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> What did France use for the other half of its energy? Why didn't it just use nuclear for everything? Energy is was more than 70% nuclear in France. The rest

• ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Okay, so your comment was less correct than I assumed. France peaked around 75% of electricity from nuclear. Energy is bigger than just electricity and generally includes transport and fuel for home and industrial heating, which puts Framce back around a half of energy from clean sources. This 75% of electricity is (perhaps not coincidentally) very close to the 80% that many people feel modern renewables can provide without any major storage issues. Because that 20/25% leeway means you can just use fossil backup to fill any gaps where your clean supply doesn't match your demand. But, the anti-renewable types who point to nuclear to justify their outdated opinions on renewables never seem to care that nuclear was only ever part of a larger system. They meticulously count every penny spent on grid upgrades and storage for one, but not the other. Pumped hydro and nuclear is a classic combination for decades. They'll attack time-of-use pricing as some kind of attack on liberty even though its a standard thing to do with excess nuclear capacity overnight, in places like France, for example.