I dont think so. We may have a common competitor yet also be in competition. Solar and wind have very complimentary output patterns (combining two variable sources produces a less variable source even without the modest degree of anti correlation which is present between wind and solar). Nuclears output pattern really begs to be constant, it never wants to ramp down because there is almost no savings, whereas solar and wind can clash but also leave each other demand windows.
You have no "base load" once such competitors are involved because half the time they are bidding for all of the load. Separating off a base load deal is then an artificial arrangement. Your supplier who can only economically supply a certain level is no help when your renewables fall short, and they are an expense when your renewables surge and offer cheaper power. Once renewables are in the mix you want economical dispatch-able supply. That means batteries for frequent sub-daily power deficits, and existing fossil moving to carbon neutral fuels for less frequent deficits.
There is no effective nuclear construction industry today that can stop renewables getting big in the mix, and the bigger renewables get into it, the less attractive "base load" power purchasing contracts become for buyers. There is talk about making nuclear competitively dispatchable with molten salt reserviors - that's just a nuclear plant and molten salt battery. The battery is the economical part. Nuclear will continue to be an expensive side project for many governments which can afford it, sometimes completing a project, sometimes giving up as they do after multiple cost increases and delays, but it is practically finished in competitive industry by the arrival of advanced solar and wind.
Even in 'all-nuke' France 7 to 11% of the powergrid is produced by fossil-fuel plants.
This could be alleviated thanks to decentralized production (small units). Granted, this is theoretically true for nuclear and solar/wind alike, however civilian practical small solar/wind units do exist, nuclear units don't.
Many write just as if nuclear plants may really solve our climate-related problem. They neglect that gridpower is a small portion of the total energy (about 17%), therefore a fully 'cleanly'-produced gridpower (by whatever method, nuclear and/or other) lets us, on the sole 'energy' side of the matter (there are other ones), with at the very least 60% of the climate-related problem at hands.
Yeah, they're not 100% nuclear. In any case, their results are far better than countries who eschewed nuclear.
France produces one-tenth the carbon pollution from electricity [compared to Germany].
French electricity costs are just 59% of German electricity prices. As such, according to the prevailing economic wisdom, French electricity should be far more carbon intensive than German's. And yet the opposite is the case.[1]
So it seems France made a good decision. Their electricity is both cleaner and cheaper...
1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/02/05...
The French public financial auditing institution (la Cour des Comptes) published in 2012 that public nuke investments are opaque, and that it costed around 228 10e9 euros, plus nowadays 3.4 10e9 euros per year for the sole maintenance. Nuke risk is what it is, and even financially it is not sound. Read there, starting folio 269: https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/EzPublish/Rappor...
It is so expensive it cannot be hidden anymore. Electricity in France is absolutely not cheap, its price there is average in Europe. Source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
Germany now pays in order to solve the problem.
France isn't completely dumb and a state law (2015-992, from 2015, the "loi relative à la transition énergétique pour la croissance verte") states that the part of nuke-produced electricity must fall to less than 50% in 2025, from 72% then, and that renewables must replace it.
However those are only words, until now.
Meanwhile... Germany solves its problem.
Comparing France and Germany when it comes to industrial and technical problems is not fair, as Germany is so far ahead we don't see them anymore (and yep, I'm French, but facts are facts).
So 228B€ for 50 years of 85% of the electricity consumption, and decarbonised. When with the push for renewable, it will cost 121B€ for currently 5,1% of wind and 1.9% for solar. Currently nuclear electricity is bought 42€/MWh by the useless competitor thanks to the ARENH, when wind cost us 89.4€/MWh and solar 294€/MWh and are not dispatchable, uncorrelated with consumption, intermittent, and will also add 30B€ to the grid because of the decentralised organisation. Also renewable made us build a gaz plan in Landivisiau because Brittany opposed the Plogoff nuclear plant and renewable are unreliable.
Also you failed to mention, that what droved the rise in French electricity is solely because of the renewable.
Germany didn't solve it's problem its electricity is still heavily carbonated.
https://i.imgur.com/zatyuXX.png
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EK2NouwWkAERV5V?format=jpg&name=...
https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/2018-04/20180418...
https://www.cre.fr/content/download/19506/file/Annexe%201_CS...
https://www.cre.fr/content/download/19600/file/Calculs%20Tar...
Nope. Nuke plant did not provide 85% during those 50 years. It even doesn't today (only about 71%). In 1971 approximatively approx 5% of the French gridpower was produced by nuke plants. Source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrie_nucl%C3%A9aire_en_Fr... How exactly do you think it may have produced 85% of the gridpower for 50 years? This is inept and misleading.
Moreover 228B€ is an estimation, the report states (folio 270) that the information is not available, mixed up with all other activities of EDF. The real cost may be superior. Everyone is free to interpret such opacity as good or bad sign.
Even worse, the report explicitly states that it completely neglects the first batch of R&D, when civilian and military domains where not clearly separated, which was a major effort. Source: (folio 36) https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/EzPublish/Rappor...
Therefore a fair part of fundamental research isn't accounted in those 228B€.
Also: nuke energy is not (completely) decarbonised. Fuel extraction, transport... aren't.
> When with the push for renewable, it will cost 121B€ for currently 5,1% of wind and 1.9% for solar.
This 121B€ budget is not spent, as it starts in... 2018, ending in 2047! Putting it in front of the production right now is at best 'disingenuous', it is in fact a huge lie. You can't read the future, you can't know what renewables will produce in the 2019 to 2047 timeframe and afterwards, therefore there is no conclusion to draw, no way to consider this investment as a bad one.
