Unfortunately, solar w/ storage isn’t cheaper. You want to look at VALCOE for LFSCOE as metrics. It doesn’t compare solar roofing with nuclear since you need more transmission, but a distributed grid seems insanely unlikely to ever happen / be practical. Moreover, storage at scale requires strip mining the ocean floor which companies are getting ready to do. That’ll be an ecological disaster which makes nuclear accidents look like peanuts.
See the recent study on Denmark which found that nuclear power needs to come down 85% in cost to be competitive with renewables when looking into total system costs for a fully decarbonized grid, due to both options requiring flexibility to meet the grid load.
Focusing on the case of Denmark, this article investigates a future fully sector-coupled energy system in a carbon-neutral society and compares the operation and costs of renewables and nuclear-based energy systems.
The study finds that investments in flexibility in the electricity supply are needed in both systems due to the constant production pattern of nuclear and the variability of renewable energy sources.
However, the scenario with high nuclear implementation is 1.2 billion EUR more expensive annually compared to a scenario only based on renewables, with all systems completely balancing supply and demand across all energy sectors in every hour.
For nuclear power to be cost competitive with renewables an investment cost of 1.55 MEUR/MW must be achieved, which is substantially below any cost projection for nuclear power.
Or the same for Australia if you went a more sunny locale finding that renewables ends up with a grid costing less than half of "best case nth of a kind nuclear power".
Denmark generates 20% of its energy from renewables which is about on par for what most countries see. Let's see how much those renewables start costing when you need to supplant the 80% of the energy grid which is still is still carbon producing. Which is my point - renewables can't scale past this threshold and trying to make them raises the costs exponentially. Compare this to France which has been >90% decarbonized in its grid since at least the 90s.
Re fossil fuel propaganda, the number 1 supporters of renewables is the fossil fuel companies. It's not because it's the future but because it prolongs to the utmost the transition off of fossil fuels while appealing to the sensibilities of people who style themselves as "environmentalists". No country that has invested in renewables has yet managed to get off fossil fuels while France invested in nuclear & nearly completely decarbonized.
How can you spread all this misinformation? Do you believe it yourself?
Yes, there has been companies trying to exploit the ocean for mining for as long as we have been traveling the seas. There has yet to be a successful attempt at it.
Then a lovely apples to oranges comparison comparing primary energy of one country to electricity mix of another.
Lets do the real comparison, the one you did not want to do because it does not show France is as a favorable light:
Primary energy mix using the substitution method[1]:
- France: 51% low carbon
- Denmark: 43% low carbon
Then we have electricity mix [2]:
- France: 92% low carbon
- Denmark: 88% low carbon
France is wholly unable to build nuclear power as evidenced by the Flamanville 3 program being 7x over budget and 13 years late on a 5 year construction schedule.
The EPR2 program is in absolute shambles due to the insane subsidies required, and now "hopefully" will reach an investment decision (i.e. the government decides on the subsidies) in 2026.
We should keep our existing fleet of nuclear power as long as it is safe, needed and economical.
But only someone with vested interest in the outcome of the nuclear industry would suggest wasting trillions of dollars on nuclear subsidies in 2025 given the state of renewables and storage.
> No country that has invested in renewables has yet managed to get off fossil fuels while France invested in nuclear & nearly completely decarbonized.
And the misinformation continues. When is France going to decarbonize the remaining 48% of their economy?
How can you believe such blatant fantasies?
90% of added peak energy generation is renewable. Do you think companies do that because it's more expensive?
We're already way overgenerating for peak generation while persistently not solving the baseload requirements which is where we need to decarbonize. Or in simpler terms, government subsidies distorting the market and solar chasing the easy 20% of the grid supply it is better suited for while ignoring the rest of the market because it's a bad fit.
