The French managed to. I guess they have super-human engineering prowess.
The trick is that they keep building the same obsolete US-based design instead of re-inventing the entire thing from scratch for each plant.
Imagine how much more accessible computers would be if you could just copy the operating system from one "printed" circuit board to another, instead of hand-wiring all the transistors, then hand coding process scheduling and I/O.
The French did this totally unprecedented novel thing where they manufacture more than one identical part at a time in a line of assembly stations, and the parts of the plants are interchangeable. I doubt such things transfer to other countries or industries though.
> The French managed to. I guess they have super-human engineering prowess.
As a french Engineer, I can confirm this. For work inquiries, please reach me at pyrale@oversized.ego
> The trick is that they keep building the same obsolete US-based design
In fact, we don't keep building them. The last N4 reactor was delivered in 2003. Since then, aside from the failed joint-venture with Germany that is the EPR, France essentially delivered nothing. That's not really an engineering issue so much as a political one.
Also France didn't "keep building the same reactor", and didn't build "obsolete" reactors. From the initial reactors (the CP generation) to the N4, the buildings got larger, late reactors produced 60% more energy than the original ones, and significant safety improvements were made. Safety changes were also backported on previous installations. In fact, the major reason why Framatome freed itself from the Westinghouse license is that it provided significant independent contribution to the original design.
The French and the US reasons are, from what I understand, quite different. I don't know the US situation that well.
In France, many factors were involved:
* France over-producing power for decades around y2k, which meant it was hard to commit the country to build more nuclear reactors.
* The EPR being an over-engineered fiasco due to it being designed in a Franco-German partnership which quickly folded, but the design was kept.
* The privatization of the energy sector involved a lot of restructuring for EDF, and the creation of Areva. This had a lot of involvement, but the main one is that the state took a hands-off stance, and EDF and Areva started competing with each other rather than collaborating.
* Areva got mismanaged quite heavily. People like to point out the Olkiluoto fiasco, but what really killed the company was the Uramin scandal.
* Politicians since 2007 started asking hefty dividends from public companies, involving EDF, in order to prop up the government's budget. That created an investment deficit, and significant debt for EDF.
So yeah, lots of things, but the underlying issue seems to be that France used to have a culture of the state coordinating huge projects, which was lost with the new generation of politicians. There seems to be an appetite for new reactors, but the industry is significantly harmed by 20 years of political mixed signals, and whether the current politicians and the industry can deliver remains unclear.
According to the list, most power plants came online in the 1980s, so it doesn't sound like they "keep building" more of them. The most recent ones, Civaux and Chooz-B, came online in 2000. Flamanville appears to be incorrectly stated as having came online in 2020. Clicking the link, you see that its 2 reactors came online in 1986 and 1987, and as for the third one -- "as of 2020 the project is more than five times over budget and years behind schedule. Various safety problems have been raised, including weakness in the steel used in the reactor. In July 2019, further delays were announced, pushing back the commercial introduction date to the end of 2022. In January 2022, more delays were announced, with fuel loading continuing until mid-2023, and again in December 2022, delaying fuel loading to early 2024."
All of the nuclear reactors in France were built by previous generations.
As an aside, I'm pro- wind, hydro, geothermal, solar, and nuclear. (I'm also very pro-smart-design which obviates the need for created energy.) However I only really see nuclear proponents (and those of fossil fuels) attacking renewables. And I only really see fossil fuel and nuclear proponents making widespread demonstrably false statements. My rooftop solar is producing a big yearly surplus, supplying my neighbors with energy for their AC etc. I think nuclear proponents who say that nuclear is so cheap and so easy should prove it by building their own nuclear reactors and make tons of money. Go ahead, just do it. Stop talking and do it.
>As an aside, I'm pro- wind, hydro, geothermal, solar, and nuclear. (I'm also very pro-smart-design which obviates the need for created energy.)
I think many of the people who aren't anti-nuclear, would agree with all that.
>However I only really see nuclear proponents (and those of fossil fuels) attacking renewables.
I rarely see that here. What I tend to see are people who don't like the idea of nuclear power making misleading or false statements about nuclear power. (Like in the original message of this thread where the claim is made "After 70 years of trying we haven't built an economic traditional nuclear reactor.")
>My rooftop solar is producing a big yearly surplus, supplying my neighbors with energy for their AC etc.
This statement is true in one small sense and misleading in another. You are likely providing excess power during a sunny day in the summer and less power than you are using when it rains and you are providing no power at other times (like at 2:00 AM.). While at the end of the year you might produce more kilowatts than you in total used, that isn't going to help your neighbors when it is raining. The only issue with consumer roof-top solar is that it is the most expensive form of power ever created and consequently has to be heavily subsidized by your neighbors who don't have rooftop solar.
