Great, hopefully the ship is turning around slowly. I have been hearing from pro-carbon "environmentalists" for 30 years that "we should have built nuclear 20 years ago but doing so now would be pointless". Meanwhile we may have just reached peak-coal today if we are lucky. Well past time to stop listening to anything those grifting charlatans have to say.
> Well past time to stop listening to anything those grifting charlatans have to say.
Are you describing the "just build nukes" party here?
Cause we've been waiting a while for this nuke solution to actually ship but every example is far more expensive all while the nuke lovers block solar and wind for the same reasons.
There is no for-profit companies that are in it to save the planet, despite what the brochures say. Unfortunately for non-carbon power companies, their main competition is each other rather then fossil fuel sources.
I don't think killing solar and wind projects is what the greens do. The problems with solar and wind are entirely due to the laws of physics. They get large advantages in the energy markets in most places. They have been very effective in preventing nuclear though which ironically does so much real world damage to their cause that all the rest of what they do is a drop in the bucket.
Sorry, I was talking about the fake environmentalists being funded by the fossil fuel industry. And the fossil fuel industry is still successfully killing solar and wind projects in the US.
France seems to work. They have plenty of nuclear power that is flexible. And you can have other forms of consumption flexibility; otherwise wind and solar are really in trouble.
France uses their own and their neighbors fossil capacity to manage nuclear inflexibility.
When a cold spell hits France exports turn to imports.
Now EDF is crying about renewables lowering nuclear earning potential and increasing maintenance costs.
The problem is that they are up against economic incentives. Why should a company or person with solar and storage buy grid based nuclear power? They don’t.
Why should they not sell their excess to their neighbors? They do.
French nuclear is more flexible than coal by design and as flexible as many older gas plants with ALFC system. They can reach up to 0.5%/second modulation (proved by Philipsburg) if the situation requires but it's rarely the case if you have a fleet. It's still not as fast as BWR's that can reach 1%/second but german coal is the slowest load follower and still meets min requirements imposed by the grid.
"When a cold spell hits France exports turn to imports." - was true in the past, a bit, but afaik this and last winter France was net exporting a ton. And with FLA3 reaching full capacity this year it'll be even less of a problem. It's not like they have a problem now, they are the largest net exporter on the continent and it's unlikely to change soon.
"Now EDF is crying about renewables lowering nuclear earning potential and increasing maintenance costs." - yes, because ren generation is acting like a parasitic source without proper BESS deployments - they eat into firm power profits without providing firm power benefits.
"Why should a company or person with solar and storage buy grid based nuclear power? They don’t." - because in many places of the world solar+bess are not sufficient. It's also the reason why Microsoft signed a contract for TMI way above market prices instead of building a fully offgrid ren solution
EDF is selling power to neighbors and makes money from it. It also is modulating it's npp a lot, which will maybe change when AC's will be more widely deployed and EV's will expand. It also is trying to schedule most maintenance works in summer, during lowest demand periods
Which are paragraph after paragraph agreeing that nuclear power is inflexible, can’t meet a true grid load on its own without flexibility and that renewables craters the earning potential of both existing and new built reactors.
As EDF will be able to sell fewer and fewer hours at a profit we will likely see them crying for handouts to even maintain the existing plants. Let alone new builds requiring 18-24 cent/kWh average prices to cover the costs.
Who is agreeing that nuclear is inflexible? RTE real generation data is a direct proof it's false.
EDF needs no handouts for maintenance of their reactors. But I'm eager to see their profits evolution in 2026 H1 after arenh got ditched.
There will be some govt loans for EPR2, but the amount is rather tiny if we compare to say German EEG fund.
The proposed subsidies for the EPR2 program is 11 cents kWh and interest free loans. Sum freely, but you end up towards 20 cents kWh.
Why always the German comparison? Who even brought up Germany Can’t the nuclear handouts stand on their own?
The EEG costs are quickly going down as expensive early projects are losing their subsidies.
