With all that the Biden administration, the DOE, NRC, etc have thrown at the industry and utilities to "incentivize" them to roll the dice with their companies and careers by building another AP-1000 (Loan guarantees, grants, tax-abatements, siting subsidies, and on, and on; on top of the existing subsidy regime like Price-Andersen, etc), they still want more! More, more, more and not a single contract to build in sight.
They literally had the nerve to tell Granholm at the opening of Vogtle that they "needed" more free money from the government, especially the Holy Grail of nuclear subsidies : govt picking up the tab for any and all construction cost overruns. HAHAHAA. That's why they can't build plants now! Because they've been incentivized by various Republican state legislatures through variations of CWIP laws to NEVER complete construction.
The way to make a fortune in nuclear is not to generate and sell nuclear power but to just never finish building the plants you started and keep rolling in all that sweet tax and rate-payer money. It is an elegant scam.
" don't get why underground safe storage for waste is considered as an issue. It's pretty much 0 impact and if our focus is to fight climate change"
Well, 0 impact is certainly not true as the waste will be trucked overland in thousands of shipments that will all converge on Nevada's roads alone.
What I don't get is why Nuke promoters don't consider something a problem if it's scientifically possible; "that's just politics" is the pat response. Well, political problems are still REAL problems too and this one has kept Yucca Mountain from being built and deployed for 40 years.
Stop saying waste is not a problem because it IS a problem with NOWHERE to store it yet; you are being intentionally deceptive. No solution is on the horizon or in consideration through the consent-based siting process AND with the Supreme Court essentially tossing out hundreds of years of precedent and the ability of an elected government to do the will of the people through agency regulation, NO deep geologic depository is being built any time soon.
The other thing I don't understand is, when nearly every single politician in Nevada has been vehemently opposed to Yucca and an overwhelming majority of Nevada citizens have consistently opposed Yucca over decades, how was it Harry Reid going rogue to put an end to the political project? He was literally doing the will of his constituents. Yucca was selected before ANY of the science was considered, because of POLITICS.
A few critics : renewables, in particular solar panels, aren't exactly simple either. Just because it happens in Chinese factories doesn't mean the complexity doesn't exist. Future developments of solar in particular, betting on new materials like perovskite, or triple band technology are very complex too.
Nuclear being expected to be excessively safe due to post-2011 hysteria isn't an issue of the technology itself, and countries aiming to develop ambitious nuclear programs will rationalise their safety expectations, like France is currently doing.
- Drought vulnerability is vastly overestimated. It caused an outcry in 2022 when multiple NPPs in Europe had to slow down production to respect biodiversity limits - it wasn't a safety issue, they simply have to respect a maximum temperature of the river's water -, but this issue is limited to closed-circuit reactors, I.e. the reactors without cooling towers. Switching from closed-circuit to open-circuit is possible and not even that complex since you don't really need to impact the primary cooling system. Open-circuit reactors have a water consumption of roughly 0.5m3/s for a GW of power. For reference, even during the worst point of the 2022 drought, the Rhine had a flow of 300m3/s. And we can of course still build reactors on the shoreline, cancelling all drought issue.
- I don't get why underground safe storage for waste is considered as an issue. It's pretty much 0 impact and if our focus is to fight climate change now, the emotional "but our kids ten thousand years from now will still be around it" is a bit fallacious. And nothing stops us from developing surgenerators in a hundred years from now and process it then, once our fight against climate change is accomplished. Windmills in particular had a phase we only had plans to recycle them, not established solutions : did we stop all windmill deployments ?
- Is your mean cost overrun for global nuclear deployments or only western ?
- A global mean delayed duration of eight years isn't that surprising to me. Five years is stupidly optimistic and nuclear developers being overly optimistic on their construction time to bridge the gap with renewables isn't new. Agreed, that's a delay, but a delay can be for technical reasons just like it can represent excess zeal from the developer.
