I think it is actually the pro nuke case that often has misconceptions of how a modern grid works, repeating terms like “base load” etc

Because actually nuclear is terrible in a grid increasingly full of nearly-free variable sources (solar&wind). The nukes need to stay at 100% all the time selling their power at a high fixed price to have any remote chance of being economical. Cheap variables push nuke's expensive power off the grid during the day, and increasingly into the evenings with batteries. This is unavoidable in an open energy market, and is fatal to the economics of nuclear.

Yes they are building a bunch but Chinas grid share of nukes is actually declining y/y and is projected to continue to decline. Renewables are too cheap.

▲

pu_pe an hour ago | parent | next [-]

What happens in days where renewables can't produce enough energy? Or the evenings where we don't have enough batteries (all evenings so far and for the next decade at least)? You can call it base load or whatever you want, but that energy is coming either from hydro, nuclear or a carbon-based source. And those carbons are hard to come by these days, so even if nuclear power is expensive, at least it is reliable.

	▲	dalyons 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It takes a decade at least for any new nuclear starting today to come online in the west. In that decade you’ve built an awful lot of batteries for the same amount of money. No one wants to bet $10s of billions of nuke capex against the relentless progress of batteries and other tech over the next 10 years, and then the 30+ years of plant operations. It’s a suckers bet , so the only ones who can take it are nation states.

▲

adev_ 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Yes they are building a bunch but Chinas grid share of nukes is actually declining y/y and is projected to continue to decline. Renewables are too cheap.

No. Nuclear energy production in China continue to increase and will probably continue to increase for the next 60y.

Its relative percentage in the global mix decreased. And this has nothing to do with Solar, but with the insane amount of Coal power plants that China had to setup quickly to match the increasing electricity demand of the developing country [1]

> The nukes need to stay at 100% all the time selling their power at a high fixed price to have any remote chance of being economical.

Nuclear plants are mainly CAPEX based. And yes, excessive solar capacity tend to decrease nuclear profitability and increase global electricity cost.

But that is mainly a problem of public policy, not a technical one.

In country without tremendous of Hydro storage (e.g Switzerland or Norway), the most balanced economical combination tend to be Nuclear for baseload and Wind+Hydro+Storage for peaks.

[1]: https://www.iea.org/countries/china/electricity

▲

dalyons 3 hours ago | parent [-]

A lot has changed since the 2023 data in your link.

Chinas coal use declined in 2025, and is projected to continue to decline in 2026 and into the future [1]. Not share, absolute. Despite overall generation growing by 5%. And it’s all driven by guess what, renewables growth.

1 https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/china/

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi...

Edit: love to see a source for how cheap renewables _increase_ energy costs as you claimed

▲

adev_ 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> Edit: love to see a source for how cheap renewables _increase_ energy costs as you claimed

That is just economics.

The intermittent nature of renewable means that overcapacity is structurally required to arrive to match partially the demand.

As an example, Germany has > 100GW of Solar installed capacity for a country where the average power demand is around ~60GW *total*.

Overcapacity means that the price of electricity naturally goes to zero (or even to negative) as soon as the sun shine. And this is very visible on the EU electricity market currently [1].

It is (obviously) terrible for the profitability of the means of production and it is not sustainable: No investor sane of mind would put money on the table for a system that sell at negative price when it produces...

To compensate that, most EU countries created the CfDs (Contract for difference) system. A minimum price is guaranteed by contract to the investor and the State pay the difference when the price are too low. The UK did it (and it costs billions) [2], France did it (and it costs billions) [3] and Germany is doing it [4].

So we are subsidizing and using public money to create an artificial profitability on top of an industry that we know is not profitable due to overcapacity caused by bad public policies.

Considering that this overcapacity is also reducing the profitability of nuclear powerplants in the first place (because nuclear is CAPEX based).

The pain is triple: The final consumer pays (1) the cost of the Grid restructuring for renewable (2) the cost of the Cfds to maintain the system alive due to overcapacity (3) the additional €/MWh to the now reduced profitability of the historical production means.

So yes, at the end, the price increase.

And it is what we see currently everywhere in Europe: Electricity price are increasing continuously even if Solar/Wind LCOE is lower than ever.

[1]: https://ibb.co/6cf99PfZ

[2]: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/another-record-year-cfd-s...

[3]: https://www.enerdata.net/publications/daily-energy-news/euro...

[4]: https://www.aoshearman.com/en/insights/germany-to-reset-gove...

▲

dalyons 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don’t know about the particulars of the EU schemes, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Elsewhere in the world, Australia is saving money due to the rollout of renewables [1]. So is the UK [2] 3. A billion in march alone.

1 https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/record-battery... 2 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/28/wind-pow... 3 https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-record-wind-and-solar-s...

▲

tialaramex an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The CfDs pay either party the difference. Their effect is to make the cost of that electricity guaranteed, it's actually a remarkably cost effective mechanism.

The subsidy is that different technologies secure a premium on the CfD. For a UK solar farm the strike price most recently was £65 per MWh. In case you were wondering no, nobody will run a gas power plant for £65 per MWh, even before Trump's war spiked price 50-100%

Yes, the offshore wind farms are significantly more expensive than a solar CfD, their strike prices were close to £100 and for that much money (adjusting for inflation) you could definitely get interest from gas plants, especially before the war - but now we're into the weeds about platform diversity. A Middle East war seems like a particularly stupid time to insist we shouldn't desire diversity...

Because of how summer works, this "But solar energy is expensive, gas is cheaper" is going to take a break for a few months because it will seem very silly, but it won't go far, expect it back in autumn.

	▲	dalyons an hour ago \| parent [-]
		the last offshore wind auction was 90, and that beat gas at 40% even before the war. https://electrek.co/2026/01/14/uk-offshore-wind-record-aucti... The next one in july should be interesting!