Which is why we have ancillary markets. For all parts of the grid that the energy only market does not solve well enough, but we as a society deem necessary to solve.
When these edge cases are found, if they even exist, design a technology neutral market solving it and let companies bid.
Sweden isn't investing in nuclear power. The current right wing government is creating a culture war issue while not wanting to accept the costs, nor creating a deal that will survive through elections by creating a more comprehensive coalition backing it.
They've moved "We'll start building this electory cycle!!" to "large scale reactors" to "SMRs!!" to now targetting the final investment decision in 2029.
The latest step in the saga is the state owned power company refusing to get their credit rating tarnished by being too involved in the nuclear project. The latest move is them owning 20%, the industry owning 20% and the government owning 60%.
The industry still haven't comitted to their 20% due to the absolutely stupid costs involved.
With the government as a first negotiation move stepping in with a direct handout of €3B. On top of credit and construction guarantees, a CFD and adjusting it all depending on how costly the build is to guarantee a profit.
But it is quite easy to understand why. Taking what one of the nuclear reactors earns in Sweden and then applying solely the interest from a new build leads to a loss of ~€1.5B per year. Then you also need to run, fuel and maintain the plant.
Reality does not seem to want to conform to your creative confabulations.
"Once committed to phasing out nuclear power, Sweden has reversed course, not only lifting the ban on new reactors but also introducing government frameworks to accelerate investments and deployment.
Today, Sweden’s nuclear roadmap includes commissioning two large-scale reactors to add 2.5GW of capacity by 2035 and the equivalent of 10 new reactors, with a push for smaller modular reactors (SMRs), by 2045. According to GlobalData, the country is on course to reach 8.2GW in nuclear capacity and 59.8TWh in annual generation by 2035." -- Inside Sweden’s policy U-turn: Q&A with the Government’s nuclear lead
"Nuclear, onshore wind cheapest way to meet Sweden's electricity needs, OECD report says
If nuclear builds become more expensive or electricity imports cheaper, "there might be an opening for offshore wind to enter Sweden's optimal capacity mix", the report said. "For the time being, this is not the case."" -- https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/nuclear-onshore-wind-cheap...
"Nordic governments are pushing ahead with nuclear energy investments at a pace not seen in decades, driven by growing anxiety over energy security and the need to cut carbon emissions. " -- https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/nordic-countri...
"Sweden’s nuclear landscape has done a 180-turn in recent years, moving from plans for a phase-out now to ambitions for an expansion. The government has lifted the reactor cap, opened new sites and introduced measures to accelerate investments and deployments.
Kärnfull Next has submitted an application to build a power plant based on small modular reactors in the municipality of Valdemarsvik in Östergötland county in southeastern Sweden. It is the first application under the country’s new Act on Government Approval of Nuclear Facilities." -- https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/application-subm...
"Sweden Reverses Nuclear Phase-Out, Plans Major Expansion by 2045
According to a report from Power Technology, Sweden has reversed its nuclear energy policy in recent years, abandoning previous phase-out plans in favor of expansion. The national government has removed a cap on the number of reactors, designated new locations for plants, and implemented policies to speed up related investment and construction. The current national strategy aims to increase nuclear power capacity by a minimum of 2.5 gigawatts by 2035. A further goal is to build new reactors with a combined capacity equal to ten standard units by 2045." -- https://www.indexbox.io/blog/sweden-reverses-nuclear-phase-o...
Like I told you. A culture war issue without broader political backing, with the company putting final investment decision at such a timing in terms of election cycles as to ensure that broad political backing is there, or it won’t happen.
The social democrats opened up to negotiate a broader energy agreement covering both nuclear power and off-shore wind.
The right and hard right shut down that effort because only tens of billions in handouts per new built large scale reactor in capacity is the only solution. Even mentioning off-shore wind is a red like for them.
It is truly interesting when the right becomes the socialists. But that’s were we are in 2026.
Also, go ahead and please explain how Sweden can have 2.5 GW online by 2035 when investment decision is set to 2029 and projects like the Canadian SMF, French EPR2 and Polish AP1000 have similar dates as their ”perfectly executed project target date”, likely ending up being late 2030s or early 2040s?