> Currently nuclear electricity is bought 42€/MWh by the useless competitor thanks to the ARENH
Only 100TW (about 1/4 of the production), sold by specification at a price equal to the nuke official production price. Given the credits nuke engulfed and the decades of monopoly, this is a very low-key counterbalancing measure.
> when wind cost us 89.4€/MWh and solar 294€/MWh and are not dispatchable, uncorrelated with consumption, intermittent, and will also add 30B€ to the grid because of the decentralised organisation.
Germany chose this horrible wind/solar/biomass path. Poor Germans, they don't know that those challenges have no solution, that they are doomed to fail. You should inform them. An EPR or two may save them!
> Also renewable made us build a gaz plan in Landivisiau because Brittany opposed the Plogoff nuclear plant and renewable are unreliable.
A transition costs. At its very beginning nuke was engulfing huge amounts of money without producing anything significant during the 1950-1970 period.
After 70 years, right now, nuke isn't a newborn, however new projects are very (very!) overbudget and late (Olkiluoto, Flamanville).
> Also you failed to mention, that what droved the rise in French electricity is solely because of the renewable.
Source?
> Germany didn't solve it's problem its electricity is still heavily carbonated.
This is a work in progress. At least do they really search for an elegant (non polluting but also not risk-inducing) solution, instead of raising the risk by letting aging plant run after their planned end-of-life date.
French vs. Germany, on an industrial challenge. Lemme try to guess who will win...
That's a fair point, but it doesn't change the argument, the cost is over a long period with a big part of the electricity mix.
>This 121B€ budget is not spent
But locked in with feed in tariff form the pre-2017 poorly functioning 5.1%/1.9% mix. You seems to think that more solar and wind will come with that, no new solar panel and wind turbine will be build with that.
https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/huet/2018/04/19/la-cour-des-comp...
>this is a very low-key counterbalancing measure
No this is a useless way to create an artificial competition, and a disgusting way to kill a company, when EDF OA is forced to buy solar and wind, uncorrelated with usage, at an expansive price.
>Germany chose this horrible wind/solar/biomass path. Poor Germans, they don't know that those challenges have no solution, that they are doomed to fail. You should inform them. An EPR or two may save them!
They have coal, lot of coal and only a plan to close them in 2038 and to replace it with russian fossil gas when France will have the latest closed in 2022 and since long barely used them.
>Source?
Look on your electrical bill the CSPE line, and Turpe because of decentralised renewable.
https://www.uarga.org/downloads/Documentation/2019_09_12_Sou...
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contribution_au_service_public...
http://www.leparisien.fr/economie/les-prix-de-l-electricite-...
> Lemme try to guess who will win...
France already won in decarbonising its electricity. Why would Germany win all industrial challenge, what are you a German supremacist ?
On a more fundamental viewpoint I think that subsidies are always at best inadequate, especially because they establish such vicious circle (subsidizing leads to a problem apparently solved by... subsidizing).
This 121B€ budget will be invested ('till 2046) to dynamise applied renewable energy. It has to offer some benefit to anyone investing and therefore accepting the risk inherent to any new and quickly developing tool, it is about long-term effects. You quote a blog, which is an immediate interpretation, not the intent and even less the (future) result.
Yes, Germany chose to kick out the bad nuke habit as fast as possible, maybe indeed too quickly for the short-term sake. On the other hand France tried to act slowly... and now its renewables program, not very ambitious, already is wayyyyyy behind previsions.
Yes, establishing new production sites implies new connections, and therefore investments. Connecting a new nuke powerplant also costs. Yes, connecting renewables globally cost more given that nukes needs less sites (intensity). However renewables don't blow up, don't produce hot waste, are easy to decommission, create jobs, create know-how and product which are more and more marketable (much more than nuke plants!)... Total lifecycle cost+risk is key.
France is indeed right now more efficient than Germany when it comes to decarbonizing gridpower production. However this is a snapshot, while the whole subject is a process. There is no finish line, and if in a pair of decades may Germany lead on all accounts, free of nukes and continuing to be a leader in a growing renewables market. Then we will once more conclude that they adopted an industrial approach much more adequate than ours, as in many other sectors.
The huge powergrid it implies isn't very different from the one nuke powerplants already need (given that many cannot sit nearby huge cities), that both wind and solar in such a wide area not producing enough is a rare occurrence.
Transporting energy far away causes losses, but we already do it, and who cares if its TCO is very low (solar and wind are progressing quickly), and its production not dangerous?
Add geothermal, hydroelectric, and biomass, then better global efficiency and energy savings.
Then a pinch of very small complementary units (already available).
... and we are better set for so many more scenarios, at a globally lower cost and without any serious risk.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EJuknaqXkAAwbWn?format=jpg&name=...
Also nuclear is 20% of the marginal electricity (the one that varies).
http://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/aen-infos-suivi-c...
https://www.tmrow.com/static/c90a14e6fe7e73b4c60963818f9041e...
https://www.tmrow.com/blog/marginal-carbon-intensity-of-elec...
"Not enough flexibility" isn't specific to renewables.
We just need moar nuclear plants and we can eliminate the few remaining coal and gas plants.
If we put the money we put into building nuclear plants into energy storage, then that would likely change pretty quickly.
You highlight that storage is a challenge, but it’s the entire blocker at this point. Until storage is solved, solar/wind do nothing more than displace some peaker plants.