alt Hacker NewsNuclear power has been killed off by economic forces; there’s no turning back. Solar and wind power generate cheap electricity in abundance, and midday electricity prices in Europe regularly dip into negative territory (as low as minus €500 (sic!) on May 1!).
Modern grids do not require high-risk investments in ultra-inert baseload power that ultimately fails to find a market; instead, they require low-risk investments in highly flexible power sources, such as batteries or pumped-storage facilities and transmission upgrades, that can capture surplus electricity at low cost (sometimes negativ) and sell it hours later at favorable prices.
The 2036 electricity futures price for Germany is €70/MWh. The break-even point for France’s EDF for old nuclear power plants that had long since been written off financially was at roughly the same level in 2020. Due to rising labor costs, their break-even point is now significantly higher. There were solid economic reasons why EDF was recently nationalized 100%. New nuclear power plant construction in France is a foreseeable economic disaster. Private investors would have fled long ago.
Replies
Yeah they found gas in the Netherlands which was exported for cheap all across Western Europe.
It's not because of hippies or Chernobyl that nuclear reactors never got built. A gas turbine is cheap and simple.
Nuclear power died 20 years ago for 40 years now.
Meanwhile Chinas 2060 plan for a carbon zero grid with 25% nuclear and 100% over provisioning is right on track.
Solar and wind are still heavily subsidized are they not? If they're so economically amazing why are they subsidized?
Nuclear power has been amazing for my native country Sweden and I do not believe for a nanosecond that there were “economic forces” that shut down many of our operational nuclear plants.
It was political lunacy, in Sweden and Germany and many other countries.
If power is so cheap mid-day, why don't european buildings have sufficient air conditioning not to kill the elderly during heat waves? The laws restricting AC all have power conservation as their rationale.