A problem with both nuclear-bros as well as anti-nuclear folks is that they tend to get their information through armchair experts who oversimplify extremely complex topics. Neither group tends to understand the real reasons for costs, the risks and dangers of technologies (including other than nuclear, for proper comparisons), or even the complexities of simply emissions which is far more than electricity and transportation and includes daily and seasonal fluxuations across an extremely non-homogeneous landscape.
FWIW, the IPCC advocates for a diversified portfolio which includes nuclear, and this is the general stance of most climate and energy researchers as the simplified version of reasoning (I know, ironic) is "don't take it off the table." When to use it, how much, and where is more controversial, but this gets extremely complicated quite quickly. It's rather problematic when the people disseminating information (i.e. science communicators; both on youtube as well as news) are not actively aligned with scientific consensus.
>FWIW, the IPCC advocates for a diversified portfolio which includes nuclear, and this is the general stance of most climate and energy researchers as the simplified version of reasoning (I know, ironic) is "don't take it off the table." When to use it, how much, and where is more controversial, but this gets extremely complicated quite quickly.
This seems like the most reasonable approach - if someone disagrees with this, it would be interesting to hear their reasoning.
> I rarely see that here. What I tend to see are people who don't like the idea of nuclear power making misleading or false statements about nuclear power. (Like in the original message of this thread where the claim is made "After 70 years of trying we haven't built an economic traditional nuclear reactor.")
I think it's just easier to notice "misleading or false statements" when they contradict what we like to think rather than when they are going in the same direction.
For example, are you 200% sure of your sentence "The only issue with consumer roof-top solar is that it is the most expensive form of power ever created"?
Is that true everywhere, all the time? Because if not, how is that not as much as "misleading or false statements" than the original sentence you quote? But of course, this sentence of yours does not strike you as misleading, because you truly believe it's not misleading.
Also, while I don't think the anti-nuclear are less numerous or less idiot, the pro-nuclear usually are also very very prone to think they are smarter when they are not, and start using bullying method to "fight the infidels", which, at least in my circle which are neutral, is really starting to make that side looks bad.
>I think it's just easier to notice "misleading or false statements" when they contradict what we like to think rather than when they are going in the same direction.
That is likely true, but what is your point? The statement I said was false and misleading was in the message that started this thread:
>After 70 years of trying we haven't built an economic traditional nuclear reactor.
Are you saying that was a true statement?
>For example, are you 200% sure of your sentence "The only issue with consumer roof-top solar is that it is the most expensive form of power ever created"? Is that true everywhere, all the time? Because if not, how is that not as much as "misleading or false statements" than the original sentence you quote? But of course, this sentence of yours does not strike you as misleading, because you truly believe it's not misleading.
This sort of incessant questioning is a form of sealioning. I guess I could have been more clear I meant that the obvious energy policy issue with consumer rooftop solar is that it is the most expensive form of power thus it has been given huge subsidies. (The money used for such subsidies is not unlimited and this money is fungible - obviously a dollar going to subsidize an extremely expensive rooftop solar installation could have gone much, much farther if it had gone to support a utility grade solar installation.) I think a charitable reading of my sentence would have understood what I meant.
> According to “numerous scientific studies,” none of the world’s more than 600 nuclear power stations have ever been economically viable, and the plants could only be operated for years due to government subsidies, the institute claims.
> That is likely true, but what is your point? The statement I said was false and misleading was in the message that started this thread
You realize the part I was quoting started with "I rarely see that here".
Obviously, my sentence was not "the element that you say is incorrect is in fact correct" but rather "that is not a surprise that you notice incorrect element when they are saying something you don't like". This second part recognizes that the element may be incorrect. The point is when you say "I rarely see that here": your impressions have no value, they do not correspond to any reality.
> Are you saying that was a true statement?
I am saying that it is not a worst statement as the one of yours I've quoted. The problem of the statement you quoted is that it is open to interpretation: what is "built", what is "economic", what is "traditional".
Of course, you will pretend it is "false" because you will find one exception, or you will say "it's economic without the artificial extra costs that I have arbitrarily decided are the results of baddies because I don't like them"
I personally think this sentence is bad because it's way too imprecise and generalist. I think only idiots will think it is "false", and only idiots will think it is "true", the reality is that this sentence cannot be called "true" or "false" as it is true to some extend and false to some extend.
> This sort of incessant questioning is a form of sealioning.
Once again you miss the point. I don't care if your statement is true or not, or precise or not. My point is that you are blaming someone for not doing what you don't do yourself.
