Which is entering emergency reserve territory. Nuclear power CAPEX to build an emergency reserve would seem to be utterly insane.

The easy solution is gas turbines. We already have them and as aviation and maritime shipping decarbonize utilize the same fuel. Whether that is syngas, ammonia or biofuels.

Or earmark the biofuels for grid usage. Today the US produces enough ethanol used as a blend in for gasoline to run the grid without help for 14 days.

As we switch to BEVs repurpose that for grid duties while ensuring the inputs also decarbonize.

▲

realusername 3 days ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure I get your comment, France has 2 years worth of uranium ready to use + 5 years of uranium not enriched.

I don't think there's any other form of energy in the country which has a 7 years emergency reserve.

> As we switch to BEVs repurpose that for grid duties while ensuring the inputs also decarbonize.

BEV will make the storage problem worse because they consume more in winter and you can't tell people how to use their own cars.

▲

ViewTrick1002 3 days ago | parent [-]

The uranium reserves does not help when a winter storm rolls through and grid usage spikes. That is "emergency reserves" or the completely black and white "must work 100% or completely unusable" statement you led with.

Take a look at France. They generally export quite large amounts of electricity. But whenever a cold spell hits that export flow is reversed to imports and they have to start up local fossil gas and coal based production.

What they have done is that they have outsourced the management of their grid to their neighbors and rely on 35 GW of fossil based electricity production both inside France and their neighbors grids. Because their nuclear power produces too much when no one wants the electricity and too little when it is actually needed.

Their neighbors are able to both absorb the cold spell which very likely hits them as well, their own grid as the French exports stops and they start exporting to France.

> BEV will make the storage problem worse because they consume more in winter and you can't tell people how to use their own cars.

I don't think you quite get how the grid works? BEVs are like the ultimate consumers for a renewable grid since they can utilize surpluses matching supply and demand.

Everyone I know with a BEV and an hourly contract times their charging to perfection to reduce costs.

They are of course willing to pay a premium to charge now if their schedule demands it, but that is a tiny tiny subset of the household BEV fleet.

▲

realusername 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Take a look at France. They generally export quite large amounts of electricity. But whenever a cold spell hits that export flow is reversed to imports and they have to start up local fossil gas and coal based production.

That's the opposite, France is exporting in winter and imports in summer whenever the Germany overproduces solar and doesn't know what to do with it.

So for now it's France which helps to stabilize the grid of its neighbors.

There's even price caps against that because France would bleed other countries in winter otherwise.

> don't think you quite get how the grid works? BEVs are like the ultimate consumers for a renewable grid since they can utilize surpluses matching supply and demand.

No they can't, you have to understand how the EU consumption works, surplus are in summer and max demand is in winter. Nobody is going to store electricity in summer in their car to use it in winter, this is nonsense.

▲

ViewTrick1002 2 days ago | parent [-]

Here's a random selection when the French grid would collapse without 35 GW of their own and neighbors fossil based electricity:

https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&...

You need to differentiate beteween exporting when the grid is strained and facing a grid collapse when a cold spell hits.

Click around the weeks and you will find enormous exports happening the week before. Those are the averages you mention. But as we can now both see the French nuclear grid is incredible inflexible when dealing with the demand curve.

> No they can't, you have to understand how the EU consumption works, surplus are in summer and max demand is in winter. Nobody is going to store electricity in summer in their car to use it in winter, this is nonsense.

Please, this is getting ridiculous. I presume you are smarter than thinking that when I put forth people with hourly contracts for their BEVs I am doing it suggesting seasonal storage.

Have you heard of this thing called wind power? Have you heard of the demand curve not being flat throughout the day?

You know, delay the full charge of the car by a day, two or five if you didn't need to go anywhere and simply worked at home this week.

▲

realusername 2 days ago | parent [-]

It seems you are pointing to the 2022 incident which is the only time it happened in 40 years (so clearly not random!). At the time the nuclear plants had unplanned maintenance, the wind power didn't produce much (bad luck) and the solar production wasn't producing (winter). The combination of all these factors made it an exceptional outlier.

Any other time it's France which supported it's neighboring grids.

> Have you heard of this thing called wind power? Have you heard of the demand curve not being flat throughout the day?

Nobody cares about the daily demand curve, it's a solved problem, even my parents had a hourly contract since the 80s (!).

The current problem in the EU is the winter load.

▲

ViewTrick1002 2 days ago | parent [-]

You should look closer rather than attempting a shallow dismissal. I specifically chose to not include dates in 2023 and 2024 due to the maintenance crisis. I also included 2021 numbers.

Looking at the 2022 numbers nuclear power supplied almost 47-49 GW compared to hovering around 52-54 GW last winter.

It does not change the outlook of France and its neighbors relying on 35 GW of fossil based power to manage nuclear inflexibility.

> Nobody cares about the daily demand curve, it's a solved problem, even my parents had a hourly contract since the 80s (!).

So now when you apparently couldn't backtrack more no one cares about meeting a varying demand?

Please. Come with curiosity instead of digging the hole you are in ever deeper.

▲

realusername 2 days ago | parent [-]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France...

This is the reality of the grid, France is a net exporter of electricity in the EU and has been for the longest time. The only outlier is 2022.

You have to understand that the debate in France for a long time in the 2000s was that building capacity was not needed because there's already too much of it (!).

The country also pushed to electric heating to use some of this extra capacity making France one of the highest electric heating share at around 40% (Germany has less than 5%).

> So now when you apparently couldn't backtrack more no one cares about meeting a varying demand?

The varying demand always meant the seasonal demand! You are in europe here and not a tropical country. The problem has always been meeting the winter load.

	▲	ViewTrick1002 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		You are again looking at yearly figures instead of instants. I already included data from 2021. It follows a similar trend in 2020, 2019 and earlier. Here's a few examples: https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&... https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&... https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&... https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&... Let me break it down for you: Is a cold spell a yearly happening or an instant? It is an instant. What does French neighbors do? They have large amounts of fossil capacity because they know they can't rely on French exports when a cold spell hits. They need to both supply their own grid and supply France. Who cares if France is exporting enormous amounts of electricity all around Europe during early autumn when temperatures are mild and no one cares? When the grid is strained France relies on 35 GW of fossil based electricity production since the nuclear electricity is so incredible inflexible that it can't be utilized to match a grid load. What would happen if you had two French grids next to each other both trying to export massive electricity when no one needed it while not being able to supply itself when a cold spell hits?