3 ms·
Is this a new thing? In France, the nuclear plants built between 1960 and 1980 have throttling but it takes more than 20hrs to cool down, making it inefficient
by laurent92 5y ago
Is this a new thing? In France, the nuclear plants built between 1960 and 1980 have throttling but it takes more than 20hrs to cool down, making it inefficient to stop at night (hence over-provisioning overnight leading to price shifts to encourage people to run water boilers and washing machines at night).
- catlikesshrimp 5y agoBut what is so bad about encouraging people to schedule their energy expenditure? Charging the electric car during the night sounds like a no brainer for me. Same goes for the water heaters. The only heavy argument agaisnt nuclear is NIMBY.
- laurent92 5y agoIt makes it relevant to add solar during the day. This would allow reducing the baseline at night.
- MagnumOpus 5y agoThis is a lie. The French reactors can throttle down from 100% capacity to 30% capacity (i.e. from 1300 MW to 400MW) within 30 minutes. Other countries can do the same if they build the option into their plant control (many do): https://www.powermag.com/flexible-operation-of-nuclear-power-plants-ramps-up/ https://www.powermag.com/flexible-operation-of-nuclear-power...