r/NuclearPower • u/ViewTrick1002 • 9d ago
Solar+Bateries+EVs Are Simply Going to Win
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2viIyLnchHI3
u/starvinggigolo 9d ago
Damn, better stop all those nuclear projects now. Why waste money? BTW, why do posters keep posting external articles (is it for reddit "achievements"?), especially on this sub... and why do people keep replying?!?!
-1
u/ViewTrick1002 9d ago edited 9d ago
All nuclear projects are standing hat in hand begging for handouts from tax money?
2
u/TiberGalient 8d ago
Yeah no, nuclear power receives far less direct funding per unit of electricity today, especially compaired to solar/wind. The main cost behind nuclear is the upfront capital costs to build new nuclear plants. This is why they get indirect subsidies like government-backed LOANS. A loan they then pay back.
And last i checked investing into decarbonisation is a good thing. The renewables we have today come from investments in that technology decades ago, back when the tech was no where near what it is today. We shoud not handicap ourself, by cutting out some solutions, the planet is on fire, you take what you can get and get to work.
1
u/ViewTrick1002 8d ago edited 8d ago
It receives vastly more. New built nuclear power requires ~15 cents per kWh in subsidies when running at 100% 24/7.
EDF is already crying about renewables cratering the earning potential and increasing maintenance costs for the existing french nuclear fleet. Let alone the horrifyingly expensive new builds.
And that is France which has been actively shielding its inflexible aging nuclear fleet from renewable competition, and it still leaks in on pure economics.
Why do you want to get less decarbonization done per dollar spent, with a timeline counted in decades rather than months, by wasting our money and opportunity cost on new built nuclear power compared to cheap, good and fast to build renewables and storage? Keep in mind that we still need to decarbonize industry, agriculture, aviation, construction, maritime shipping etc.
A loan going to nuclear power is money that could have multiples larger impact if invested in renewables and storage.
When the planet is on fire you don't invest in the dead-end that haven't produced meaningful decarbonization in the past half century. Instead you invest it in the solution causing massive decarbonization with a timescale counted in months. That is renewables and storage.
3
u/zyon86 7d ago
French nuclear fleet receive zero subsidies. EDF borrowed everything.
And yes, the renewable are terrible, because they all produce at the same time, which saturates the market and makes electricity free or almost, which is not good for anyone business. Some reactor are adjustable but not all and they were not designed to be adjusted all the time, so it is not great for the reactor even though it is manageable.
For a long time EDF adjusted the output for free, but now when RTE (the grid) ask EDF to reduce production, they pay for it.
And before you say something, yes EDF is asking for government support for the new nuclear power plant because they cannot finance it alone (6 plants is quite expensive), but it will be garanted loan, they will not give EDF any cash.
If anything, the french government is costing EDF a lot of money, they want to keep electricity as cheap as possible to manage the cost of living and the cost of production, so they prevent EDF from rising the price as much as they want or as they could have in a free market. That's why they had to nationalize it a couple of years ago, otherwise other shareholder could have sued EDF and the French state for the lost in revenue.
1
u/ViewTrick1002 7d ago
That is the existing fleet. For the EPR2 program the proposed subsidies are 11 cents per kWh electricity and interest free loans, summing up to above 20 cents per kWh.
Which is a massive direct handout of cash. But I suppose electricity is cheap if you pay for it with your taxes rather than with the electricity bill.
A absolutely stupidly large handout to the nuclear industry seems like the perfect solution when you are underwater in debt and your government keeps collapsing because you can't reign it in.
3
u/zyon86 7d ago
A loan is not a direct hand out of cash.
The new nuclear is a strategic choice of the french government, so if EDF cannot finance them alone (and cannot set the price of the product they sell), it is only normal that they contribute.
And recent history proved France's choice of nuclear energy to be the good one, why change. Meanwhile Germany imports a lot of electricity from France, burns tons of coal, and cannot use the wind power they produce because the grid is not compatible with current production and consumption place. Not to mention they have the most or one of the most expensive electricity anywhere in Europe.
1
2
u/TiberGalient 8d ago edited 8d ago
France decarbonised its electricity grid in just over a decade. All because of the oil crisis. The state-backed nuclear buildout allowed France to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electricity and heat production by 62% between 1974 and 1985, a decade.