- About the competition with renewables, renewables are neither asked to contribute to their additional infrastructure nor contributing a cent to prepare for the upcoming need for massive battery capacity and decreasing mean load factor due to overcapacity. The competition is rigged from the start if renewables aren't putting a cent toward internalising their negative externalities on the grid. Just like the risk on their future revenues is completely negated by generous CfD and PPAs, causing government to already today dump billions in net losses on CfDs (23B for Germany, 10B for France). And yet the grid this takes places in is nowhere near having very high renewables penetration, it's only going downhill now until storage ramps up.
- Point 4 only calls for one question: are dams insured ? You aren't making against nuclear you are making a point against every large project.
- Why is your entire analysis on LCOE/contracted price to reach profitability suddendly focuses on the west, whereas you used the global nuclear fleet for delays ? The Lazard's infographic in particular is especially dishonest since you are now making a point with only two nuclear reactors : Vogtle 3 and 4. Whether voluntary or accidental, that's cherrypicking.
- You showed that the majority of global nuclear projects which started in 2021-2024 took approx 8 years to build. Why are we magically jumping to >20 years project duration?
- Saying that a portfolio of renewables and storage can be installed anywhere, derisked is quite the bold claim. Can you provide any exemple of a renewable production plant built without it offshoring its intermittence-related revenue risk to a generous third-part ? Same goes for batteries which to this day are very rarely profitable on their own without pulling half of their revenue from generous frequency reserve payments.
- You probably meant "More risky to deploy than renewables" ?
- Pointing to missing electricity generation while comparing to renewables (with still zero large scale storage..) is pretty funny :)
- I believe that you have another post pointing to the shortcomings of LCOE when talking about renewables. Why are we dropping this skepticism toward renewables' LCOE here ?
- Building just one NPP is, in my opinion, not that smart since we are observing a habit of large cost overruns on first-of-a-serie nuclear plants built in countries which have yet to develop a local specialised workforce. It should only be considered if the NPP's capital and running costs - with overrun factored in - are lower than the costs incurred by building the batteries it would replace.
- What basis or source makes you think that we will reach >80% renewable penetration by 2040 ? Your economic transition scenario graph featured at the end of the post, while already optimistic compared to our current awful trajectory, only shows 60% and that's with the fraud known as biomass turned into biogas counted in it.
- The idea that countries use civilian nuclear plant to safeguard their military nuclear capacity is an old and unproven one. USA, the UK, France, Russia and China all have quite large submarines fleet, with both attack and boomers being nuclear. What makes you think that they would need a civilian nuclear stepstone to maintain their military nuclear knowhow ? Especially since submarine and AC nuclear reactor are pretty different to land ones.
solar manufacturing isnt simple, but we've figured it out and scaled it to insane levels. Innovation will happen but it's practically only incremental at this point. I think it's a very fair statement to make that it is the simplest form of energy generation end to end in terms of risk (e.g., hydro is simpler but high risk given the construction, biomass burning is simple but has a complex supply chain)
Some might be rolling back safety standards, but France is still building very few plants (HPC, FM3, any others?). How much do they have to reduce safety standards to scale again? Is that level going to be accepted by society?
Water availability is not the biggest issue and refrigeration exists (albeit reducing efficiency), but it is a risk to the current fleet. if we build everything near shore, we'll have pretty heavy transmission issues...
underground storage is expensive and getting stuff out there is a new challenge for the future. how is this future cost included, who'll pick up the tab etc. Again, new risks to consider.
wind turbines are simple materials, carbon fibers, epoxy etc, the means to recycle exist already, the scale of the waste stream is not really big enough to recycle beyond the valuable metals. no such technology exists really for nuclear waste, there is no breeder fleet for fuel, there is no recycling facility for the highly contagious waste. Sellafield has to figure this stuff out and the total cost is exceeding GBP 130bn already
the Flvybjerg source is global
Actually, we do pay for the grid connection costs and build our own lines in a BOOT models in many markets. true though that many grid costs are rolled over to rate payers
Batteries aren't a cost incurred but an investment by an actor to arbitrage. Most deals we're working on are actually co located from the beginning as we want to optimise for prices.