Your sentence was, according to your own standard (not mine, YOURS), objectively pretty bad (which is not the same as "incorrect"):
1) "the ONLY issue" is obviously highly debatable, as what is an issue for someone may not be an issue for someone else (or be a "small issue"), and it highly depends of the objective and what people care about
2) "the most expensive form of power EVER CREATED". This is technically 100% incorrect: it is totally unreasonable to pretend that modern solar is a more expensive form of power than the form of power used one or two centuries ago. Of course, you can answer "it's obviously not what I mean", but I know that and I don't say you have made a mistake, what I'm saying is that you are the one reacting to such approximations if they are "anti-nuclear".
3) "the MOST EXPENSIVE". Again, while it can be true, it is not at all trivial and even "decidable". In a parallel thread, you admit yourself that you take the "average", which is a very very bad reasoning: if a country decided to build a series of crap nuclear plant with turbines of sub-par efficiency, according to you, it would objectively mean that the nuclear power will intrinsically be worse. A better metric instead of the average would be to take the minimum: it corresponds to the real potential of the technology, probably ignoring old technology (so it is also a good thing to do for nuclear) (sure, there may be circumstantial effect, but at first order, they exist in all the forms, so it's fair. While it is not perfect, it is anyway already way better than taking the average). If we do that, solar power is better than nuclear power. And this is only with the US numbers, but you can easily decompose by state and cherry-pick the ones going in one way or another, or add other countries in the world. It scientifically does not make sense, the numbers that you use cannot answer the question of knowing if the form of power is "more expensive" or not in a debate about future decision, especially when they are all so close.
4) the fact that the sentence is a very naive generalization.
Again, let's be clear: I'm not criticizing you for your statement, or saying your statement is incorrect.
What I'm saying is that someone would have behave exactly like you, would have written exactly the same kind of statement, would have been as clear and precise, but it would have been anti-nuclear and you would have said "yet another example of anti-nuclear being lying or misleading".
> I think a charitable reading of my sentence would have understood what I meant.
This is a good summary: you are asking people to be charitable when reading your sentence and try to understand what you mean by refitting the terms to make sure the sentence is true, but you don't do that to others.
As I've said, the statement that you are saying is a lie is true "in some extend", and, if you really believe in what you've said to me, you should just be charitable and understand what they mean in order to refit the terms so that this sentence is true.
This is not my assertion and has been covered in discussions on this web site for a long time.
>Rooftop solar photovoltaic installations on residential buildings have the highest unsubsidized levelized costs of energy generation in the United States. If not for federal and state subsidies, rooftop solar PV would come with a price tag between 147 and 221 U.S. dollars per megawatt hour.
It would be extraordinary if these one-off rooftop solar photovoltaic installations would be low cost. They are more dangerous to install than ground based solar farms and much more costly - the real question is why are they so heavily subsidized? It really is sort of a reverse Robinhood scenario where less well off consumers subsidize their wealthier neighbors.
> The latest report from Lazard on LCOE also gives similar numbers:
I'm not convinced you read the doc you cited.
In it, it clearly states that the levelized cost of energy for solar PV rooftop residential ranges from $115/MWH while gas peaking is $114/MWH and nuclear is $141.
Your source also states quite clearly that these costs depend on the circumstances (i.e., each case is a case) and it points to unsubsidized costs.
If I get a quote from a rooftop vendor that sells gold plated PV panels to install in a cave, that does not mean that residential PV panels have an expensive energy cost.
I guess I should point out these kind of insults are against the site guidelines.
>In it, it clearly states that the levelized cost of energy for solar PV rooftop residential ranges from $115/MWH while gas peaking is $114/MWH and nuclear is $141.
You are quoting the lowest value in each range, you need to consider the entire range:
$117 to $282 Rooftop residential
$115 to $221 Gas Peaking
$141 to $221 Nuclear
If you take the average from the range, the most expensive is rooftop solar. As the Statista web site states:
>Rooftop solar photovoltaic installations on residential buildings have the highest unsubsidized levelized costs of energy generation in the United States.
The LCOE of course also undercounts some of the costs associated with consumer rooftop solar. There is real value in having an energy source that isn’t so intermittent. With a low capacity factor, you need to spend money to deal with that. This might be through adding new power lines to bring in power from somewhere else, over building, adding gas peakers, adding energy storage etc. Obviously none of this is free and none of these extra costs are included as part of the LCOE of solar. You can see some estimates of this on page 11 of the report.
>Your source also states quite clearly that these costs depend on the circumstances (i.e., each case is a case)
Yes that is why there is a range. But if your point is that sometimes rooftop solar won’t be the most expensive form of power, that seems like moving the goal posts from your original response:
>>Care to show the basis of your personal assertion? It's an extraordinary and unbelievable claim.
>...and it points to unsubsidized costs.
