> We haven't found a site for final storage yet either.
Nuclear waste storage shouldn't ever be "final". Nuclear waste processing and recycling today is far more advanced than it was in the past. Nobody knows what we can do in the future.
It's intellectually dishonest to extrapolate technological progress of so-called green technologies, but then not afford the same to nuclear technology, which has effectively been left in limbo for decades.
Fuel can be reprocessed, but most nuclear waste is not fuel.
Nuclear has received 100’s of billions in funding and shows little signs of the massive improvement needed to be cost competitive. It’s going to take a ~60% cost reduction to just catch up with current rentable prices.
Giant concrete structures, armed guards, medical officers, highly trained staff, decommissioning etc. Nuclear has never been cheap, and shows little sign of becoming so in the next 10 years.
I could say the same about wind or solar, it all depends on what you mean by "significant". The difference is that nuclear can actually support virtually any nation's energy needs today, wind and solar (or any other "clean" form of energy) can not.
Based on what evidence? Replacing all infrastructure today is hardly worth it, but wind and solar backed up by battery or hydro storage costs less than even base load Nuclear power.
Load following nuclear power costs even more per kWh than base load nuclear power. Which is why France imported and exported so much electricity while being theoretically 100% nuclear.
PS: Even battery backed up nuclear seems to be much cheaper than peaking nuclear power based on current market prices.
> Based on what evidence? Replacing all infrastructure today is hardly worth it, but wind and solar backed up by battery or hydro storage costs less than even base load Nuclear power.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation reveals that the amount of hydro or battery storage needed to support base load is orders of magnitude beyond current capacities:
Batteries themselves aren't that green anyway, Lithium can be considered a "conflict material" and there's no better "eco-friendly" alternative today.
Now I'm not saying technology and production can't or won't improve for these complements, but that's way into the future. If we count that progress in, we can't just discount nuclear progress.
> Load following nuclear power costs even more per kWh than base load nuclear power. Which is why France imported and exported so much electricity while being theoretically 100% nuclear.
Riddle me this, then: France has among the cheapest electricity prices in Europe, Germany has the highest after Denmark. France is almost entirely nuclear, Germany is big on wind, but also coal.
France imports/exports energy because that is how the grid in Europe works. If France didn't export to Germany, they'd need even more coal or natural gas to support base load. Germany's wind energy also causes peaks that need to be exported, sometimes at negative prices, more so than coal or nuclear:
> France has among the cheapest electricity prices in Europe
No, France has extremely subsidized electricity for consumers, but the economy pays the real price. Notably, French nuclear power is generated by the government rather than private industry allowing for minimal transparency in these subsidies.
France regularly needs to import electricity to cover peak demand despite being one of the world’s top exporters of electricity. It also meeds to regularly operate nuclear power plants at below 100% output because the market price often can’t support operations let alone capital costs. This was true before wind or solar became significant energy sources.
This means if other countries had adopted Nuclear then France would have needed even more subsidies. In a theoretical world with increasing Nuclear production globally, it’s costs just keep rising because demand is not a steady state.
> No, France has extremely subsidized electricity for consumers, but the economy pays the real price.
According to [1], not only are there significant taxes on electricity for households, but non-household prices are far lower, so I don't see where you got this information.
> France regularly needs to import electricity to cover peak demand despite being one of the world’s top exporters of electricity.
Again, this is how the grid works. European countries both import and export electricity to even out demand and production. This is more efficient than building out extra capacity that isn't needed most of the time.
> It also meeds to regularly operate nuclear power plants at below 100% output because the market price often can’t support operations let alone capital costs.
Like coal or gas plants, nuclear plants can be regulated to meet demand. This is a good thing, because demand varies seasonally. A low or even negative market price means production is too high relative to demand. Basic economics.
This is actually a far bigger issue with wind energy, which cannot be regulated in the same way. You end up with negative prices more often, as shown in the article that I linked to you.
> This means if other countries had adopted Nuclear then France would have needed even more subsidies. In a theoretical world with increasing Nuclear production globally, it’s costs just keep rising because demand is not a steady state.
Yes, demand is not in a steady steady, but that's a far bigger issue with wind and solar energy, where unsteady demand meets unsteady output. That would require far more buffering than steady nuclear power.
