll use more lithium batteries, again because those are cheaper now. And the gas they burn will transition to hydrogen.
You should read the article I linked to, it has lots of details about how the French are in denial about this incoming reality from a Frenchman with an easily found track record on supporting nuclear and commenting on the energy industry. As he says, they are having problems now, because they were mostly correct for so long in the past, and that makes it harder for them to cope with being wrong now.
> Your paper says that nuclear has some limited load following abilities.
Load following requirements aren't determined by the plant operator, they're determined by the grid operator, and they're the same for every controllable output source. So far, nuclear plants fully comply with the european grid requirements.
> You appear to be claiming this means that no storage/batteries are required for nuclear grids
Well, yes, that's what I'm saying, and that's what the article says.
> It would be an interesting math exercise
It's not an interesting math exercise, it's the very nature of the problem. You keep ignoring that just because it is convenient to pretend a 55€/MWh nuclear plant is equivalent to a 44€/installed MWh wind farm.
In reality, building wind farms or PV farms create external dependencies. These dependencies are absorbed without too much of a cost when your grid massively depends on gas.
The rest of your message simply denies this reality because it doesn't align with your belief.
> it has lots of details about how the French are in denial about this incoming reality
IDK what you think the article says. It talks about the failure from political leadership to provide certainty about the future of power in France, and, as a consequence, the fact that nothing has been done in the last two decades to prepare our future production means. It's been well known for a while now, and the crisis means the penny had dropped for everyone at the time the article was written.
It is completely unrelated to nuclear plants ; had we had gas plants instead, our politicians would have made the same mistake.
> Well, yes, that's what I'm saying, and that's what the article says.
No, it doesn't. They'd love to be able to say that. The reason they don't say it loudly and clearly is because it's not true.
So they have to say lots of things that kind of sound a bit like that if you are not paying attention, because it would be really good for them if it was true. But it's not.
France is going to struggle to keep 50% of their power nuclear even with a will to try. So in many ways it does not matter.
But so many people say it as a way to, falsely, impugn renewables that I'm standing on the principle. What you claim is true is not true. The document does not claim it, and if it did it would be lying.
> No, it doesn't. They'd love to be able to say that. The reason they don't say it loudly and clearly is because it's not true.
You sound like a conspiracy theorist. The people writing these documents are engineers working at a public company, not members of a secret group trying to wash your brain.
All the data they quote can be cross-examined. It doesn't require belief to make one's mind up.
> France is going to struggle to keep 50% of their power nuclear even with a will to try.
I don't really see how that's related to the load-following ability of nuclear plants.
Figure 1.3 for example, which shows the flexibility of nuclear in France and nuclear is the thing on the chart that varies least, while all the other follow the demand much more closely, especially hydro.
Or figure 4.1 where they don't bother going below 60% usage as the price for nuclear would just keep rising, and it's out of design range for most of them anyway.
As that document makes clear, nuclear has limited technical flexibility, but it's the economics that is the deal breaker. So talking about what is possible is hardly relevant.
Any attempt to deploy more nuclear in France would have rapidly hit diminishing returns and been financially disastrous.
> neither nuclear nor offshore wind exactly match the demand profile so some kind of storage/demand-response/complementary generation assets etc. is required.
There is no requirement to adapt demand for nuclear, and even though the availability of zero-cost storage could theoretically improve nuclear's cost-effectiveness, in reality, the cost of storage is greater than potential gains from running nuclear 24/7.
> that's why they are traditionally "baseload"
The article I provided states, quote:
> Nuclear power plants in France and Germany operate in load-following mode. They participate in the primary and secondary frequency control, and some units follow a variable load programme with one or two large power changes per day.
Right after the snippet you quoted, the following sentence is written:
> In France, the impact of load-following on the average unit capacity factor is sometimes estimated at about 1.2%.
Maybe you should stop making partial quotes to support repeating lies?