It’s always funny when you proclaim imaginary new built nuclear power as the solution, rather than staying grounded in reality.
You are. As evident by all your ramblings, desperately clinging to outdated talking points.
All you know is that half a century old nuclear power works acceptably. Built in an entirely different economic era.
What we also know is that forcing new built nuclear power costs on the ratepayers would lead to an energy crisis. You can pay it with the taxes, but that doesn't make the cost dissappear.
Why waste trillions on handouts and decades of opportunity cost on new built nuclear power when renewables and storage are the cheapest energy source in human history?
We still need to decarbonize industry, aviation, shipping, construction, agriculture etc. We don't have the luxury of dallying with the dead end that is new built nuclear power we have already confirmed.
Now calculate what it costs running a nuclear plant only at night.
You’ll end up at $400 per MWh excluding transmissions costs, taxes etc.
Your state already has coal plants forced to become peakers or be decommissioned because no one wants their expensive electricity during the daytime. Let alone a horrifyingly expensive new built nuclear plant.
But not economically. And it can’t ramp twice. Once is easy.
For the French to do load following they sync their entire fleet to manage it. Letting plants take turns and spread out where they are in their fuel cycle.
According to the current version of the European
Utility Requirements (EUR) the NPP must be capable
of a minimum daily load cycling operation between
50% and 100% Pr, with a rate of change of electric
output of 3-5% Pr /minute.
The problem with integration of solar and wind with nuclear power is that it doesn't make economical sense to build solar and wind in electric grid based on nuclear power generation. Because the fuel costs of nuclear power plants are so low and the capacity factors can be very high (nuclear power plants need only very short pauses for maintenance) building solar and wind in such electric grid doesn't lower the costs for grid customers.
This is big problem for solar and wind investors and manufacturers.
Nuclear power is a big competition also for coal and gas producers. I think coal producers in Australia are quite scary even of the idea for nuclear power production in Australia.
Meanwhile to achieve load following in France they sync the fuel cycles of the entire fleet and then let the plants take turns across the week.
You have it the other way around. The marginal price for renewables are zero so consumers buy that first. Which means nuclear power, like the coal plant I linked, is forced to load follow. Which craters their earning potential.
Nuclear power is literally the worst combination imaginable for a grid with any amount of renewable penetration. They both compete for the same slice, the cheapest most inflexible, a competition which nucler power loses handily.
Which means, the window of opportunity for new built nuclear power is gone.
> Our analysis finds that even if, reversing the historical trend, overnight construction costs of nuclear half to 4,000 US-$2018 per kW and construction times remain below ten years, the cost-efficient share of nuclear power in European electricity generation is only around 10%. Nuclear plants must operate inflexibly and at capacity factors close to 90% to recover their investment costs, implying that operational flexibility – even if technically possible – is not economically viable.
This is a future you can't escape from. Flexibility is mandatory. It is coming from pure incentives. Lets explore them:
Why should a household or company with solar and storage buy expensive grid based nuclear power when their own installation delivers? They don't.
Why should this household's or company's neighbors buy expensive grid based nuclear powered electricity rather than the zero marginal cost surplus renewables? They don't.
EDF is already crying about renewables cratering the earning potential and increasing maintenance costs for the existing french nuclear fleet. Let alone the horrifyingly expensive new builds.
And that is France which has been actively shielding its inflexible aging nuclear fleet from renewable competition, and it still leaks in on pure economics.
If you are now (in the year 2026) optimizing only for costs of producing electricity then you end with electric grid which has more or less structure of Chinese electric grid - big chunk produced with domestic fueled base-load fossil fuel power plants+nuclear power plants, as much hydro as you can build, little bit variable renewables.
If for example Germany would optimize for costs of producing electricity then they would not shut down already build and running nuclear power plants, would not import LNG, would use much more domestic coal.
If you care for CO2 emissions (which is not the case in China) then the problem of electric grid is much more complicated.
