alt Hacker News> That’s a backwards looking metric. You’re complaining that late 2000s renewable were expensive.
All renewable are still subsidized now, at all time, without subsidy no renewable would be installed in europe currently, they would be crushed by nuclear production (who can sell at loss event when renewable are available). Most of the modulation of nuclear reactor is cause because nuclear is pushed out of the marked by subsidized renewable would be sold at loss otherwise.
https://analysesetdonnees.rte-france.com/en/electricity-trad...
You can look at the graphs there is no correlation between winter and imports and France mostly export at all time. You are just making things up. Nuclear production does not depend on the weather and the french production is exactly sized for the french consumption. Historically France used hydro as the other pilotable part of its mix (before the pan european electric grid and exchanges at spot price). Don't look at special events since 2020, look at the graphs for the last forty years.
You're still sidestepping the fact that you're comparing already installed capacity and not costs of new buildouts for solar vs. nuclear. Despite the history of nuclear blowing past timelines and budgets, it was easily the best option for zero-emissions power available throughout the 70s/80s. So it's indeed unfortunate that Chernobyl/Three Mile Island and the collapse of the USSR stymied the industry while it was still competitive which would have offset fossil fuels we're using today.
But the economics of nuclear vs. renewables have drastically changed with current solar/solar+battery costs (without subsidies) which make it very difficult to justify new construction of nuclear in 2026. Plus, apart from the per megawatt price comparison, the most recent examples of new nuclear projects in the west have been plagued by budget overruns and deadlines repeatedly pushed years into the future.
Huge amounts of new solar/solar+batteries come online every year: it's a boring, proven investment at this point and actively benefiting from the learning curve given the rapid cadence and relatively short timelines for new construction. So your suggestion to give France a huge amount of money for nuclear over renewables, in the hopes that new plants could come online in 5-10 years (likely getting later pushed to 15+ years with individual projects scaled down/cancelled) seems driven more by a sentimental attachment to nuclear than objective weighing of pros/cons.
I get it, I'm a 90s kid and thought nuclear was the absolute coolest thing ever, staring at pictures of glowing pools while growing up and amazed by the idea of entire cities powered by a few semi-trucks worth of rocks. And I do regret that we missed the opportunity to take full advantage of its potential during its heyday. But technology is always changing and with every passing year it becomes increasingly hard to justify new nuclear construction against solar + batteries, both because of raw cost per MW and well known weaknesses not shared by solar.