They tax all electricity while subsidizing Nuclear generation. Much like how the US has both farm subsidies and sales taxes on food. This is arguably due to non domestic production. EDF‘s finances are also wacky with huge debt both on and off the books, plus a very odd insurance situation.
>Yes, demand is not in a steady steady, but that's a far bigger issue with wind and solar energy, where unsteady demand meets unsteady output. That would require far more buffering than steady nuclear power.
Not so fast.
Nuclear needs both daily storage and unused capacity seasonally, just like wind and solar. The issue with nuclear is it also costs vastly more per kWh and due to long build times you need over provision pushing that kWh figure up more. On top of that they still need maintain them so you need to over provision even more again increasing kWh costs. And you still need storage to hit 100%.
The France model is to actually use a lot of non Nuclear power. The numbers look much better until you consider what customers are actually using vs just the raw production numbers for the country vs total demand. Something like (450 * .75 -61) / (450 - 61 + 21) so consumption is ~67% Nuclear which is not bad, but a long way from 100%. And this is also with regularly reducing output which again increases prices.
> They tax all electricity while subsidizing Nuclear generation.
That's different from subsidizing electricity for consumers to make it more affordable. Like many industries, nuclear gets some amount of subsidies, but so do renewables. That doesn't mean subsidies are the reason why electricity is so much cheaper in France. In Germany, wind energy is heavily subsidized - and it is paid for with higher consumer prices.
> Nuclear needs both daily storage and unused capacity seasonally, just like wind and solar.
Yes, but orders of magnitude less. You keep nitpicking nuclear while completely ignoring the fact that wind and solar fails miserably on these metrics.
> The issue with nuclear is it also costs vastly more per kWh and due to long build times you need over provision pushing that kWh figure up more.
Of course nuclear isn't the cheapest form of electricity generation, neither is wind or solar. However, as of today it's the only one that can sustain a grid for almost any country without simultaneously relying on massive amounts of fossil fuels or extremely expensive buffering infrastructure.
If that wasn't the case, everyone would be doing wind and solar everywhere. If wind and solar was so clearly superior, it wouldn't need any subsidies at all. The path to a green future would be clear. Unfortunately, it's not that simple.
> That's different from subsidizing electricity for consumers
No, the only question is the relative subsidies vs taxes, and the revenue from taxes are significantly less than the subsidies. These taxes go right back to the industry and the government adds more to the pot, resulting in a net subsidy. (US telecom’s got some similar taxes passed.)
> orders of magnitude less
Nuclear ends up needing more storage because wind and solar can be crafted to roughly follow load. Yes, peak usage does not exactly match solar, but it’s vastly better than nuclear which produces 1/2 it’s output at night when demand goes way down. Sure, you can buy more nuclear capacity, but buying more wind / solar capacity also reduces the need for storage.
The other option is to vastly over build nuclear capacity which sit’s idle 99% of the year. That’s ridiculously expensive per kWh.
> Of course nuclear isn't the cheapest form of electricity generation, neither is wind or solar
New wind, solar, and hydro are the three cheapest electricity sources. Read up on some of those solar power purchase agreements, it’s hitting under 3c/kWh without subsidies. Solar is not a great fit near the poles, but you can cheaply transport it 1,000+ miles north.
> No, the only question is the relative subsidies vs taxes, and the revenue from taxes are significantly less than the subsidies.
I've tried to find the extent of subsidies to the nuclear industry in France and I failed. It's not public information as far as I can tell. So, how would you know?
> Nuclear ends up needing more storage because wind and solar can be crafted to roughly follow load.
I've given you a link that calculated that Germany would need decades worth of worldwide battery production to buffer its renewables. It also doesn't have near enough locations for hydro storage.
Meanwhile, the share of France's nuclear is far higher than that of Germany's renewables. If that explanation was true, France would have to have massively more buffering than Germany, which clearly isn't the case. This brings us to your alternative explanation:
> The other option is to vastly over build nuclear capacity which sit’s idle 99% of the year. That’s ridiculously expensive per kWh.
So in this explanation, not only are France's electricity costs in reality far higher than those of other countries because of nuclear subsidies, but those subsidies are so large that they depress the price of electricity to half of that of Germany, which has all this really "cheap" renewable energy.