Germany is a nice example of electric grid with significant amount of variable renewable penetration (lot of solar and wind, small amount of hydropower). First they decided to phase-out nuclear power and ban construction of nuclear power plants (beginning in 2000), then they decided to replace domestic coal production with imported fossil fuels and then decide to decarbonize grid (until 2045), which is now much more expensive because nuclear phase-out.
In contrast France has already decarbonized the electric grid.
The economic situation EDF is bad because decade long taxation of EDF, the ARENH mechanism.
Under the so-called Regulated Access to Incumbent Nuclear Electricity (Accès Régulé à l’Electricité Nucléaire Historique, ARENH) mechanism set up to foster competition, rival energy suppliers could buy electricity produced by EDF's nuclear power plants located in France that were commissioned before 8 December 2010. Under such contracts, between July 2011 and December 2025, suppliers could buy up to 100 TWh - or about 25% of EDF's annual nuclear output - at a fixed price of EUR42 per MWh.
So no France didn't actively shielding its inflexible aging nuclear fleet from renewable competition, it was shielding renewable competition from its aging nuclear fleet.
I love the framing. "Little bit of renewables" when in China they are literally 5x in size of the nuclear production. Nuclear power in China peaked at 4.7% in 2021 and is now down to 4.3%. Entirely irrelevant.
The problem I am mentioning has nothing to do with ARENH, and the protectionism isn't the ARENH. It is not building more renewables and dragging their feet on interconnects.
> Chinese electric grid - big chunk produced with domestic fueled base-load fossil fuel power plants+nuclear power plants, as much hydro as you can build, little bit variable renewables
This is not an accurate representation of China's power generation mix. Yes, they are only about 40% total renewables thus far, but less than 5% of that is nuclear.
Their hydro contribution is double that of nuclear, and both wind and solar are drastically higher still.
All the new EPR builds went terribly bad, long over planned time, over budget.
Some argue thats because European Pressurised Reactor is design that merges German Konvoi reactors with French Framatome N4 design. A design that is trying to please both German and French regulators.
If risk and disposal is factored into coal, gas, solar power, what would be cheaper? Nuclear has recyclable fuel processes and fail safe systems available.
> That cost doesn’t even factor in disposal because no one knows the true cost yet
There's still some cost factored in, unlike any other industry where the government is expected to clean up after the fact.
> Not sure what risk you think come from renewables
The grid collapse risk (See what happened in Spain last year, which caused 8 deaths, more than every nuclear power plant accidents in the Western world combined…). Grid operators are currently investing a trillion Euro in the EU alone in order to adapt the grid to the new challenges caused by intermittent and distributed energy sources, and this will never be accounted for in renewable electricity prices… (hence the paradox: the more “cheap energy” is being deployed in Europe, the more expensive the electricity prices become).
> and storage
"Storage" doesn't exist yet as a most people imagine it. Batteries can help ease a few hours of peak load/low supply but that's pretty much it, pumped storage is very situational with limited deployment capabilities. So the risk is that the technology simply never materialize.
It's €1.6tn up to 2040. And it's not being built to fix problems "caused by intermittent sources" so much as a complete overhaul of a grid for 27 countries, some of which are relatively backward, with standardised digital control, plus significant new interconnectors.
The finished grid will be far more robust, better able to handle local outages and issues, and generally more adaptive and open to development in various directions.
As for "cheap energy" raising prices - prices rose a little after Covid, but there's been no constant march upwards. The main driver of higher prices is gas, and eliminating gas dependence, for both for financial and strategic reasons, is a key goal.
The current situation in Iran is likely to increase that motivation.
A key point about renewables is that power doesn't rely on imports from war zones.
In my part of the world the authorities can demand a clean up bond as part of giving permission to build the project. That is done to ensure that you can’t skimp on your responsibilities.
Then I just see misinformation on the Iberian blackout. Please go ahead and tell me how thermal planes not delivering the expected reactive power was caused by renewables.
Please tell me how renewables can’t deliver reactive power when the US and all other sane grids have required them to do it for close to a decade.
And with that we’re solving high 90s% of the grid. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough when we still need to solve agriculture, construction, aviation, maritime shipping, industry and so on.