Renewables and storage are built in massive amounts all over the world without subsidies.
Why this completely one sided focus on absolutely massive handouts for the electricity sector, which is already solved by renewables and storage for the 99% of the cases when we still need to decarbonize industry, agriculture, construction, aviation, maritime shipping etc?
It makes absolutely and sounds like a solution looking for a problem, with a bunch of people who can’t let go attached to it.
It is the fax machine of the internet age. It is time to let go.
Yes, epr2 will get some state loans and cfds, if approved by EC.
I brought up Germany because it's a famous example of lots of subsidies going into transition/deployment
EEG costs are projected to rise per EWI because even though most expensive contracts are being over, it's paid more frequently. It's projected nr will reach 23bn/y.
"which is already solved by renewables and storage for the 99% of the cases" - it's not solved by far in Europe unless you add something on top, eg. Gas firming.
It's interesting to say nuclear is a fax machine in the internet age when nuclear is our youngest invention to extract energy while solar/wind/hydro are much older. Such arguments make no sense whatsoever
France is part of the EU power grid and flexibility comes from that not from nuclear power plants.
And the government had to rise the subsidies for nuclear energy to prevent higher rises of the energy prices. The costs for the consumers still raised.
And their power plants were in trouble in the last hot summer because the rivers were too hot to be used for cooling. Won‘t be the last time. And that will be a big problem when people turn on their AC in a heat wave but the power plants can’t power up because they don’t have enough cool water.
And that was before drone wars were a thing.
People react nervously when unknown drones fly around airports and power plants.
And didn’t we learn from the internet that centralization is a bad thing? Nuclear power plants are exactly that.
Imagine a grid where every consumer is also a producer who can satisfy their energy needs at least partially for themselves even without the grid. Try to blackout that.
"And their power plants were in trouble in the last hot summer" - blatant lie. Cooling was fine, it's env protection law to avoid damaging the fauna(read - to not boil fish). Yet, it affects about 0.02% of annual generation and valid almost exclusively to NPP without cooling towers. Yet in those exact periods EDF was net exporting about 14GW to neighbors, again, data is public. French nukes can handle ppl's AC's just well, probably EDF even hopes for that to modulate their npp less and get more $
"And didn’t we learn from the internet that centralization is a bad thing? Nuclear power plants are exactly that." France has a combination of centralized and decentralized power - npp's are distributed around the country but each can generate a lot of power. Even more distribution and you start paying a ton for transmission lines and maintenance. That's the reason Germany started subsidizing them from this year, with about 6bn/y. Full decentralization is not a feature and you still can't achieve it since transmission system is centralized, prime example being recent cascade blackout in Spain.
"Imagine a grid where every consumer is also a producer who can satisfy their energy needs at least partially for themselves even without the grid. Try to blackout that." - that'll mean having to need a fully parallel grid for firming. Besides, a lot of home solar are grid followers - if there's a blackout, it'll shut down too unless you have a special invertor+bess which many dont have (yet)
"And that was before drone wars were a thing." - a drone would do nothing to a NPP. Even an airplane impact can be tolerated depending how new is the NPP.
1- not being able to cool reactors physically, which is false
2- being a major deal, when it affects only 0.2% of generation per year, during a period when EDF is net exporting about 14GW to the neighbors
3- being an unfixable issue, which is again false. The problem exista for reactors without cooling towers. EDF can fix it by building them. But there's no financial incentive here. Where would EDF sell extra power when export is already maximized in that same timeframe and market prices in summer are low?
Now you are being mean, or are engaging in discussions to spread misinformation
"And their power plants were in trouble in the last hot summer because the rivers were too hot to be used for cooling" - this does imply that cooling was not possible. You said nothing about the fact it's just a legal limit. Nor did you specify what/how many NPP exactly got modulated. Is "their" supposed to mean all? A bunch?
