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Comment by SJC_Hacker | Hacker News Reader

If nuclear is too expensive why are French (~70% nuclear) electricity prices much lower compared to Germany (~60% renewables) ?

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Because cost of production and the price being charged are two different things.

Because they aren’t when you look at wholesale costs?

Either way. France is wholly unable to build new nuclear given the outcome of Flamanville 3 and the ruinously expensive proposed subsides for the EPR2 fleet.

While Germany still pays for expensive early renewables. Back before the industry exploded in scale.

The relevant question is where to spend the next 100b to get the most decarbonization the fastest, today.

> Because they aren’t when you look at wholesale costs

I searched wholesale costs - the first result - click 'Monthly' for the easiest view to digest: https://ember-energy.org/data/european-electricity-prices-an...

I also wonder how much of electricity costs in recent years have more to do with things like:

- Did France previously largely pay off the cost of building their old nuclear plants, while Germany has been spending heavily in recent years to majorly change their generation mix and build new generation? I've also heard that even France is now facing some significant challenges with the needed replacement of nukes nearing their retirement age being costly.

- How much of French and German generation buildouts were covered by the gov instead of ratepayers, if any?

However, I haven't researched the above questions.

The subsidies estimated for the EPR2 fleet (0% interest loan during construction, then reduced rate during exploitation) are 1/4 what Germany paid (365 billion) in subsidy for its renewable the last 20 years and nobody complained. All the money will be used in France/Europe meanwhile, the surplus of stable energy will benefit all its neighbors, meanwhile all the PV panels for solar production come from China. Renewables (even from France) which are responsible of much of the instability and problems of the european grid.

The 100b should be given to France to build its EPR2 fleet and save the italian electrical grid and provide backup to spanish solar production.

That’s a backwards looking metric. You’re complaining that late 2000s renewable were expensive.

The problem with nuclear is that it doesn’t solve stability. When cold spells hit Europe the French exports turn into imports. So all the French neighbors needs enough backup capacity, generally fossil based today, to both make up for the French exports vanishing, they experiencing the same cold spell, and exporting to France.

Stick two French grids next to each other and they would quickly collapse due to how brittle they are.

> 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.

I'm speaking of total cost of ownsership, current renewables, new and old, needs subsidy (or market distortion) to operate now without it they would be non viable economically. There is nothing romantic about my defense of nuclear. All PR around renewables is mostly propaganda, yes it works, yes marginal cost of production is nearly 0 but not 0, so you still need revenues, but the most important thing is not raw volume of production it is stability of production to be able to secure production contracts and no storage technology (not event pumped hydro storage) can provide the volume of storage needed to stabilize the grid of a sufficiently big grid like europe, not today and not for a long time.

I'm not even speaking about the transport network overhaul needed to integrate so much distributed and uneven production, it's humongous cost still non budgeted by most countries (see the drama about power lines between spain and france), a lot more than the price of 20 new nuclear reactors (want to move 20Gw of intermittent PV power from spain to poland ? good luck).

60% of the newly installed PV are from China and Europe, both zone with an hugely distorted energy market, for different reasons. Europe is victim of Germany political choice to abandon nuclear power and over reaction to climate change (compared to the rest of the world), all their neighbors are angry at them. And China is edging geopolitical risk of being cut of from oil by over-investing in independent energy generation. Japan historically did the same (why did the japan economy not collapse after Fukushima and nearly stopping all their nuclear reactors ? France would have collapsed in the same situation. It did not collapse because knowing they are an island and so cannot rely on neighbors, they had double the needed production as thermal electric power generation, that's why, same situation for Great Britain but they mainly rely on power links to France and Benelux). If PV was such a cheap/easily deployable/marvel technology you would see more development from under-developped countries like in Africa or South-America, or from isolated developed countries like Japan; it's not the case, much come from already highly developed economic zone (EU and China, but not the USA, for contrarian ideological reason, see Trump/Republican/BigOil) which would have no need for it if raw economic calculus was applied (Gernamy would still have nuclear power, Italy too, and the grid would have been developed before deploying new power generation everywhere).

If you are right why is Italy (which does not have the installed industrial migth around nuclear of France) is intending to create new nuclear power generation if PV/wind are ideal ? Are they stupid ?

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