To show how unlikely this is, take the cost offset for a single cent per kWh for France's energy usage[1]:
450 billion kWh * 0.01 EUR = 4.5 billion EUR
That amounts to almost 0.5% of total annual tax revenue[2] for a single cent, or over 5% just to explain the consumer price difference between Germany and France without accounting for all this supposed extra cost that nuclear is causing. Yet, somehow France manages to hide this enormous expense in its accounting?
> New wind, solar, and hydro are the three cheapest electricity sources. Read up on some of those solar power purchase agreements, it’s hitting under 3c/kWh without subsidies.
I'm not contesting that they are cheap on paper, but they're not that cheap if you count in the infrastructure to actually make them support a nation's grid in the general case. Again, if it was all so easy why isn't everybody 100% invested in wind and solar everywhere? Why bother with anything else? You're ignoring a lot of factors, like land use or location requirements. There's a vast difference in wind output depending where it is, and hydroelectricity doesn't work at all without a suitable location.
Of course there are cases where wind, solar and especially hydro totally make sense. That doesn't mean it's a solution for all energy needs. We can make do without nuclear, we can make do without fossil fuels, but as it is, we can't make do without both. That's the issue at hand.
Is wildly incorrect. When calculating storing wind and solar power you want to minimize total costs, in most cases this results in over productions resulting in a lot of ‘wasted’ power.
Do this and you don’t get 6TWh for Germany. The country only uses 556.5 TWh per year or ~1.5 TWh per day. 0.2 TWh is a high but much more reasonable estimate. Considering they already have .0377 TWh of storage or 19% of that suddenly the numbers don’t look that huge.
> massively more buffering than Germany
France has massive buffering from the rest of the European electric grid. It’s fine because they use peaking power not actually going 100% Nuclear, using significant peaking power generation.
PS: France uses 6,939.52 kWh (2014) per year. A 0.1 euro discount is 70$ per person per year, not exactly crazy money. Germany and much of Europe on the other hand has huge energy taxes which push up their bills.
France (2013) spending central government 487.7€ billion, 562.9 Social Security, Local 252 billion, quasi government bodies 81.3€ billion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_France
> The country only uses 556.5 TWh per year or ~1.5 TWh per day. 0.2 TWh is a high but much more reasonable estimate. Considering they already have .0377 TWh of storage or 19% of that suddenly the numbers don’t look that huge.
The "average" isn't the issue here. If you just look at the graphs you will see that actual production is well below the required ~0.8-1.9 TWh load for several days in a row. That's how the buffering requirements multiply. You can also clearly see how massively larger the discrepancy between production and load is, when compared to the stable output of a nuclear (or fossil fuel) plant.
> France has massive buffering from the rest of the European electric grid. It’s fine because they use peaking power not actually going 100% Nuclear, using significant peaking power generation.
France doesn't have any buffering for itself that the other countries don't also share. As you can hopefully see by just looking at the graphs, Germany currently needs far more buffering than France:
> France uses 6,939.52 kWh (2014) per year. A 0.1 euro discount is 70$ per person per year, not exactly crazy money.
A 0.1 EUR (=10 cents) discount is ~670 EUR per person per year, or roughly 40 billion EUR per year, just as I calculated earlier. This is more than the entire military budget. If this kind of money was really spent on nuclear subsidies, do you think it could just be kept secret? Wouldn't it be all over the media, wouldn't every renewables lobbyist be touting it, talking about "the big nuclear scam" going on in France?
> Germany and much of Europe on the other hand has huge energy taxes which push up their bills.
France also has those taxes[1], but the taxes in Germany are even higher to pay for the renewables[2].
Ops typo 0.01 as should have been obvious by the calculation.
If you just look at the graphs you will see that actual production is well below the required ~0.8-1.9 TWh load for several days in a row.
Only because they had insufficient production. If you do the optimization extra production vs vs storage. It's more or less X$/kWh for storage, but Y$/kWh / (numbers of hours you would be storing it) for generation.
(to simplify) If you pay say 100$ per kWh of storage and 1,000$ per kWh of generation then storage is only a net savings up to 10 hours between generation and usage.
This ends up working out so you want enough generation that in the absolute worst day you still produce more electricity than you need. Be that from nuclear or wind. It's much cheaper to do this with returnables over very large areas.
Overcapacity is not inherently a bad thing as long as it's cheaper on net than the other options. It does absolutely destroy more expensive sources of production, but that's how economies are supposed to operate.