"And that will be a big problem when people turn on their AC in a heat wave but the power plants can’t power up because they don’t have enough cool water." - this implies it's both a major problem during heatwaves and/or that it's unfixable, both being false.
"> being a major deal, when it affects only 0.2% of generation per year
Interesting choice of time period. Energy problems are rarely viewed from a yearly perspective." - did you omit on purpose LITERALLY the following text "during a period when EDF is net exporting about 14GW to the neighbors" ? France is largest net exporter on the continent both yearly and in summer in particular. You are free to inspect energy charts data.
"That time and money can be used for decentralization." - french generation is already sufficiently decentralized. They can decentealize even more by building more plants across the country.
"Drones will get cheaper and cheaper and more capable and many nuclear power plants aren’t built for that threat" - nuclear plants are built or upgraded to withstand airplane impacts, a drone would barely scratch the outer reinforced concrete.
All your statements are either made on purpose to mislead (especially considering how you dismiss your own statements or omit crucial parts of text quoting me) or you are communicating your thoughts in a very unoptimal way...
Nuclear power is one of the most flexible sources of power, especially PWR's with ALFC or even more so - BWR's
You can actually see how France is flexing in the summer on RTE website
France's nuclear operators have been claiming this for years. But recently started claiming that wind and solar are bad because they force nuclear to flex which is too expensive.
> Electricite de France SA said growing solar and wind generation was increasing equipment wear and maintenance costs at its nuclear reactors, which are forced to reduce output when power demand is insufficient.
"France's nuclear operators have been claiming this for years. But recently started claiming that wind and solar are bad because they force nuclear to flex which is too expensive." - one doesnt disprove the other.
French nuclear is extremely flexible https://www.services-rte.com/en/view-data-published-by-rte/g... but it doesn't mean it's free. Solar and wind without proper bess to support them are creating problems for other generators, acting as grid parasites without offering proper firm generation
That's false too. Most of the arguments from antinuclear activists in this direction are about physical capacity of modulating too slow, which was false. Regardless, EDF is modulating now mostly due to economic reasons. Above 50-60% capacity factor you'll be fine, beyond that it'll be problematic with any asset, at which point you'll need to ask yourself if you love gas or you let nuclear run for some minimal CF or if you mandate each NPP to build a bess buffer to absorb capacity when needed
Most of the claims from nuclear opponents talk about lack of flexibility in nuclear without specifying whether they are talking about technical or economic flexibility. Dishonest nuclear proponents then interpret that in a strawman way, as if the opponents were arguing they couldn't technically scale power output.
You can design a load following nuclear reactor (that's the industry term, only activists and marketers say flexible). Nobody does that because the basic NPP design that everyone uses is for a base load reactor. We have had load following NPP designs for 50 years but getting them approved is a political process that greens block.
You are just trying to politicize the laws of physics due to your own lack of understanding of the topic. Meanwhile, your solar panels are manufactured mostly with power gotten from coal, in the 3rd world, and are mostly sited in places where they do little to no good while at the same time destabilizing the grid. Then you have the temerity to argue with actual engineers who spend their lives studying this topic. Seriously???
load following for modern reactors is mostly embedded. For some Gen2 it's possible to adapt ALFC from Framatome (like Germany did in the past). But if you want fastest load follow you need BWR's.
Solar manufactured from coal is irrelevant, it's offsetting that carbon many times over during lifetime. A real problem is on the other hand providing firm power. In some regions like Australia it could be realistic to get by with ren alone. In other regions like say Germany, it's not realistic and confirmed even by Fraunhofer ISE
Calling BS on the last claim there. It's not realistic to do it in Germany with just batteries for storage (since something like Li-ion batteries are poorly suited for handling Dunkelflauten or seasonal storage). Throw in a very low capex, if poor RTE, storage technology and renewables can easily get to 100% anywhere.
I will add that if a place like Germany tries to compete in energy-intensive industry against places nearer the equator with cheap, low seasonality solar they're going to lose.