Such CfDs dont really exist anymore, only offshore projects we've been working on and the UK for some reason is being more generous for onshore too. In the Nordics it's all merchant already, same in Iberia. Old assets will continue to get their EEG or whatever sure, they got generous tariffs in 2000/2010s. Now we largely dont need it anymore
In more mature markets hydro needs insurance for accidents, liability, pollution etc. I doubt they need in Albania or other emerging markets where this was practically always handeled by the government directly.
We don't have much insights in most markets where nuclear economics are available, largely only NA and Europe. but apart from Vogtle, HPC, FV3, OK3 are all financial disasters.
project duration is not just construction but all planning on top. Announcement to COD is way longer than construction.
"Saying that a portfolio of renewables and storage can be installed anywhere, derisked is quite the bold claim. Can you provide any exemple of a renewable production plant built without it offshoring its intermittence-related revenue risk to a generous third-part."
Batteries are highly profitable actually, it's the hype of the last 18 months. Similar to solar this will probably normalise once cannibalisation becomes an issue. Grid services is a legitimate business case and batteries do it cheaper than conventional plants. In mature markets these value pools are largely already exhausted and new batteries make their money in arbitrage. Co-located batteries can often not even provide grid services so it's arbitrage only.
yes, good catch. Probably inverted the statement
Intermittency of renewables is part of the business case and planned for. If an NPP is delayed, that's not planned for. This kills the business case for the investor but also leads to costs to society reflected in higher prices to account for the risk. You can see this implied for instance in electricity futures markets when Finish winter power had big premia baked in for OK3 start up delays, but also Belgian power markets notoriously had price premia accounting for their less reliable plants.
LCOE has it's obvious shortcomings, but it does have a usecase to illustrate lifetime cost per unit energy.
Well the EPR has its 4th reactor in construction (I think one in china with 2 reactors, one in Finland, HPC and FMV in construction) and costs have only been increasing. After HPC they really need to show that they can deliver Sizewell C (announced in 2010) or the industry is dead
not on a global level but many markets will be at 80% in the 2040s, Britain for instance is planning for some nuclear in the mix of a very wind heavy portfolio.
The more people you have working on one thing the more externalities you will get, such as a workforce of nuclear scientists or engineers. It's not a must but there's definitely benefits to adjacent industries.
Mhhh, if only we had done the same to another technology in the 70s !
"Simplest form of energy in terms of risks" What ? The financial risk is so big that there almosr zero projects which get financed without a CfD or a PPA, meaning that they aren't viable if they can't offset that risk for free to a third party. Least risky is probably the good old turbine gas (not CCGT), less fixed costs, more variable. But ofc it sucks for the environment.
"How much do they have to reduce safety standards" Not necessarily much, the biggest blow to nuclear has been the state-manufactured loss of knowhow.
" Will that level be accepted by the population" 99.9999% of the population has no clue of what nuclear safety standards are and wouldn't give a flying f... if we reduced the number of auxiliary diesel units from 4 to 3.
"Albeit reducing efficiency" Uh ? The cold water temperature doesn't change, the Carnot efficiency is the same.
"Risk for the current fleet" So far the only risks are 10% reduced generation during summer anticyclonic conditions. That is, exactly when solar panels are doing their best.
> Pretty heavy transmission issues
Coastal areas have higher population density than the rest of a country. And that would still cost way less transmission issues than developing 100% RE which requires transmission capacity for renewables overcapacity.
> Underground storage is expensive
But you don't need much space. France has a single underground storage project and that thing is sized to handle the entire country's waste for ages.
"Who will pick up the tab" We haven't even yet figured who will pick up the tab for mass deploying storage capacity in 100% RE grids. Complaining about not deciding who will pick up the tab a thousand years from now for nuclear is a bit ridiculous in comparison.
"No such technology exists for nuclear waste" Uh ? Nuclear breeders exist. They aren't mass deployed, partly because natural uranium is cheaper, but they exist.
"No recycling facility"
I checked on my Maps app and La Hague was still there
> 130 bn Sellafield
Which isn’t a storage project but the British government fixing a British fuckup. That’s like saying that the price of a dam is the price of the damage from some 1950s dam collapse event. Comparing two different numbers.
> Highly contagious
... are we talking about nuclear waste or a virus ?