Yes, that was actually my point. The real question is why is consumer rooftop solar so heavily subsidized? It really is sort of a reverse Robinhood scenario where less well off consumers subsidize their wealthier neighbors. The money available for energy subsidies is not unlimited and this money is fungible. A dollar going to subsidize an extremely expensive rooftop solar installation could have gone much, much farther if it had gone to support a utility grade solar installation.
>If I get a quote from a rooftop vendor that sells gold plated PV panels to install in a cave, that does not mean that residential PV panels have an expensive energy cost.
> I guess I should point out these kind of insults are against the site guidelines.
It's not an insult. It's a clear reference to the fact that your source does not support your claim, and it actually rejects it.
> You are quoting the lowest value in each range, you need to consider the entire range:
I'm actually not. If you read the source you cited, you'll notice that they provide a range of values for their estimates of what would be the levelized cost for energy from multiple sources.
The observed real world cases fall within the whole range. This means that they report real world examples of residential rooftop PV panels costing well below alternatives such as Nuclear.
If your thesis was that residential rooftop PV panels were the most expensive source of energy, your own reference refutes your baseless claim. You have to intentionally ignore all the cheapest real world examples of PV installations to proceed to argue they are the most expensive.
If you insist in arguing about statistical nonsense such as "I can find a PV panel that is both terribly expensive and generates no energy at all" then go right ahead, but cherrypicking that as your absolute reference would be disingenuous.
> Yes that is why there is a range.
The range does not exist so that people could lie and misrepresent the data. If the range covers examples of residential PV panels generating cheaper energy than nuclear or even gas, you should not discard them either because you either failed to read the data or tried to misrepresent it.
In particular, check the section on commenting - for example:
>Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
>>> You are quoting the lowest value in each range, you need to consider the entire range:
>I'm actually not. If you read the source you cited, you'll notice that they provide a range of values for their estimates of what would be the levelized cost for energy from multiple sources.
The observed real world cases fall within the whole range. This means that they report real world examples of residential rooftop PV panels costing well below alternatives such as Nuclear.
If your thesis was that residential rooftop PV panels were the most expensive source of energy, your own reference refutes your baseless claim. You have to intentionally ignore all the cheapest real world examples of PV installations to proceed to argue they are the most expensive.
There would be no reason to estimate a range if we only consider the lowest possible LCOE.
As the Statista.com article states:
>>Rooftop solar photovoltaic installations on residential buildings have the highest unsubsidized levelized costs of energy generation in the United States. If not for federal and state subsidies, rooftop solar PV would come with a price tag between 147 and 221 U.S. dollars per megawatt hour.
At any rate, the LCOE comparison between residential rooftop solar and nuclear is irrelevant to the main issue. The main issue is that if we want to subsidize a renewable energy source, why should we subsidize rooftop solar when we could subsidize utility grade solar or wind? Look at those costs - literally the highest cost estimates for both utility grade solar and wind are lower than the lowest cost estimate for residential rooftop solar. Money is fungible and not unlimited - a dollar that goes to subsidize residential rooftop solar is a dollar that would go much, much further if it was used to subsidize utility grade solar or wind. These residential rooftop solar subsidies are also unusual in that much of the subsidy is often paid by less well-off households to subsidize their wealthier neighbors.
> However I only really see nuclear proponents (and those of fossil fuels) attacking renewables.
The reverse is pretty much true too. It seems like both renewables and nuclear proponents should be taking turns bashing fossil fuels, but since both see each other as a competitor for "the future of power", that's where the banter goes.
> And I only really see fossil fuel and nuclear proponents making widespread demonstrably false statements.
You don't have to go further than this thread to find false statements about nuclear.
> "The leading German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin investigated whether new nuclear power plants can indeed contribute to a clean(er) economy. The answer is negative: all 674 nuclear power plants that were built worldwide between 1951 and 2017 were built with substantial government subsidies. Without such support they would never have come about."
Do those cost estimates include the absolutely insane over-engineering for safety that has been forced on the nuclear power industry and _only_ the nuclear power industry? I'd be shocked if a single other power generation method didn't double in price if it was forced to meet the same standards as nuclear. I guarantee you that the coal plants in Germany are killing more people every year than every single one of their Nuclear plants has combined over it's lifetime. And likely more than every single nuclear plant on the planet with the possible exception of Chernobyl
To be clear, I'm not saying there should be no regulations, and that just anyone should be able to build any kind of reactor they want anywhere they want with no concerns for safety etc. But I do _very much think_ that when you are considering a technology that increases safety and also increases cost, you have to consider what the alternatives are. Are _they_ safer than whatever the current thing is? If you force it to be more expensive and more safe, are you going to get less of it and instead get the other, cheaper, more dangerous thing?
That calculation has never been done (in the US at least) and the result is thousands to millions dead over the past 80ish years a result of continuing to burn coal instead of nuclear.
