Two points:
1: France is 75% nuclear and has some of the cheapest electricity.
2: there are a ton of small reactor designs that would be substantially cheaper and quicker to build. Problem is that you can't get them out of research labs.
1: France is 75% nuclear and has some of the cheapest electricity.
2: there are a ton of small reactor designs that would be substantially cheaper and quicker to build. Problem is that you can't get them out of research labs.
Its only new NPP under construction, Flammanville, is 9 years over schedule and over 300% over budget. It is still not certain when it will open due to safety defects that are still being evaluated.
New build nuclear is not cost competitive with new build wind and solar (even when you account for firming costs), and the cost of wind and solar is still falling at an astonishing rate.
The future will tell, as it is now, Germany already spent more on renewable than the total French nuclear industry, even when you add decommissioning and with the bad results we know. Maybe countries should learn on the German mistakes? Also the renewables built to replace the nuclear plants in France are pointed out for being far over-budget as well.
The cost studies for renewable tend to remove a lot of external costs in order to make them appear cheaper than they are.
Source? What does that even mean? Where'd you find an honest assessment of the regulatory and construction costs for France's nuclear power plants, much less a sensible estimate for decommissioning plants that are still running? Does it include research and development in either case? Does it include maintenance, personnel, fuel, cleanup, storage of spent fuel both temporarily and long term?
[1] CPI - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303286860_Policy_an... - page 6 in pdf pages or 1 with their numbers.
[2] Cour des comptes - http://cpdp.debatpublic.fr/cpdp-cigeo/docs/docs-complementai... - page 265 pdf / page 270 with their page numbers
I can't tell from a quick glance how the French number comes to be, what's included and what isn't and who is the ultimate source.
Given the fraught nature of the subject, I'm taking any number with a grain of salt, especially if it purports to assign a single price tag to things.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
Uranium is not very expensive right now, so a lot of mines have closed or mothballed. That doesn't mean there's any shortage of the stuff. Australia's known reserves are enormous. Throw a dart at a map of northern Australia and you'll probably hit an orebody.