> Ops typo 0.01 as should have been obvious by the calculation.
It's not obvious that you made a typo there. Sure, reducing the cost by one cent is only ~70$ per citizen per year. But it's also only one cent, which is not much of difference, so you wouldn't really have a point there. The price difference to Germany on the other hand is about ten cents (=0.1 EUR).
What's more likely, you got yet another thing wrong after getting so many things wrong, or it was a simple typo?
> Only because they had insufficient production. If you do the optimization extra production vs vs storage. It's more or less X$/kWh for storage, but Y$/kWh / (numbers of hours you would be storing it) for generation.
There are days where production is 1/10th of the requirement, followed by days where production is double that required. Some days, there just isn't enough wind. What's the overcapacity required there? Where exactly does it show up in your earlier calculation of kWh cost?
It's pretty telling that you're ready to point out the demand to production discrepancy for nuclear, but when it comes to wind, which has far higher such discrepancies, you basically ignore it.
> Overcapacity is not inherently a bad thing as long as it's cheaper on net than the other options. It does absolutely destroy more expensive sources of production, but that's how economies are supposed to operate.
Overcapacity destroys electricity infrastructure if it's not manageable anymore. Negative energy prices signify that the grid is nearing its limits.
Also, if you end up needing 5-10x more capacity than base load, is it really still cheaper?
Frances electricity prices are 0.01 euro’s lower than Great Britten a comparable economy, but France is still higher than much of Europe.
> There are days where production is 1/10th the requirement.
Wind production in a single country on it’s own is extremely variable.
Germany: “The day with the lowest wind yields was 24th July 2018. With an average output of 1338 MW, corresponding to 10 percent of the average daily output, only 32,1 GWh of wind power was fed in on this day.”
However, solar output on that day was not also 10% of normal.
Low solar power and low wind power days are inversely correlated. Further, variability decreases over larger geographic areas.
A realistic look at generation goes something like this.
As an optimization problem you need to compare daily demand which is seasonal and weather dependent with solar and wind generation which are also seasonal and weather dependent. Further, choosing wind locations that match your demand both seasonally and hourly. Figuring out the cost of excess capacity for each generating source.
After doing that you can back fill with imports and hydro generation which is dispatch able over time.
Storage is effectively a last resort, though after building it you want to maximize it’s use which means reducing the need to import and use hydro power.
Finally, on extremely unusual situations you ask some consumers to cut demand and finally use backup generators.
> Germany specifically has very high electricity prices, it’s a poor comparison to the rest of Europe even excluding France.
It's actually a great comparison, because Germany has put a lot of money into renewables, especially wind. Remember, we're comparing nuclear to renewables.
Earlier, you made the claim that renewables are so much cheaper than nuclear and that the only reason that nuclear is competitive is massive subsidies.
If that's true, Germany should at least be competitive. Which it would be, if you took out the taxes. The problem is, it's those taxes that pay for the renewables subsidies:
> Frances electricity prices are 0.01 euro’s lower than Great Britten a comparable economy, but France is still higher than much of Europe.
"Much of Europe" is countries with far lower incomes and little to no taxes on electricity[1]. Among comparable countries, France is among the cheapest, despite not having any geological advantages.
Anyway, the point is not that nuclear is so much cheaper. It really isn't, coal is both cheaper and can support a grid just as well. In this sense, Germany got the worst of both worlds: Lots of toxic coal but also high prices.
> Wind production in a single country on it’s own is extremely variable.
Well yes, that's the issue.
> Low solar power and low wind power days are inversely correlated.
Perhaps, but solar also is far less viable economically.
> Further, variability decreases over larger geographic areas.
So does loss due to transmission.
> After doing that you can back fill with imports and hydro generation which is dispatch able over time.
Well, where do these imports come from? Germany is not exactly a small country, how big of an area do you need to have a stable supply of renewable energy?
Remember, your claim is that renewables are cheaper, yet they need all this infrastructure and an electrical grid spanning vast areas of different countries.
You haven't done the math, you haven't provided a source, so what actually supports this claim?
> Finally, on extremely unusual situations you ask some consumers to cut demand and finally use backup generators.
It can't be recycled, that doesn't mean it never will be possible to neutralize it. This is a problem we can put off for a thousand years, we'll likely figure out a solution in the meantime.
We haven't found a site for final storage yet either.