4 ms·

I have no clue what you are trying to argue? If anything, you are proving that France could export even more nuclear or be completely self-reliant if it wasn't

by seec 3y ago

I have no clue what you are trying to argue? If anything, you are proving that France could export even more nuclear or be completely self-reliant if it wasn't forced by obtuses EU regulation to temper their electrical industry strength. And the comparison with the US proves exactly that it is ALL political. The US can run their reactor full tilt all the time because they only compete with themselves, it's just a different type of electrical generation business, and since nuclear is cheap once it is built, it is better to run it all the time and adjust the rest. France does not have this luxury and is forced to participate and agree to bad deals for the EU electrical grid as a whole. Because the grid has to be balanced, technically and commercially, those are the parameters and those are what is used by regulators to favor different political factions... France could very well run its nuclear reactor to full capacity and export a shit ton of very cheap electricity, killing many competitors in the process but making decent amount of money that could be used for even more/better nuclear. This is EXACTLY what Germany complained about in the late 90s and this is why they have been putting a lot of regulation to favor their environmental bullshit even though nobody asks them to pay for all the coal they burn. So, I don't understand how that could be an argument against nuclear, if anything, once you get the ball rolling energy is so cheap, others accuse you of cheating, just like Germany did.

Retric 3y ago
> I have no clue I know, let me try and clarify the basics. > France could export even more nuclear or be completely self reliant if it wasn’t forced by obtuse EU regulations to temper their electrical industry strength. People only want so much electricity at any given instant so France can only export so much electricity at any given moment. This directly translates into capacity factor numbers because if nobody wants power they slow down production at nuclear power plants. To simplify a 1GW nuclear reactor is selling at 10c/kWh on average a 85% capacity factor reactor is generating an extra ~120 million dollars worth of electricity per year over a 70% capacity factor nuclear reactor. That’s the difference between making 60$ million dollars per year and losing 60$ million dollars in the same year. Something like ~6 Billion dollars inflation adjusted over a reactors lifetime aka serious money. It doesn’t matter if nuclear is relatively cheap per hypothetical kWh if nobody wants those kWh then they are worth nothing. Thus adding more nuclear in France means lower capacity factors and losing more money.
- seec 3y ago
  I agree on that logic but what I don't agree with is that France could only sell when electricity is cheap. If Germany would be subjected to actual regulation on their coal usage during the winter and actually would pay the real cost with externalities then electricity would get more expensive, making the French nuclear way more interesting. French nuclear looks expensive only because of usage of "cheap" coal and natural gas by neighbors, and while everybody is pointing various nuclear cost that may come in the future, we are already paying the price of burning those fossil fuels. In the winter, French electricity is already 30e/MW cheaper; and that is before true cost is taken into account. Germany is supposedly generating up to 60% of their electricity with wind (solar isn't meaningful in the winter) but that is largely dependent on the weather. One day they are generating over 30GW of electricity with wind but then other days they are barely hitting the 10GW mark. In the past month, Germany has imported over 1.4GW of electricity from France. In the past 5 years, their wind/renewable share of the total generation has barely gained 4% while their coal/gas usage hasn't moved at all (and Germany do not heat a lot of homes with electricity so that's even worse) As it is the share of renewable in Germany in a winter month is just hitting the 40% share mark. They have over 60GW of wind capacity installed, to be viable in the winter without relying on coal/gas or nuclear energy imports they would need at least 5 times this capacity. You should read about "Energiewende" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiewende https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiewende You can see that in 2016 there were some complaints that this political "project" had cost at least 160 billion in the past 5 years, and electricity price in Germany were too high. German citizens are still paying more for their electricity and they had to subvention their green energy even more (while hypocritically burning as much coal as they did 10 years ago). If we would regulate Germany's coal/gaz usage then French nuclear energy could be making quite a bit of money, just by running the current reactors to their full capacity. But that's hardly possible because Germany is running the show in Bruxelles and it is always about Germany's interest first. Which is exactly what I am saying: the current economics of French nuclear are not representative of what could be possible, first because nuclear was very unpopular even in France in the past 20 years (only recently gained traction because energy bills inflated and people understood the stakes) and secondly because Germany want to make everyone pay for their ideological choices... I do agree that France itself do not need more reactors, but some will be built in the future to replace the aging ones.

by seec 3y ago

Retric 3y ago

> I have no clue I know, let me try and clarify the basics. > France could export even more nuclear or be completely self reliant if it wasn’t forced by obtuse EU regulations to temper their electrical industry strength. People only want so much electricity at any given instant so France can only export so much electricity at any given moment. This directly translates into capacity factor numbers because if nobody wants power they slow down production at nuclear power plants. To simplify a 1GW nuclear reactor is selling at 10c/kWh on average a 85% capacity factor reactor is generating an extra ~120 million dollars worth of electricity per year over a 70% capacity factor nuclear reactor. That’s the difference between making 60$ million dollars per year and losing 60$ million dollars in the same year. Something like ~6 Billion dollars inflation adjusted over a reactors lifetime aka serious money. It doesn’t matter if nuclear is relatively cheap per hypothetical kWh if nobody wants those kWh then they are worth nothing. Thus adding more nuclear in France means lower capacity factors and losing more money.

seec 3y ago
I agree on that logic but what I don't agree with is that France could only sell when electricity is cheap. If Germany would be subjected to actual regulation on their coal usage during the winter and actually would pay the real cost with externalities then electricity would get more expensive, making the French nuclear way more interesting. French nuclear looks expensive only because of usage of "cheap" coal and natural gas by neighbors, and while everybody is pointing various nuclear cost that may come in the future, we are already paying the price of burning those fossil fuels. In the winter, French electricity is already 30e/MW cheaper; and that is before true cost is taken into account. Germany is supposedly generating up to 60% of their electricity with wind (solar isn't meaningful in the winter) but that is largely dependent on the weather. One day they are generating over 30GW of electricity with wind but then other days they are barely hitting the 10GW mark. In the past month, Germany has imported over 1.4GW of electricity from France. In the past 5 years, their wind/renewable share of the total generation has barely gained 4% while their coal/gas usage hasn't moved at all (and Germany do not heat a lot of homes with electricity so that's even worse) As it is the share of renewable in Germany in a winter month is just hitting the 40% share mark. They have over 60GW of wind capacity installed, to be viable in the winter without relying on coal/gas or nuclear energy imports they would need at least 5 times this capacity. You should read about "Energiewende" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiewende https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiewende You can see that in 2016 there were some complaints that this political "project" had cost at least 160 billion in the past 5 years, and electricity price in Germany were too high. German citizens are still paying more for their electricity and they had to subvention their green energy even more (while hypocritically burning as much coal as they did 10 years ago). If we would regulate Germany's coal/gaz usage then French nuclear energy could be making quite a bit of money, just by running the current reactors to their full capacity. But that's hardly possible because Germany is running the show in Bruxelles and it is always about Germany's interest first. Which is exactly what I am saying: the current economics of French nuclear are not representative of what could be possible, first because nuclear was very unpopular even in France in the past 20 years (only recently gained traction because energy bills inflated and people understood the stakes) and secondly because Germany want to make everyone pay for their ideological choices... I do agree that France itself do not need more reactors, but some will be built in the future to replace the aging ones.