> This tells me you’ve never looked at a demand curve. In for example California the demand swings from 18 GW to 50 GW over the day
Have you been looking at "net demand" curves? Total demand variation is not too large over the day. The wind/solar production enormously increases the magnitude of remaining demand difference over the day.
Nobody is talking about batteries to deal with demand swings between seasons though. Capacity has to accommodate whether it's nuclear or fossil or battery or renewable. The issue is day to day variation. And it does not matter how much wind/solar capacity you have, you can't supply demand without storage. That is untrue of other generation types.
Other generation might use batteries to take the edge of peaks, but that would only be done if it made total cost cheaper. That's not the case for renewables. If there were no other generation then they would have to use storage, so it's always going to make them more expensive.
The net demand curve varies 30 GW over the period you posted?
It goes 7 GW negative.
The problem with nuclear power is that about all costs are fixed. It costs 18-24 cents/kWh when running at 100% for 40 years excluding backup, transmission, final waste disposal and taxes.
Now remove any earning potential from large portions of the day coming from renewables and storage and the economics simply does not pan a out.
> The net demand curve varies 30 GW over the period you posted?
Right. Due to solar/wind.
Gross demand is much flatter. Not completely flat, but it's obvious that it does not require anywhere near the amount of storage or variation that renewables alone would require.
Are you sure with the numbers? Maybe for failed projects like Vogtle it may be true but otherwise, the cost is about 4.7ct/kwh everything included looking at swiss open data. And Goesgen didn't run at 100% CF all these years.
You mean middle eastern labor and design that doesn’t fly with western regulations?
Sounds applicable!
Let’s first acknowledge that KHNP pulled out of all western projects except the Czech one after their settlement with Westinghouse. They don’t exist as an option.
Then let’s look at the Czech subsidies. They aren’t materially different compared to any other modern western nuclear construction.
They’ve shaved a few billion from the headline number but the project is still pure cost plus putting all construction and financial risk on the governments tab.
Barakah is Korean design partly based on Westinghouse patents. That's why for Barakah they had a deal with Westinghouse just like with Czechia. The design is in line with western regulations. Labor is not that relevant for such projects. By far the biggest problems are depleted supply chain and immature design (Both EPRs and Vogtle started when their design wasn't finalized. On top, EPR suffered major design changes for each build due to specific regulations, especially in UK)
Czechian govt subsidies were approved by EC and are pretty ok cost-wise. Even 11bn/reactor is fine considering FLA3 is 23bn. On the other hand, Germany spends on EEG alone each year almost a full equivalent of a failed FLA3. And with new transmission subsidies it's even higher. Both EEG and transmission subsidies are not subject to EC approval, unlike subsidies for nuclear
But agree with the other comment - your remarks sound rather racist
Hmm...any evidence for your weird and to be frank a bit racist claims about "middle eastern labor and design" as well as regulations?
You may not be aware of this, but the UAE is one of the richest countries in the world, on par with with the United States and ahead of Denmark and most of the European nations.
That is incorrect. The profitability floor of even the catastrophic FOAK FV 3 build is 9 cents/kWh for a 2% ROI, with around €130 for 4%. The EPR2 units are lower, around €90/MWh for 4% return and €70-80 for 2% return.
Contrast this with French intermittent renewables projects, which are not profitable at all, EDF receives massive subsidies for them.
Thanks for confirming how insanely expensive new built nuclear power is by using absolutely insanely low discount rates.
Hinkley Point C just got a bridging loan to finalize the plant, after 8 years of building so the remaining risk should be minimal. They got an 7% interest rate. Then EDF needs to make profit on top of that.
When using real world discount rates for FV3 you end up towards 20 cents/kWh.
I love how you quote the EPR2 units cheaper than the proposed subsidies. This looks like blind conviction rather than a factual statement.
The proposed subsidies for the EPR2 fleet is a 10 euro cents CFD and interest free loans. Sum freely, but you end up towards 20 cents per kWh.