> Build our own lines
Actual transmission lines or just the tiny bit going from your local DC/AC inverter toward the closest grid inverter / HV line direct connection ? Big difference.
And that’s still not paying for the rest of the grid needing further investments.
Here in France each regional office of RTE (national electricity transmission operator) applies a producer-pays model for extra infrastructure. Infrastructure needs are sized by surveying the projects currently in the pipes + investigating areas with low infrastructure but high renewables potential, and then divides the bill by the number of MW. In places like South-western France the bill now reaches 80k€/MW which starts to significantly eat the producers’ margins. I doubt that other places in the world do same considering how much it impacts the projects’ CAPEX.
> Aren’t a cost but an investment
Which will end up being paid for by the consumers and increasing the end price. Call it as you want that’s a cost, necessary to compensate the negative externality of renewables intermittency.
"Deals we are working on"
Now be honest. How many of those batteries are in project only thanks to frequency reserve compensations ? I was in the industry man, we both know we don’t yet have batteries working on their own. It’s all frequency reserve to push the returns rate up or a decorative add-on to make it more acceptable to local authorities.
"Such CfDs don’t really exist anymore"
Lol. Europe is on track to end 2024 with something like 12 GW contracted under PPAs. Since no one does purely market selling (no bank would finance that) it’s guaranteed the rest is CfD, feed-in and a bit of home consumption for solar. For a reminder we are forecasting something like 60 GW of solar and 17 GW of wind in net additions this year. That's a bit more than 12 GW. But if my memory is right you are working in Spain right? Spain is the leader in PPA so that could explain the bias.
"It's all merchant already in the Nordics and Spain"
Spain still runs CfDs auctions
"Now we largely need it anymore" Unsure. Even if the economic part goes in renewables favour there is still the issue of offsetting the intermittency revenue risk. And with wholesale prices rising like crazy this year on low renewables hours PPAs future isn’t so bright. Renewables will need to bring price down in order to incentivize its consumers to take on the intermittency risk if they want to keep working as they do right now. And if market prices are already low when the sun shines and increases significantly in the evening, you really need to bring the contracted price down if you the PPA to be interesting. The pool of companies who buy renewables PPA for the sake of saying they are green and buy renewable electricity is shrinking.
Project planning phase can be significantly faster if nuclear companies are free to invest without having the risk of getting their project randomly cancelled or being attacked in the courts by five different NGOs.
"The point of portfolio is diversification" And also affordable electricity generation. That's even the main point. Building solar panels in the middle of the desert for the sake of it is ridiculous and only done by the madmen in Jeddah.
"Batteries are highly profitable actually" Oh come on cut the crap we both know they aren't. Otherwise there would be way more battery project development and the Chinese battery cell manufacturing sector wouldn't be in overcapacity.
"Grid service is a legitimate business case" That I can agree on but the total european market for capacity reserve is 5 GW. So, you know, that’s quite limited. But it would be movely indeed to have that covered by batteries, it’s probably less expensive than having nuclear reactors not use their full capacity.
"In mature markets they now make their money and arbitrage"
Not sure where I read that, I think it was a Lazard report, but Californian batteries still make half of their total revenue in grid service alone. California is by far the most developed battery grid on Earth.
"Part of the business case and planned for" Pretty easy to do when some benevolent third parties offset the intermittency risk for free. Except for below-zero-hours mecanisms in CfDs there is no intermittency risks in solar financial plans.
"Costs for society due to a risk" Mmmh, that reminds me of an energy strategy where current producers aren’t putting a single cent toward storage investments and it’s all going to be paid for by the end consumers.
"Price premia due to NPP delays"
Do you really want to step on the field of wholesale prices stability ? Lol
LCOE is like the GDP of energy. Simple, works great, but it’s too simplistic. Not taking negative externalities into account when investing and consuming is literally what got us a in climate crisis to begin with.
EPR 1 is already dead and buried. HP C and Sizewell will likely keep on being a shitshow and EDF probably popped a few hectolitres of Champagne when FV3 was finally finished. The real deal will be EPR 2 with works starting in Penly in 2026 for a pair of reactors. That’s where we will see if France is still capable of building something bigger than a bakery.