The US nuclear safety regime (which is what makes it so expensive and so impractical) has no concept of tradeoffs. It imagines a hypothetical perfect power generation that never kills anyone to which nuclear should be held. That standard is ridiculous now and was ridiculous 50 years ago when nuclear was _already safer than coal_.
The comparison being discussed in the article I linked is with clean energy alternatives. In that respect, nuclear does need significantly more safety measures than wind or solar, for example.
The problem with nuclear is that it's much more difficult to regulate effectively than most other industries, because the consequences of mistakes can be so much higher. E.g. Chernobyl contaminated food throughout much of Europe for months. The natural organizational reaction in that situation is to overcompensate.
Nuclear is likely to always be expensive for that reason, because you're never going to get economy of scale as long as companies can't e.g. mass produce nuclear plants and set them up all over the place. I also generally agree with the other reply to your comment by three14.
I consider this to be a pragmatic observation, not a judgment on whether nuclear might make sense in some hypothetical perfectly rational world.
The argument that the nuclear power industry suffers from "insane" over-engineering for safety and that this is the reason for the cost is brought up again and again, except there is no real evidence for this.
In fact it's easy to see that a large proportion of a the construction cost is the same as any other (e.g. gas, coal) thermal power plant, because they all need the same steam turbine. Now nuclear power plants have additional costs, also due to safety (and I would argue that we should expect that, a nuclear power plant has more challenges to a coal plant).
Moreover if you look at the cost increases for nuclear power plant projects, they are pretty much inline with the cost increases we have seen for most large infrastructure projects. They all have become significantly more expensive (recently build coal plant also went significantly over budget). Even the world nuclear forum says (https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec...):
> Nuclear power plant construction is typical of large infrastructure projects around the world, whose costs and delivery challenges tend to be under-estimated.
The reality is that nuclear power is just not cost-competitive (see also this analysis somebody else (in a counter solar argument) posted https://www.lazard.com/media/typdgxmm/lazards-lcoeplus-april...).
Especially considering that renewables are on an exponential curve and nuclear is not (and doesn't show any indication of how to get onto one). Because so much of the cost (and energy) is in the construction of a nuclear power plant, it is actually counter-productive to invest into nuclear power plants, because we will increase CO2 compared to an investment into renewables.
Not to pick on you, but every time this discussion happens on HN, someone argues that the nuclear power industry is burdened by far more red tape than other industries (probably true) and that if we simply reduce the red tape, we could profitably build new nuclear plants (probably true) and they would still be safe (probably not true). This isn't an engineering problem. This is a social problem. Suppose you offer to let people build with minimal regulation - the most profitable plants are going to be the ones that cut the most corners on safety. The great engineering team that made a safe but slightly more expensive reactor than the minimum allowed by regulation will be out of the market.
And unsafe nuclear is really unsafe in a politically terrible way. You are doomed to either have Chernobyls or a lot of non-optimal regulation, or excellent regulation in the world of spherical cows and frictionless planes.
Perhaps one of the new nuclear startups can find a solution to this, but it'll have to be by finding a way to mass produce nuclear within the existing heavy red tape regime. And in the real world, that's not a bad thing.
I am sure that new designs would be better on paper. I am also sure that a regulatory regime in which nuclear plants are allowed to be exactly as unsafe as fossil fuel power plants would somehow turn out in the real world of money and politics to actually be worse than fossil fuel plants.
I don't think we as humans know how to create a regulatory structure for nuclear that would keep away people who are willing to sacrifice principles for money, and at the same time allows new designs to easily be built.
Of all the things the government can and does subsidize, cheap electricity seems like a pretty good one, especially if it's clean. I suppose that does lead to sillyness like bitcoin farms though.
The goal, alluded to in the quote I provided, is to compare it to cleaner alternatives.
The article I linked ends as follows:
> "For all these reasons, nuclear energy, even though nuclear power is emission-free, is not a relevant solution for profitable, climate-friendly and sustainable energy in the future." According to the researchers, nuclear energy as a solution for climate protection is "an old narrative that is still as inaccurate as in the 1970s."
It's about nuclear vs. renewables, and renewables look like a much better investment these days (and years) considering the budget explosions of recent nuclear projects.
You'd be better using South Korea as an example rather than France these days. To add more context, South Korea is an incredibly, incredibly corrupt country that sends its exiting president to prison to the extent that I joke that we need a special prison just for presidents. Yet there are basically no nuclear accidents at the kind of scale that we saw from Japan. 100% speculating but it's almost as if the nuclear power plants are used as a deterrent and part of the national security apparatus perhaps similar to the logic that Ukraine may have had in the past.