And that is excluding for example the backup needed when suddenly half your fleet is offline at the same time. Like happened in France during the energy crisis and multiple times in Sweden last year.
I don't call out all the disinformation you put forward en-detail, that would be far too much work.
The interest-free loans are also not a subsidy, at least not the loans, as the principal has to be repaid in full. The lack of interest payment is a subsidy, but that's a lot less than the loan amount, and being a state company EDF can get pretty good interest rates on the free market. Oh, and those loans will only be for half of the investment.
My estimates put the value of this subsidy at around €20 billion. So less than 1 year of Germany renewable subsidies just from the EEG. For plants that will run for 80 years or more and produce electricity worth >€600 billion (at 10 cents).
20/600 = 0,0333 or around 3,3% of those 10 cents, or less than about 1/3 of a cent per kWh.
And of course the French state owns EDF, so when EDF makes a profit, the state gets those profits. As they have been doing consistently for the last half century or so.
So as with CFD payment, which you put as a subsidy of 10 cent/kWh, there is the tiniest grain of truth in your claims, but then inflated beyond the pale.
Speaking of the CFD: the expected wholesale price of electricity in Germany is expected to be around €90-95/MWh in the next couple of years, and prices have tended to be higher than predictions. And if the wholesale price goes above the CFD price, then EDF loses money on the CFD, because they get exactly the CFD, no less, but also no more.
Assuming the predictions are correct and apply to France as well, the subsidy would be 0,5-1 cents/kWh, so a factor 10-20 less than your claim of 10 cents, and only if wholesale prices actually stay low.
After all, the CFD is primarily necessary, because the subsidized and preferentially treated intermittent renewables have wrecked havoc with wholesale electricity prices, with prices in Germany in 2025 fluctuating wildly between + €583/MWh and - €130/MWh.
It's not really the price, it's the artificially and unnecessarily introduced fluctuations that cause problems for investors.
And of course those renewables that are causing al this havoc get vastly more subsidies per kWh than this. And preferential loans, preferential feed-in, preferential regulations etc.
Anyway, your claim was 20 cents of subsidies per kWh. The real value ranges from less than a cent (could even go negative) to maybe up to 2 cents. So very generously you inflated by a factor of only 10-40.
So you can see why I don't debunk all of the disinformation you put forward, just some of it. It's too much work.
Do you think that demand is willing to pay 18-24 cents per kWh excluding backup, insurance, transmission, final waste disposal etc.?
I can tell you they won’t. Which is why there’s currently 0 commercial nuclear reactors under construction in the US.
You also have to look at it from incentives. Why should a person or company with solar and storage buy horrifyingly expensive nuclear power from the grid when their own installation delivers?
Well, they don’t.
Why should their neighbors prefer horrifyingly expensive grid based nuclear electricity to their neighbors excess renewables?
Well, they don’t.
Do you know what they do instead? These steady consumers. They buy financial instruments like futures and PPAs to ensure steady price and supply.
The problem for new built nuclear power is that these financial instruments costs a fraction of the price new built nuclear power requires.
New built nuclear power is the fax of the internet age. It is time to let go.
The exact opposite of what you write is true. Please inform yourself.
They are currently buying up all the nuclear they can get their hands on, reactivating shut down plants, investing both in startups and in existing players to build as much nuclear as they can:
Storage would mean just to reroute the energy to storage, otherwise you need to lower the power plant‘s output what doesn’t happen fast in nuclear power plants
If I go around bragging about my awesome self-built home design for years, and then buy, clear and level a plot of land, while it is a necessary step, it is also largely irrelevant to my ability to actually build the house, much less the quality of the finished building.
Building the actual reactor is the challenging bit.
You claimed that building the non-nuclear parts of the construction as evidence that the reactor itself will successfully be built, which is nonsense. That someone builds a launchpad tells you nothing about their ability to build and successfully launch rockets
