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Re:Britain has gone two months without burning coal to gener... by Retric on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @04:10PM (#23470344)
France imports and exports a lot of electricity, so the used electricity is far less clean than that suggests. Similarly, countries that import from France are cleaner than that suggests.

This is an important consideration when looking at the cost of scaling nuclear power as it gets far more expensive the lower the utilization. You can get to around 40% across an electric grid such as Europe or an island, but scaling past that needs truly massive subsidies.

Re:Britain has gone two months without burning coal to gener... by AnthonyMouse on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @05:10PM (#23470947)
> This is an important consideration when looking at the cost of scaling nuclear power as it gets far more expensive the lower the utilization. You can get to around 40% across an electric grid such as Europe or an island, but scaling past that needs truly massive subsidies.

This is why diversified solutions are best. You get ~40% from nuclear and the same from solar and you're 80% carbon-free. Even using natural gas for the last 20% would put you well ahead of most countries as it is, and as storage or other alternatives improve you can move even that to solar+storage or whatever alternatives.

Re:Britain has gone two months without burning coal to gener... by glogla on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @04:34PM (#23470600)
The linked page tracks both - production and consumption.

For example, at the moment, Germany produces at 415g/kWh but consumes at 382g/kWh, mostly thanks to 3 GW import from France and 2.7 GW import from Switzerland.

Re:Britain has gone two months without burning coal to gener... by Retric on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @05:14PM (#23470976)
The map shows both production and consumption, but it only tracks carbon by production nationwide.

PS: It’s not uncommon to see a country export and import electricity at the same time. In that context using nationwide numbers is clearly missing important details.