> You are aware that the EU must choose between nuclear or gas to produce electricity when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine.
Which does not capture the cost of a nuclear plant being forced off the market because no one is buying its electricity during the day and they have to amortize the cost over a 40% capacity factor instead of 85% like they target.
And this can be a purely economical factor. Sure a plant may have a 90% capacity factor but if the market clears at $0 50% of the time they still need to recoup all the costs on the remaining 50%, pushing up the costs to what would be a the equivalent to a 42.5% capacity factor when running steady state.
Take Vogtle running at a 40% capacity factor, the electricty now costs 40 cents/kwh or $400 MWh. That is pure insanity. Get Vogtle down to 20%, which is very likely as we already have renewable grids at 75% renewables and it is 80 cents/kWh.
Take a look at Australia for the future of old inflexible "baseload" (which always was an economic construct coming from marginal cost) plants.
Coal plants forced to become peakers or be decommissioned.
Electricity is fundamentally priced on the margin and if you start forcing nuclear costs on the ratepayers they will build rooftop solar and storage like crazy, leaving you without any takers for the nuclear based electricity.
You can say that "no one would do that" but it is the end state of the market.
> Considering that the EU classifies nuclear as equally renewable as solar, why should we rely solely on solar?
Why waste money on horrifyingly expensive new built nuclear power? Who looks at Flamanville 3, Hinkley Point C and friends and draw the conclusion that they want some more?!?
> Electricity is fundamentally priced on the margin and if you start forcing nuclear costs on the ratepayers they will build rooftop solar and storage like crazy, leaving you without any takers for the nuclear based electricity.
The regime can just make it illegal to do rooftop solar or home batteries. In a functioning country this is easy enough to push through as a safety measure (lithium battery fires are legit scary, at least in videos). In the U.S. you can just start a campaign to get people fired for endangering their neighbors with dangerous woke energy, no legislation needed at all.
Which does not capture the cost of a nuclear plant being forced off the market because no one is buying its electricity during the day and they have to amortize the cost over a 40% capacity factor instead of 85% like they target.
And this can be a purely economical factor. Sure a plant may have a 90% capacity factor but if the market clears at $0 50% of the time they still need to recoup all the costs on the remaining 50%, pushing up the costs to what would be a the equivalent to a 42.5% capacity factor when running steady state.
Take Vogtle running at a 40% capacity factor, the electricty now costs 40 cents/kwh or $400 MWh. That is pure insanity. Get Vogtle down to 20%, which is very likely as we already have renewable grids at 75% renewables and it is 80 cents/kWh.
Take a look at Australia for the future of old inflexible "baseload" (which always was an economic construct coming from marginal cost) plants.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant...
Coal plants forced to become peakers or be decommissioned.
Electricity is fundamentally priced on the margin and if you start forcing nuclear costs on the ratepayers they will build rooftop solar and storage like crazy, leaving you without any takers for the nuclear based electricity.
You can say that "no one would do that" but it is the end state of the market.
> Considering that the EU classifies nuclear as equally renewable as solar, why should we rely solely on solar?
Why waste money on horrifyingly expensive new built nuclear power? Who looks at Flamanville 3, Hinkley Point C and friends and draw the conclusion that they want some more?!?