The anti-nuclear crusade in the West is a bit worrisome given that if we had been better at dealing with nuclear as a whole there would be less coal and gas power plants all over the West now. As much as I can sympathize with the concerns about nuclear power related supply chain issues and risks of meltdowns + radiation almost all the problems I've seen in nuclear across countries and cultures don't come down to technical issues as much as structural ones due 90%+ to politics causing massive over-regulation of nuclear to become unviable both financially and politically. This seems silly because I strongly believe such efforts should be directed at the much greater, immediate, far more supportable threat to humanity's IMO of fossil fuels. Of course we kind of depend upon them now but given the problems we had from the 1980s into the 2000s with fossil fuels all the way to now the kind of resources we could have spent on renewables may have had better results simply stepping away from lobbying constantly against nuclear power and letting engineers do their best work in all areas of energy research.
Seriously, almost all the "but nuclear costs too much" arguments are a self-fulfilling prophecy of bad faith where people pile on more and more requirements like it's a really bad DoD project when it's much more complicated honestly. US DoD has operated tons and tons of nuclear reactors, for example, quite successfully with a pretty darn good safety record last I saw despite all sorts of other failures within the US Jobs Program - they're used in submarines!
It is my understanding that the French massively subsidize nuclear power because they essentially run it as a job program to keep nuclear engineers employed so that they can build nuclear bombs.
The French breeder program was such a "success" that it's been mothballed. They've put the work on a shelf and terminated any follow on reactor.
This tells me the French don't believe nuclear will power the world any time soon. If they believed that, they'd understand breeders would be needed, and would be working on them.
Except for the fact that french nuclear power is highly subsidized (partly by military budgets, partly other subsidies, partly by grossly underfunding for storage and decommissioning costs, which they are required to put funds aside for), is breaking at the seams last year for some time >80% of the power generation was down in France due to maintenance (picked up by "intermittent solar and wind").
That link doesn't contradict what I said? I said in summer last year (almost?, at the time I saw 2 different sources, one French said all, one German said almost all) all nuclear power plants were offline. Macron even went on TV arguing that they pulled forward maintenance to "prepare for the winter to support the German's lack of Gas" (seems not to happened according to your link, they were on record low output at the turn of the year).
The link shows ~25 reactors were up in the summer at the low point, out of 58.
If you want another link: [2] states that about half of the reactors were down. I don't know what news sites you use, but "almost all" or "all" reactors being down is simply false news.
Every time the fact nuclear power is subsidized is being brought up, I can't help but think of how much energy, in general, is highly subsidized, like other fossils and renewables. What makes it special in the case of nuclear?
Moving a technology down an experience curve is a positive externality. Technologies with good experience curves (like renewables) justify subsidy because of this. Nuclear, unfortunately, has not shown good experience effects.
The French have discovered that they vastly underestimated end-of-life costs. And the power having been sold and used at a price that did not fund those costs, they are well and truly screwed.
> And the power having been sold and used at a price that did not fund those costs, they are well and truly screwed.
I don't know where you read that, but that's nowhere in actual reasonable sources.
Actual serious sources [1] report funding is being set aside for dismantling, which may be significantly eased by the fact that these reactor are actually going to serve for longer than expected.
Whereas Germany has set aside €38 billion to decommission 17 nuclear reactors, and the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority estimates that clean-up of UK’s 17 nuclear sites will cost between €109‒250 billion over the next 120 years, France has set aside only €23 billion to decommissioning its 58 reactors.
That's about 6X less than Germany, per reactor. When is the last time that kind of project came in under budget?
The article is from 2017, yet reports number from 2013. In 2017, the total provisioning was 28~Bn€. Also French reactor are still working (and producing returns), as opposed to German reactors.
If you focus on dismantling costs, the example of Maine Yankee [1]: is way less dramatic: "In January 2002 Maine Yankee put the total decommissioning cost at $635 million."
The number provided for UK reactors is ludicrous compared to existing dismantling costs, and simply factors in 150 years of dry cask storage, whereas France has a deep storage facility on the way.
Also the author, Paul Dorfman, is an anti-nuclear proponent, it's not surprising to see this kind of numbers from him.
> whereas France has a deep storage facility on the way.
That has been "on the way" for how many years exactly? The reality is that after almost > 50 years of nuclear power we have exactly one long-term storage facility world-wide which has been commissioned last year (Finland). And somehow that was hailed as a success.
Also what do you think the storage cost for deep storage facilities are?
> That has been "on the way" for how many years exactly?
Research is completed, we're currently in the process of anti-nuclear groups using their legal recourse options. This project is not time-critical, so there is no reason to speed that up.
> Also what do you think the storage cost for deep storage facilities are?
Initial investment estimates are between €8bn and €16bn [1].
The numbers are from the respective national nuclear authorities.
Also, as of 2019, the ongoing cost of securing spent fuel at Maine Yankee is about $10M per year. At what point does the spent fuel storage there age out and need replacement?