With all that the Biden administration, the DOE, NRC, etc have thrown at the industry and utilities to "incentivize" them to roll the dice with their companies and careers by building another AP-1000 (Loan guarantees, grants, tax-abatements, siting subsidies, and on, and on; on top of the existing subsidy regime like Price-Andersen, etc), they still want more! More, more, more and not a single contract to build in sight.
They literally had the nerve to tell Granholm at the opening of Vogtle that they "needed" more free money from the government, especially the Holy Grail of nuclear subsidies : govt picking up the tab for any and all construction cost overruns. HAHAHAA. That's why they can't build plants now! Because they've been incentivized by various Republican state legislatures through variations of CWIP laws to NEVER complete construction.
The way to make a fortune in nuclear is not to generate and sell nuclear power but to just never finish building the plants you started and keep rolling in all that sweet tax and rate-payer money. It is an elegant scam.
" don't get why underground safe storage for waste is considered as an issue. It's pretty much 0 impact and if our focus is to fight climate change"
Well, 0 impact is certainly not true as the waste will be trucked overland in thousands of shipments that will all converge on Nevada's roads alone.
What I don't get is why Nuke promoters don't consider something a problem if it's scientifically possible; "that's just politics" is the pat response. Well, political problems are still REAL problems too and this one has kept Yucca Mountain from being built and deployed for 40 years.
Stop saying waste is not a problem because it IS a problem with NOWHERE to store it yet; you are being intentionally deceptive. No solution is on the horizon or in consideration through the consent-based siting process AND with the Supreme Court essentially tossing out hundreds of years of precedent and the ability of an elected government to do the will of the people through agency regulation, NO deep geologic depository is being built any time soon.
The other thing I don't understand is, when nearly every single politician in Nevada has been vehemently opposed to Yucca and an overwhelming majority of Nevada citizens have consistently opposed Yucca over decades, how was it Harry Reid going rogue to put an end to the political project? He was literally doing the will of his constituents. Yucca was selected before ANY of the science was considered, because of POLITICS.
A few critics : renewables, in particular solar panels, aren't exactly simple either. Just because it happens in Chinese factories doesn't mean the complexity doesn't exist. Future developments of solar in particular, betting on new materials like perovskite, or triple band technology are very complex too.
Nuclear being expected to be excessively safe due to post-2011 hysteria isn't an issue of the technology itself, and countries aiming to develop ambitious nuclear programs will rationalise their safety expectations, like France is currently doing.
- Drought vulnerability is vastly overestimated. It caused an outcry in 2022 when multiple NPPs in Europe had to slow down production to respect biodiversity limits - it wasn't a safety issue, they simply have to respect a maximum temperature of the river's water -, but this issue is limited to closed-circuit reactors, I.e. the reactors without cooling towers. Switching from closed-circuit to open-circuit is possible and not even that complex since you don't really need to impact the primary cooling system. Open-circuit reactors have a water consumption of roughly 0.5m3/s for a GW of power. For reference, even during the worst point of the 2022 drought, the Rhine had a flow of 300m3/s. And we can of course still build reactors on the shoreline, cancelling all drought issue.
- I don't get why underground safe storage for waste is considered as an issue. It's pretty much 0 impact and if our focus is to fight climate change now, the emotional "but our kids ten thousand years from now will still be around it" is a bit fallacious. And nothing stops us from developing surgenerators in a hundred years from now and process it then, once our fight against climate change is accomplished. Windmills in particular had a phase we only had plans to recycle them, not established solutions : did we stop all windmill deployments ?
- Is your mean cost overrun for global nuclear deployments or only western ?
- A global mean delayed duration of eight years isn't that surprising to me. Five years is stupidly optimistic and nuclear developers being overly optimistic on their construction time to bridge the gap with renewables isn't new. Agreed, that's a delay, but a delay can be for technical reasons just like it can represent excess zeal from the developer.