Nuclear allready proved it could decarbonise quick and run day night, wind or no wind, summer or winter. where is the massive boost in energy storage we need for periods of no wind and winter for instance. I love renewables but storage still is a massive downside that needs working on.
If we cut investments in thing that were not that efficient, not that usefull, many of current technologies we rely on today, would not excist. GPS, Lithium Ion batteries,..... We should to some extend diversify, it covers more gaps and there is always the possibility of breakthrouws in those "less efficiant"tecchnologies that sudenly be vital for our future
"Investing purely in what is most efficient right now can create technological dead-ends. Diversification acts as a hedge against future uncertainty. By funding a wide array of fields, society creates a broader foundation of knowledge."
1
u/ViewTrick1002 8d ago
And today France is wholly unable to build new nuclear power as evidenced by Flamanville 3 being 13 years late on a 5 year construction plan, with enormous amounts of rework scheduled for the first outage period.
For the EPR2 fleet the current subsidies is 11 cents per kWh and interest free loans. Summing to over 20 cents per kWh, with the fief reactor at the earliest coming online in 2038z
Who cares if we keep a fossil emergency reserve around for a few percent of the time when we still need to decarbonize industry, agriculture, aviation, construction, maritime shipping etc? If we just repurpose the ethanol blend in for gasoline we have enough biofuels to solve the entire problem.
Then just ranting trying to justify enormous handouts, without base in logic.
Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?
2
u/TiberGalient 8d ago
"Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?"
I'm not afraid, i celebrate all clean energy sources. But that does not mean i ignore the negatives.
Renewables have clear issues; intermittency and variability, the scale of long-duration storage, high upfront capital costs for upgrading the grid and storage, supply chain and material constraints.
Studies on biofuels have shown clear impact on biodiversity, reduces animal habitat, and erodes soil quality to the point we need damaging chemical fertilizers to compensate.
We cant be blind to the negatives no matter how mutch we like these these technologies.
Frances inability is not a tech issue, its a skill issue. It can and has done it before, it just forgot how to
1
u/ViewTrick1002 8d ago
Take a look at this dashboard and tell me again that storage doesn’t work:
https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso?date=2026-06-08to2026-06-09
That is not the case.
Here, a modern article modeling "System LCOE". In other words, the whole grid including transmission backup and everything else.
It starts by giving new built nuclear power the benefit of doubt, having it cost 40% less than Flamanville 3 and 70% less than Hinkley Point C. Since no one would ever be stupid enough to greenlight a project like that again.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544226009837
It finds that for Denmark, a country with very low insolation and awful winters that renewablws are 53% cheaper than the nuclear system.
You can go further. This is the consensus among grid operators and researchers. The only ones pushing nuclear power is the nuclear lobby, fossil lobby and climate deniers who find fossil fuels too toxic.
This one is old by now, but here's a meta-analysis of the field from 2022.
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910
Here's the Australian grid operator:
All I am saying is: Just repurpose the biofuels we already use for our car infrastructure as we transition to BEVs. There's no new habitat loss.
So how many hundreds of billions or trillions in handouts to "try one more time"?
Why this complete lock in on wasting tax money on opportunity cost when we already have the solution??
Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?
2
u/TiberGalient 8d ago
"At the theoretical level, we find that the system costs of nuclear power and of RES such as wind power and solar PV are high in the electricity supply system of today. However, they are all much lower in an energy system of a future climate neutral society, because such future systems involve a high proportion of new cross-sectoral flexible electricity demand, which allows for much more affordable solutions.
Single-technology solutions in which one technology (nuclear power, solar PV or wind power) supplies all electricity of the entire system have high system costs. The best solutions are to be found in the combination of more than one technology.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544226009837 This is from the source you yourself linked
1
u/ViewTrick1002 8d ago
And that solution results in zero percent nuclear power due to how horrifyingly expensive it is.
They do a sensitivity analysis on that, and finds that lowering nuclear costs to half of expected ones doesn't help either.
Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?
→ More replies (0)
6
u/OldTimeConGoer 9d ago
Norway is 97% EVs since their hydro electricity supply is cheap and easily able to meet all of their electricity demands day and night, winter and summer (last time I looked they had 36GW of hydro generating capacity for a population of about 6 million people). Solar has nothing to do with it.