All ignoring that storage on larger scales already exists.
You're not going to read them, so why bother since you live in a parallel universe. But if you wanted, you could ask your chatbot so you don't have to put the efforts to read anything.
You do realize that it’s quite telling that you still haven’t been able to point out a single of these ”falsehoods” nor been able to provide any factual information of your own?
> You do realize that it’s quite telling that you still haven’t been able to point out a single of these ”falsehoods” nor been able to provide any factual information of your own?
Brandolini's law. And I'm not going to spend any effort with someone who use "sources" they haven't even read…
> Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?
I'm not afraid of them. I'm afraid of people making wrong decisions based on idealistic views of technologies.
Renewable (outside of hydro) are a very good complement to fossil fuels. And they are a key tool to half emissions from electricity production in most of the world where electricity production is mostly done through fossil fuels. And that's great.
But also that's it. They aren't going to carry the grid on their own, they aren't going to cure cancer or bring world peace.
I have read all the sources I linked. Well, to be perfectly honest, for the ENTSO-E final report I read the summary and the relevant sections and for the actual FERC regulation, rather than the news posts I used to find the true root source, I left it at the introduction which says "non-synchronous sources must provide reactive power as per this technical specification from Y date".
But that's of course not good enough.
But you know that I am right, which is why you're trying to avoid facing reality and pretending everything I say is false, rather than dare to face it.
The consensus among grid operators and researchers is that renewable grids are a solved problem. They’ve moved on to the implementation details instead. Reddit is firmly stuck in the past though.
But, if you are curious, the modeling lands on a combination of this depending on local circumstances:
- Wind, overbuilt
- Solar, overbuilt
- Demand response
- Long range transmission to smooth out variability
- Existing nuclear power (for the grids that have them)
- Exising hydro
- Storage
- In places with district heating: CHP plants running on carbon neutral fuels.
- An emergency reserve of gas turbines. Run them on carbon neutral fuel if their emissions matter.
Why do you want to waste tens of billions of euros on handouts per new built large scale reactor?
Love it. Keep ducking. Why are you so afraid? You still haven't pointed out a single falsehood.
Then you go link a seminar from unknown people in French as your source.
But I get it. You Frenchies truly are in the shit.
The new Greece of Europe economically with a spiraling debt being completely unable to reign it in. With a crumbling nuclear fleet you are unable to replace in time. Which renewables are already cratering the earning potential for.
The perfect solution to that of course is an absolutely stupidly large handout to new built nuclear power!
So go ahead. Link some internationally credible research telling me how wrong I am. You still haven't been able to do it, which is extremely telling,
Funny how random sources you haven't read from the internet are valid sources but a conference on the topic given in France's most prestigious academic place, conference which I followed, isn't because you don't like French people. Thanks for acknowledging I was right not to bother giving more material you wouldn't have read.
“On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog” as the saying goes, buy everyone knows you're a lame troll.
> "Random sources on the internet" = the pan European entity responsible for the largest grid in the world and FERC.
= a source that you picked at random without reading it (and which doesn't back your argument since it acknowledges the fact that renewable render the grid more vulnerable, but who cares about the facts).
> Why are you so afraid of renewables?
I'm not, it's a projection of your own fear of nuclear though. Scary atoms making up everything.
> When will France fix their economy by not wasting hundreds of billions on insane handouts and state capitalism?
It's funny because France has among the cheapest electricity in Europe and the nuclear operator have been forced to subsidize its competitor to compensate for the competitive advantage of NPP. (ARENH, but you're not gonna read about it either).
I just read enough of it to verify its accuracy as to the point I was making.
It also verifies that the US has required non-synchronous plants to manage this for the past decade. And for that matter, I just picked the US because it is well known jurisdiction. All reasonable grids, except Spain until after the blackout, have the same regulations in terms of managing reactive power.
Managing reactive power is trivial to do today. But since it is not free it won't be done unless if the grid operator requires it.
I have no fear of nuclear power. I always argue that we should keep our existing nuclear reactors around as long as they are:
1. Safe
2. Needed
3. Economical
In that order. The problem is wasting decades of opportunity cost and trillions on handouts to new built nuclear power when we still need to decarbonize industry, aviation, shipping, construction, agriculture etc.
