3 ms·

Also IIRC you can design the reactors to support a degree of output scaling, if not shutdown. IIRC French reactors are designed to do that - they have some issu

• cauch 4y ago
  Yes, I believe it's the case. The French nuclear plants can do some load following. But they are not doing it, because it's more inefficient for a nuclear power plants, and as the nuclear is anyway not 100% of the mix, the load following is done by the other parts of the mix that don't have such problem. On my mind, the main problem of scaling down production for nuclear plant is that a nuclear plant is very expensive, and if it produces only at submaximal capacity, it means that the construction cost is spread on less electricity production.
• moloch-hai 4y ago
  Operating a nuke at less than 100% is untenable: if run at 50%, each kWh costs twice as much as at 100%, but even running at 100%, it costs radically more than all other choices.