Regardless of whether nuke fuel cost is negligible, nukes were already quite expensive even under the previous model where nukes were highly utilized (expensive due to the very expensive non-fuel parts of building/running nukes). (And I'm not even sure if those existing high costs assumed the government handled the costs of insuring (or otherwise paying) if the nuke plant has a disaster, or if it included decommissioning/safe nuke disposal costs?)

But if we're talking about moving from a model where nukes run ~100% of the time (excluding maintenance) to one where they just cover the 1/x portion of the time that zero-fuel-cost renewables (+ storage) can't, then wouldn't nuke's cost per kwh end up 'x' times higher than before as a result because we still have the same amortized costs split over fewer generating hours per year, and nuke fuel cost is negligible?

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AnthonyMouse an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> But if we're talking about moving from a model where nukes run ~100% of the time (excluding maintenance) to one where they just cover the 1/x portion of the time that zero-fuel-cost renewables (+ storage) can't

Nobody is talking about doing that. Nuclear plants are baseload. They always run 100% of the time because even if the current price of electricity is low, their incremental cost savings from reducing output is basically zero, so any positive price means they remain at full output.

This means you don't want 100% nuclear generation, because you don't have constant load. If you have 10GW of demand at night and 20GW during the day then you don't want 20GW of nuclear and nothing to do with half of it at night. But having 5 to 10GW is good, because you never need less than that anyway.

The thing people don't seem to have caught onto yet is that the combination of solar being cheap and solar not generating anything at night means that the price at night is going to be higher not just than it is during the day, but than it has been historically, because now whatever you're using to supply power at night -- regardless of what it is -- has to recover most of its capex exclusively at night. That's not great for nuclear but it's even worse for most other things. On top of that, the most competitive real alternative to nuclear there is natural gas, which doesn't work if you want to stop emitting CO2.

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ViewTrick1002 24 minutes ago | parent [-]

That’s not what we are seeing in reality. In Spain the nuclear plants massively load follow. Same as I just mentioned they do in Sweden.

Pretending they can just do “baseload” in 2026 doesn’t work. They can bid negative, but that’s just extending the life of the plant a few extra years.

And you still haven’t been able to explain why consumers should buy ruinously expensive nuclear electricity when cheap renewables or stored renewables are available.

And this is today a purely physical problem. You only need to look to Australia to see grids where rooftop solar today crowds out all other sources, even utility scale renewables. How do you force them to buy ruinously expensive grid based nuclear?

A new nuclear plant only making its money during the night becomes stupidly expensive. And nuclear is hit harder by this than say an open cycle gas turbine running carbon neutral fuels.

Gas turbines are cheap in CAPEX and expensive in OPEX. They can cope with it, although even they have trouble with the sliver of hours left after solar, wind and storage make up the bulk. Since that’s a far slimmer portion than their bread and butter peaking style of operation

	▲	AnthonyMouse 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> And you still haven’t been able to explain why consumers should buy ruinously expensive nuclear electricity when cheap renewables or stored renewables are available. You're kind of answering your own question when you can't call them "cheap stored renewables". Ask yourself why the price is lower in France than in Spain. "Stored renewables" are fairly expensive even on the days when renewable output is high. When renewable output is low they're not even available because you had no surplus generation to charge the batteries during the day and now the sun is down and they're empty. > A new nuclear plant only making its money during the night becomes stupidly expensive. And nuclear is hit harder by this than say an open cycle gas turbine running carbon neutral fuels. A nuclear plant is hit lighter than this than a gas turbine because it still generates during the day. And when your concern is cost, are you aware of what it costs to produce "carbon neutral fuels"? That's original electricity generation cost + fuel production infrastructure cost + conversion losses + fuel storage cost + conversion losses again + capital cost for the rarely used fuel-burning generators. That's the thing that's ruinously expensive.

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dalyons an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

yeah the math doesnt work. On top of the running costs you mentioned, You are trying to pay back the ridiculous capex over a reasonable timeframe (say 30 years). Nukes already have trouble doing that at 100% high power price sales. Saying "oh they can keep selling power but at a fraction of price" is technically true but fatal to the economics of nukes.

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SJC_Hacker 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

If nuclear is too expensive why are French (~70% nuclear) electricity prices much lower compared to Germany (~60% renewables) ?

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_Microft 22 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Because cost of production and the price being charged are two different things.

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ViewTrick1002 22 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Because they aren’t when you look at wholesale costs?

Either way. France is wholly unable to build new nuclear given the outcome of Flamanville 3 and the ruinously expensive proposed subsides for the EPR2 fleet.

While Germany still pays for expensive early renewables. Back before the industry exploded in scale.

The relevant question is where to spend the next 100b to get the most decarbonization the fastest, today.

	▲	no-name-here 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Because they aren’t when you look at wholesale costs I searched wholesale costs - the first result - click 'Monthly' for the easiest view to digest: https://ember-energy.org/data/european-electricity-prices-an... I also wonder how much of electricity costs in recent years have more to do with things like: - Did France previously largely pay off the cost of building their old nuclear plants, while Germany has been spending heavily in recent years to majorly change their generation mix and build new generation? I've also heard that even France is now facing some significant challenges with the needed replacement of nukes nearing their retirement age being costly. - How much of French and German generation buildouts were covered by the gov instead of ratepayers, if any? However, I haven't researched the above questions.