And then you finish off by living on almost half a century old merits. Like I said, the French should keep the fleet around as long as the criteria I mentioned above requires it.
The problem is wasting hundreds of billions on handouts to new built nuclear power when renewables and storage are the cheapest energy source in human history.
Don't let the French pride make you become the next Greece.
Tiring with arbitrary limitations to exclude major accidents of a fleet in the hundreds.
The difference between renewables and nuclear power is who gets harmed.
When dealing with nuclear accidents entire populations are forced into life changing evacuations, if all goes well.
For renewables the only harm that comes are for the people who has chosen to work in the industry. And the workplace hazards are the same as any other industry working with heavy things and electric equipment.
And the worst power-production disaster in history so far was neither Fukushima nor Chernobyl, but the 1975 Banqiao Dam failure. And it's not even close.
Which of them resulted in "entire populations [] forced into life changing evacuations"? Which ones were the implied something worse than that and what happened then?
> For renewables the only harm that comes are for the people who has chosen to work in the industry.
Solar panels are essentially semiconductors. "Silicon valley" is called that because they used to actually make such things there. You can tell from the number of superfund sites.
"The newer ones are safer" has a certain symmetry to it, right?
> And the workplace hazards are the same as any other industry working with heavy things and electric equipment.
Those things are actually the dangerous things though? There were no fatalities from Three Mile Island but a plant worker at a nuclear power plant in Arkansas was killed and several others injured when a crane collapsed and a generator fell on them. Power company line workers have a worse-than-average fatality rate from getting electrocuted.
That's how all commodity markets works. All of Europe runs on the same scheme.
Do you think the Saudi's price their $10 per barrel oil at $10? The average price? Median? Or marginal?
They price at at the marginal price.
In the UK what this means is that cheap production like renewables and storage are incentivized to get built while the most expensive fossil production is shutting down.
Then at some point renewables start to become to marginal producer and prices crater. Which is already happening.
Saudi's use the government to price their oil internally low... on the free market they sell it at the price dictated by supply and demand. Renewables and storage are disincentivized because oil and gas is legally blocked from ever taking a loss. Whats stopping O&G from raising prices to keep their marginal producer status and ensuring a race to the bottom?
How can they be legally blocked from ever taking a loss? It is a market. They bid.
There's a plethora of producers with varying equipment, startup times, ramp times, costs and so on.
As renewable penetration expands the most expensive, or least flexible ones are called in fewer and fewer hours until they shut down. If one oil and gas producer tries to raise prices a competitor steps in and fills the demand.
Did you think there was this one monopoly oil and gas power producing able to dictate prices at will?
> How can they be legally blocked from ever taking a loss? It is a market. They bid.
I don't know enough about oil & gas to tell you what is happening there, but not every market truly operates as a free market.
For example, nuclear power plants almost always have a contract with the government for a specific electricity price: if the market pays more the profits will go to the government, if the market pays less the government subsidizes production. Something similar happened with early wind power.
> Compare it to Swedish electricity prices in the winter which are around SEK 3/kWh, or roughly €300/MWh.
The averge electricity price in SE3 this winter, which had nuclear outages, was €100-110/MWh.
New built nuclear power requires €170-230/MWh for 40 years after the completion. Adding on taxes, VAT etc. means that to power the average Swedish home with new built nuclear power the average monthly bill needs to be €540. That is summer as winter.
Using extremely CAPEX heavy nuclear power to fix problems existing a few percent of the year is economic lunacy.
Where are you getting those numbers? I can't find a single source that quotes levelized cost of new nuclear above €150/MWH for newly constructed nuclear?
Below €100/MWh is pure fantasy. The proposed subsidy scheme for the French EPR2 fleet is a €100/MWh CFD for 40 years and interest free loans. Summing up to ~€200/MWh in total.
Your source provided several numbers for nuclear. One is $34/MWH, which is a average cost of existing plants, another number is $169/MWH a number they describe as "Represents illustrative LCOE values for Vogtle nuclear plant’s units 3 and 4"
Your source doesn't even support your statement!