>>> And the power having been sold and used at a price that did not fund those costs, they are well and truly screwed.
>I don't know where you read that, but that's nowhere in actual reasonable sources.
We know for a fact that France nationalized EDF last year and the debt is at currently 65 bn euros and growing. Since the company has been nationalized, the taxpayers are on the hook.
I wouldn't personally go so far as to say they're "screwed" but it's a documented economic fact that nuclear power in France has been sold at a loss, and still is.
Note that this debt is already real, whereas the cost of decommissioning and storing waste for hundreds of years is guesswork no matter which source you use. Operations in France are proven not to cover costs even before we get to that!
65 billions in debt and having to be saved by the state means you are not profitable. It doesn't matter where the costs come from in this case, they are not covered by the money EDF has accumulated from selling power, which was the point.
This debt is already a reality - and growing with interest rates if nothing else - and we haven't even gotten to the many billions more that have to be invested in the beat-up old plants to keep them running.
We also don't know how many billions more that have to be paid to decommission them and for storing the waste. Nobody knows this yet.
Nuclear power has always been a strategic choice, with extensive international treaties and special conditions in place to make it a reality despite it not being financially viable in the traditional sense. The costs have been socialised and pushed to future generations, deliberately.
Now that several decades have passed, we are the generations that have to start paying.
> It doesn't matter where the costs come from in this case, they are not covered by the money EDF has accumulated from selling power, which was the point.
That by itself isn't an issue. Plenty of companies take on debt to invest, for instance. My company intends to take €40bn of new debt in the next decade or so, and our investors don't see it as an issue.
That's why unit costs are important, that's what dictates whether the activity is reasonable, and how much debt can be supported by it.
> We also don't know how many billions more that have to be paid to decommission them and for storing the waste. Nobody knows this yet.
Plants have been decomissioned in the past already. Because of that, we have pretty reasonable estimates of how much dismantling costs. If you have specific points about why past dismantled structures are different from future ones, feel free to expose them. Otherwise, the "we don't know" discourse is basically FUD.
>That by itself isn't an issue. Plenty of companies take on debt to invest, for instance. My company intends to take €40bn of new debt in the next decade or so, and our investors don't see it as an issue.
But that isn't the case here. When the debt causes you to be bailed out by the government, is is an issue, wouldn't you agree?
EDF isn't a car maker that has to invest in a transition to electric cars (or whatever), they are basically bankrupt. EDF needs _additional_ billions in order to invest in the future, separate from the billions of debt it already accumulated. Since the organisation is nationalised, that money will come from the taxpayers.
>Plants have been decomissioned in the past already. Because of that, we have pretty reasonable estimates of how much dismantling costs.
Which decommissioned reactor are you thinking of?
Most decommissioned reactors are part of plants that have other active reactors, so they are not actually dismantled. EDF has postponed final decommissioning for several of its closed reactors by 50 years, Berkeley in the UK is still ongoing, Vandellos 1 in Spain (closed since 1990) will commence final phase in 2028, Rancho Seco in California, closed in '89 still costs money today, and so on.
Apart from that, the "end result" for decommissioning projects are always "and then the federal government takes over from here". Meaning that the true costs are unknown even when the projects are actually completed.
This is not FUD, it's reasonable concerns based on observed realities. A discussion can be had about nuclear power anyway - it has merits too of course - but the concerns can't simply be brushed aside and ignored. They are based on reality.
> But that isn't the case here. When the debt causes you to be bailed out by the government, is is an issue, wouldn't you agree?
EDF's current situation is an issue. My point, however, is that this is not related to electricity pricing, nuclear or not.
> Since the organisation is nationalised, that money will come from the taxpayers.
Yes, so what? France's general budget received tens of billions in dividends from EDF in recent years, would you say EDF saved as much for the taxpayer?
> Which decommissioned reactor are you thinking of?
maine Yankee, for instance.
> Apart from that, the "end result" for decommissioning projects are always "and then the federal government takes over from here".
That's unrelated to dismantling. This issue is about waste storage in the US.
>France's general budget received tens of billions in dividends from EDF in recent years, would you say EDF saved as much for the taxpayer?
Of course, my point is only that it's true to say that EDF sold the power too cheaply, otherwise they would have been profitable and debt-free.
The question that has to be answered is whether nuclear can provide power at a competitive price once all the costs are counted. Currently all the costs are not counted, and we keep discovering that the costs are way higher than any estimates have previously shown.
>> Which decommissioned reactor are you thinking of?
>maine Yankee, for instance.
Yankee costs 10 million USD per year still to this day with no end in sight.
"Securing these remnants of nuclear energy generation is an ongoing task that requires armed guards around the clock and costs Maine Yankee’s owners some $10 million per year, which is being paid for with money from the government."
