Here are state subsidies for energy sources in Germany in Billion: https://i.imgur.com/NbaNLK4.jpeg
Than there is maintenance. EDF will have to pay staggering 100 billion € to increase the life of their fleet for another 10 years and the price won't go down in the future. Even though the fleet is quite well maintained and France relies on it, accidents, overheated rivers, too cold winters force them to buy (often dirty) power from Germany.
LCOE for nuclear is only surpassed by peak gas: https://i.imgur.com/gRj8GS0.jpeg
https://zenodo.org/record/5573719
So yeah...number juggling is quite trendy in Shillenbergers Astro-Turf but it won't change the facts: nuclear is too expensive and too slow to fight climate change.
Say it's a cold cloudy day with no wind and it's been so for a week. You'll need the capacity of that coal/nuclear plant those days. And let's say every other day of the year solar and wind make enough power. So who pays the extremely high fixed cost of the nuclear and coal plant so it's available that one week you need it? No one wants to, so they're shutting them down. The power company could still be paying the bond for the plant, but ultimately that's the consumer's money. Then, surprise, you end up with blackouts or you pay for new natural gas plants to be built. Prices and fragility go up.
It's likely cheaper to make demand more flexible, but that has a cost too.
It'll take time to build out capacity but it'll take more time AND cost to build new nuclear plants.
When the wind is blowing really hard? Wind turbines?
The texas winter was a bit of an anomaly. It got so cold that every power source ending up failing because none were set up to deal with it even though all of them in theory could have (& would have if they were in, say, alaska).
It'll take time to shift to using green energy and there will be problems but the same would be true for any other kind of shift to any new sources of power.
Probably not 16 years like the new UK nuclear plant will take though :/
If you don't believe me go back and have a look at how big the batteries were. The 500 million dollar project installed 130 MWh worth of electricity storage. That is enough to produce the same energy as a power station for 10 minutes before being fully drained.
California has more than 1.5 GW of utility-scale chemical batteries interconnected to it's grid with another 1 GW anticipated to enter service by the end of the year. Most of these batteries can sustain full output for four hours. This is in addition to the more than 3.0 GW of pumped hydro "batteries."
1 GW is roughly the output of one nuclear power plant.
Source: I develop power plants in the western US.
We'll need at least half a day's worth of storage, likely much more if we want to use wind for a significant portion of power generation.
Then over the course of a few years there was a lot.
All that really matters is A) is it cost effective B) will there be scaling problems C) will there be political impediments.
Either way, conservatively speaking, $50-60/MwH for battery backed wind/solar on the mainland seems fairly doable. Prices will likely keep dropping too.
By contrast, in the UK Hinkley Point C is being paid $124/MwH guaranteed for 20 years. It doesn't exist because it's a cost effective way of supplying green energy that's for sure, but it does bolster the nuclear economy. The military do like to hire nuclear technicians and buy parts for PWRs in nuclear subs, etc. and somebody has to pay for these things. Rate payers, I guess.
Assume enough energy is supplied to charge the batteries. So lets say we want 1kWh during 4 hours, that puts our capital cost at 4 kWh*200$/kWh = 800$. Now we assume this system runs every day for 4 hours during ten years. Ten years sounds reasonable, but it could be less. 7 years maybe? So about 1kWh*365,25*10=14610kWh in total. That gives us 800$/14610kWh = 0,0548$/kWh or 54,8 $/MWh in 2030 if I didn't make a major mistake somewhere and assuming no efficiency losses. That's pretty good.
What if it's been so for a month?
What if the country is Sweden?
What if the month is January?
What if the average temperature is -20C?
>So who pays the extremely high fixed cost of the nuclear and coal plant so it's available that one week you need it? No one wants to, so they're shutting them down.
Those who don't want to freeze, they want to pay.
You can keep big gas plants around in a high intermittent grid and fire them up 10% of the time. The way we view LCOE right now, those plants would be insanely expensive while wind/solar would be super cheap. But we would still pay for the backup capacity. This kind of system cost is what matters dramatically more than LCOE.
These kind of discussions always touch on a few of these points. But actually a well designed market absolutely can take these factors into account and price accordingly. You have strike prices to cover capital costs, capacity markets, bidding to reduce costs etc.
The low price of wind is just an acknowledgement that it is less valuable due to intermitancy. But you guarantee the rate regardless of the market because the low CO2 emissions are valuable.
Nuclear is expensive because it is more valuable due to low CO2 and low intermitancy. Give it a relatively high subsidised rate. It should be more expensive than wind.
Gas peakers are valuable because they can be turned on quickly. But they are dirty. So they charge a high rate but the rate is not guaranteed. The market avoids using them.
You could and maybe should replace all of this with a state run electricity company that makes all the decisions. That is really what people are arguing for rather than a particular type of generator. But in an energy market costs need to actually mean something more than a political point.
Take the simplest case and ignore CO2 and carbon tax for now. The base power stations have to be sufficient to supply the whole power grid when the wind doesn't blow, and the sun doesn't shine. Ok, so now imagine what happens if we simply remove all the solar panels and all the wind turbines. What happens? Nothing happens. The grid still works normally. In other words the cost of all those windmills, solar panels, their construction, their maintenance, etc, it is all extra cost that the consumer has to pay somehow.
So isn't the magic market supposed to fix all this? Why doesn't market dynamics take care of this? Because government regulation doesn't allow fixed power plants to charge a fixed yearly fee. If the government did allow this then the market would indeed price everything correctly.
Now if you add a carbon tax, having a number of windmills on the side does eventually become advantageous, but never compared to non-intermittent sources of renewable power like hydro or nuclear which could also charge this fixed yearly fee.
In the US, in most markets (except ERCOT/TX), it's the opposite of what you say. Government regulation _requires_ either the market operator or load serving entity to contract for capacity (as opposed to energy). PJM, which operates the largest market in the US, runs an annual auction for capacity. Incredibly, due in part to subsidies offered to the natural gas industry, existing nuclear power plants have not cleared in the auction. [0, 1]
[0] https://insidelines.pjm.com/pjm-successfully-clears-capacity...
[1] https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...
You are trying to simplify things too much. Unpicking a few factoids to make an argument. The advantage of this kind of energy market is that individual companies don't have to do that. Small developers don't need to worry about building backup for their solar panels. And nuclear power stations can take on a big risk. All bundles into the price.
But all this is specific to particular markets. No idea what is going on in the USA and as a European I assume it is probably a mess.
Only about 20% of the cost of coal and 5% of nuclear comes from the fuel. Almost all costs are fixed costs. They need to be paid regardless of whether people use the power or not. But in the current system, those who use solar or wind and only use base power occasionally aren't paying those costs. Instead everyone else has to cover those costs, which is why the price of electricity skyrockets wherever there are more 'renewable' (or specifically, 'intermittent') sources.
This is why electricity costs 10c per kwh in many parts of the US, but 40c per kwh in European countries with lots of windmills.
basically it is a huge market distortion. The real cost of base power is a fixed yearly fee to get access, then 2c per kwh after that (i.e the 20% fuel cost). If this is what was charged no one would use wind or solar at all. (or you would have people using solar but disconnected from the grid, which would be great too).