As for Hinckley, I have 2 objections. A you have cherry picked the least cost effective reactor in the world, and are trying to pass it off as typical, and B, it's levelized cost of energy is £128/MWh which translates to €146.
Since we're apparently in the business of cherry picking, I chose Olkiluoto, with a levelized cost of €30/MWH.
Unfortunately the anti-nuclear crowd in Europe has a very loose relationship with reality, but I think it's only prudent we stick to actual numbers here on HN.
Relevant excerpt from the Wikipedia article:
For example, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), based on undisclosed portfolio of projects, estimated nuclear power LCOE at €190-375/MWh which is up to 900% higher than the published LCOE of €30/MWh for an actual existing Olkiluoto nuclear power plant, even after accounting for construction delays in OL3 block, although this number is based on an average LCOE with new and old reactors.
My data might be old, but at least it isn't made up!
Did you even read the footnote of the number you linked?
> The analysis is based on publicly available estimates and suggestions from selected industry experts, indicating a cost “learning curve” of ~30% between Vogtle units 3 and 4. Analysis assumes total operating capacity of ~2.2 GW, total capital cost of ~$32.3 billion, capacity factor of ~97%, operating life of 70 years and other operating parameters estimated by Lazard’s LCOE v14.0 results, adjusted for inflation.
97% capacity factor for 70 years. Meaning for a "Vogtle" started today, i.e. entering planning in 2006 and operational by 2023 = 17 years we have:
2026 + 17 + 70 = 2114
Do you realize the absolute insanity of trying to predict the profitability of a new built nuclear plant into the 2100s? For anyone with a basic level of economic understanding that number is an admission that new built nuclear power is absolute insanity.
EDF is already crying about renewables cratering the earning potential and increasing maintenance costs for the existing french nuclear fleet. Let alone the horrifyingly expensive new builds.
And that is France which has been actively shielding its inflexible aging nuclear fleet from renewable competition, and it still leaks in on pure economics.
And now you see the next part. That 97% capacity factor is also insanity in a world increasingly driven by renewables. EDF is today having trouble with their capacity factors reducing. How do you think that will play out?
> Since we're apparently in the business of cherry picking, I chose Olkiluoto, with a levelized cost of €30/MWH.
You do know that's wrong? Olkiluoto is also sitting up there with Hinkley, Flamanville and similar, but there are no public figures on the total cost. Only the settlement half a decade before the plant was completed, as costs and interest kept accumulating.
The only difference is that they signed a fixed price contract and the French paid for the vast majority of the plant. So you can in some cases argue that the Finnish side had an acceptable cost.
Not sure how you'll get the French to pay for this new built nuclear plant of yours. But I'm sure you'll work something out.
Flamanville 3 is also sitting at ~180 per MWh. I also love that you quickly dimissed Hinkley Point C as the "worst project ever", even though the contract was signed before they even started building.
Why don't you dare face reality? Why must new built nuclear power be the solution no matter the cost?
Do you dare look up the proposed subsidies for Sizewell C? Even before they have started building the expect cost is almost up there with Hinkley Point C.
EDF is at this point refusing any notion of a fixed price contract and are instead forcing a pure cost-plus expected profit pay as you go financing scheme. Where the ratepayers today pay enormous sums to maybe get some electricity in the 2040s.
Have you looked at the Polish subsidy scheme?
- The state gives a direct handout of ~€15B
- The state takes all financial and construction risk
- The plant gets a 40 year CFD which is adjusted to guarantee a profit for the plant.
How can you square that with your view of nuclear power being cheap to build?
I am saying that trying to justify new built nuclear power by projecting an economic life into the 2100s is just accepting that nuclear power is horrifyingly expensive but trying to use economic terms the general public does not understand to smudge the picture.
You also do realize that to have a nuclear reactor be operational for ~80 years everything but the outer shell and reactor pressure vessel is replaced. How cheap do you think that is?
The French have projected the cost to operate their paid off fleet until EOL to be €65 per MWh.
Are you starting to realize the conundrum? Or will you cherry-pick another study to not have to face reality?