This means that every year, at least 10 million USD has to retroactively be added to the actual cost of electricity generated by that plant.
Then some day the spent fuel has to be moved, and the current container structure has to be dismantled. Why doesn't that count as being part of the decommissioning costs?
To say that nobody knows what it actually costs is quite fair IMO.
> Of course, my point is only that it's true to say that EDF sold the power too cheaply, otherwise they would have been profitable and debt-free.
They have been profitable for decades.
As for the debt, part of the debt is logical for such a group to have (i.e. amortizing the expense that was or is being made to extend the plants' lifetime).
Part of it is due to being required by the government to make bad decisions (e.g. buying and recapitalizing Areva, giving 8 billions worth of electricity to their competitors this winter, ...). This debt is unrelated to EDF's operations.
> Yankee costs 10 million USD per year still to this day with no end in sight.
That is related to long term storage, not dismantling. There's no reason for that to cost billions in France, where a storage site is on the rails.
> Why doesn't that count as being part of the decommissioning costs?
Decomissioning a plant has two parts: dismantling, which is a one-time cost, and long-term storage, which is an ongoing cost. The specific issue with the US govt. is that, when the plants were being built, it guaranted that a storage solution would be built, but didn't deliver. That's why the government currently pays for storage. There is no technical reason for this to happen.
> This means that every year, at least 10 million USD has to retroactively be added to the actual cost of electricity generated by that plant. [...] To say that nobody knows what it actually costs is quite fair IMO
By that same logic, it's impossible to know the cost of anything. Maybe future politicians will force people to recycle their solar panels at outrageous cost?
The only logical decision is to separate the cost of decomissioning (dismantling, a reasonable duration of dry-cask storage and the cost of a long-term storage site) and the cost of political decisions.
How can you know if they were profitable or not before you know the final costs?
>> Why doesn't that count as being part of the decommissioning costs?
>Decomissioning a plant has two parts: dismantling, which is a one-time cost, and long-term storage,
Certainly, but the yankee plant is currently housing the fuel in a short-term storage container on-site. So the dismantling part is not completed yet, and the costs are ongoing. It's not yet in the "long-term-storage" phase of operations, which btw also cost money.
>Maybe future politicians will force people to recycle their solar panels at outrageous cost?
The difference with nuclear compared to other sources is that the costs of nuclear __have__ to be handled. If an operator of a solar panel plant goes bankrupt, the state doesn't have to pay a cent since the plant simply stops costing money when it is shut down. That makes it much easier to estimate the costs.
If an operator of a nuclear plant goes bankrupt however, the state simply has to cover all the costs to ensure proper handling of the fuel and waste.
We have to date not managed to do so reliably anywhere in the world, so how can we claim to know the costs?
> but the yankee plant is currently housing the fuel in a short-term storage container on-site.
It's hardly short term if it's been there for 26 years.
> It's not yet in the "long-term-storage" phase of operations
And, judging by the ongoing process, it's not close to be. For no technical reason, it's just politicians doing politician things.
So, the logical conclusion is that no one can predict what politicians could do. If they do this, what makes you think that they wouldn't pass a law forcing people to recycle current solar panels at an outrageous cost? You've been claiming that it's impossible to know anything about anything related to nuclear, but the same claims also hold for any other production source, since this kind of political decision is, essentially, arbitrary.
Welcome to the FUD, if you can do it, others can do it too.
>It's hardly short term if it's been there for 26 years.
It certainly is short-term storage. Short-term simply means that it is not intended for permanent final storage. All nuclear waste in the world is currently in short-term storage.
The costs of nuclear are not invented by politicians, as I have shown they are instead largely hidden by politicians.
So far you have compared nuclear waste to recycling solar panels, you have insinuated that having to manage it carefully is just a political decision, and now you think 26 years is "long term storage". I can just assure you that all of these things are completely wrong and encourage you to investigate it further on your own.
It's not about it being 26 years, it's about it being longer than the time needed to actually build the long-term solution, and no solution being planned because of political games.
Dry cask storage is the long-term prospect of US waste, but it's unrelated to producing electricity or the actual cost of anything. It's a political decision and paid for by government money, as it should be. Once politicians tire of wasting money, they can build the actual thing.
And if you believe this kind of stuff couldn't happen to your favorite technology, you're delusional.
The trick is that they keep building the same obsolete US-based design instead of re-inventing the entire thing from scratch for each plant.
Imagine how much more accessible computers would be if you could just copy the operating system from one "printed" circuit board to another, instead of hand-wiring all the transistors, then hand coding process scheduling and I/O.
The French did this totally unprecedented novel thing where they manufacture more than one identical part at a time in a line of assembly stations, and the parts of the plants are interchangeable. I doubt such things transfer to other countries or industries though.