I think you should show some curiosity. You are using the few sentences you cherry-picked from that Wikipedia article to shield yourself from reality.
What I linked was not a lobby group, but one of the largest institutional investors in the energy space.
And you did the same thing in that document. Finding the lowest number where the calculations they are based on make their real world application near non-existent.
It’s the report authors saying: even if we assume absolutely insane numbers new built nuclear power is still horrifyingly expensive.
You can go through comments and ask your favorite chat bot about the statements I have made. You will find that all are true, within the margin of error of like this not remembering if the source number was euros or usd.
How many trillions in subsidies should we hand out to "try one more time" with nuclear power when renewables and storage already is the cheapest energy source in human history?
Achieving putative cost reduction from Nth-of-a-kind plants would involve large subsidies of large numbers of plants. The cost could well be in 13 digits.
Because the commission is proposed by the national governments through the European council.
Meaning any attempt at making the commission directly elected reduces the national governments powers.
What you see isn’t the commission watering down the proposals, what you see is the natural tug of war between the national governments and the European Parliament.
The problem is the economics. They’re just horrifyingly expensive to build. The equivalent to each new large scale reactor in GWe requires tens of billions in subsidies.
The next problem comes from incentives. Why should anyone with solar or storage buy this expensive grid based nuclear electricity?
Why should their neighbors not buy surplus renewables and instead pay out of their nose for expensive nuclear powered electricity?
EDF is already crying about renewables cratering the earning potential and increasing maintenance costs for the existing french nuclear fleet. Let alone the horrifyingly expensive new builds.
And that is France which has been actively shielding its inflexible aging nuclear fleet from renewable competition, and it still leaks in on pure economics.
The French have used their nuclear system for 20+ years as a giving tree.
The forced EDF to sell nuclear at very cheap prices to fossil fuel companies and then buy it back at much higher price.
The French forced EDF to give subsides to solar even when that actually hurts their economics.
The French randomly in the 2010s decided to replace nuclear in a short time-frame (completely 100% unrealistic) but it sounds good to politicians. And they decided to delay all maintenance and didn't do any of the upgrades many other nations did.
Once of the secrets of French nuclear is, that their grandfather were so good in providing them these nuclear plants, the french absolutely suck at running them. Other countries like the US and ironically Germany managed to run their reactors at higher factors.
The problem is the solar is cheap when its being produced and makes the economics of base lose worse, without actually solving base load. Solar has been cross subsidized this way for a long time. And has been more explicitly subsidized. But its a private good, it helps only private people, it is negative on a system level.
Once you think on a systemic level, how to provide reliable energy for a whole country, nuclear is not more expensive and France saved a huge amount of money buy doing what they did.
> Why should anyone with solar or storage buy this expensive grid based nuclear electricity?
If somebody privately wants to build solar/storage that's fine, but they should get no support. Also prices should be adjust to actually reflect peak demand. Historically the way the system operated is with much simpler pricing models because it was understood that everybody shares in this infrastructure. In such a situation, the majority of people wouldn't build solar and batteries.
But really, the question we should ask, what the best thing to run a modern economy on and the German solution of 'lets build a massive electricity pipeline to solar farms in Greece' isn't a great model.
All this new energy transfer infrastructure is incredibly expensive. It cost at least as much as the generation itself, and sometimes more.
Then when asked what method to price in the Swedish nuclear fleet having ~50% of capacity offline multiple times last year and France famously having 50% of the capacity offline during the energy crisis I always get crickets for answers.
It’s apparently fine when nuclear plants doesn’t deliver, but not renewables.
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.
> Once you think on a systemic level, how to provide reliable energy for a whole country, nuclear is not more expensive and France saved a huge amount of money buy doing what they did.
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.
The French made a good choice half a century ago. The equivalent choice in 2026 are renewables and storage.
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.
It’s just complete insanity at this point.
> All this new energy transfer infrastructure is incredibly expensive. It cost at least as much as the generation itself, and sometimes more.
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.
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.
When these edge cases are found, if they even exist, design a technology neutral market solving it and let companies bid.
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