- About the competition with renewables, renewables are neither asked to contribute to their additional infrastructure nor contributing a cent to prepare for the upcoming need for massive battery capacity and decreasing mean load factor due to overcapacity. The competition is rigged from the start if renewables aren't putting a cent toward internalising their negative externalities on the grid. Just like the risk on their future revenues is completely negated by generous CfD and PPAs, causing government to already today dump billions in net losses on CfDs (23B for Germany, 10B for France). And yet the grid this takes places in is nowhere near having very high renewables penetration, it's only going downhill now until storage ramps up.
- Point 4 only calls for one question: are dams insured ? You aren't making against nuclear you are making a point against every large project.
- Why is your entire analysis on LCOE/contracted price to reach profitability suddendly focuses on the west, whereas you used the global nuclear fleet for delays ? The Lazard's infographic in particular is especially dishonest since you are now making a point with only two nuclear reactors : Vogtle 3 and 4. Whether voluntary or accidental, that's cherrypicking.
- You showed that the majority of global nuclear projects which started in 2021-2024 took approx 8 years to build. Why are we magically jumping to >20 years project duration?
- Saying that a portfolio of renewables and storage can be installed anywhere, derisked is quite the bold claim. Can you provide any exemple of a renewable production plant built without it offshoring its intermittence-related revenue risk to a generous third-part ? Same goes for batteries which to this day are very rarely profitable on their own without pulling half of their revenue from generous frequency reserve payments.
- You probably meant "More risky to deploy than renewables" ?
- Pointing to missing electricity generation while comparing to renewables (with still zero large scale storage..) is pretty funny :)
- I believe that you have another post pointing to the shortcomings of LCOE when talking about renewables. Why are we dropping this skepticism toward renewables' LCOE here ?
- Building just one NPP is, in my opinion, not that smart since we are observing a habit of large cost overruns on first-of-a-serie nuclear plants built in countries which have yet to develop a local specialised workforce. It should only be considered if the NPP's capital and running costs - with overrun factored in - are lower than the costs incurred by building the batteries it would replace.
- What basis or source makes you think that we will reach >80% renewable penetration by 2040 ? Your economic transition scenario graph featured at the end of the post, while already optimistic compared to our current awful trajectory, only shows 60% and that's with the fraud known as biomass turned into biogas counted in it.
- The idea that countries use civilian nuclear plant to safeguard their military nuclear capacity is an old and unproven one. USA, the UK, France, Russia and China all have quite large submarines fleet, with both attack and boomers being nuclear. What makes you think that they would need a civilian nuclear stepstone to maintain their military nuclear knowhow ? Especially since submarine and AC nuclear reactor are pretty different to land ones.
solar manufacturing isnt simple, but we've figured it out and scaled it to insane levels. Innovation will happen but it's practically only incremental at this point. I think it's a very fair statement to make that it is the simplest form of energy generation end to end in terms of risk (e.g., hydro is simpler but high risk given the construction, biomass burning is simple but has a complex supply chain)
Some might be rolling back safety standards, but France is still building very few plants (HPC, FM3, any others?). How much do they have to reduce safety standards to scale again? Is that level going to be accepted by society?
Water availability is not the biggest issue and refrigeration exists (albeit reducing efficiency), but it is a risk to the current fleet. if we build everything near shore, we'll have pretty heavy transmission issues...
underground storage is expensive and getting stuff out there is a new challenge for the future. how is this future cost included, who'll pick up the tab etc. Again, new risks to consider.
wind turbines are simple materials, carbon fibers, epoxy etc, the means to recycle exist already, the scale of the waste stream is not really big enough to recycle beyond the valuable metals. no such technology exists really for nuclear waste, there is no breeder fleet for fuel, there is no recycling facility for the highly contagious waste. Sellafield has to figure this stuff out and the total cost is exceeding GBP 130bn already
the Flvybjerg source is global
Actually, we do pay for the grid connection costs and build our own lines in a BOOT models in many markets. true though that many grid costs are rolled over to rate payers
Batteries aren't a cost incurred but an investment by an actor to arbitrage. Most deals we're working on are actually co located from the beginning as we want to optimise for prices.
Such CfDs dont really exist anymore, only offshore projects we've been working on and the UK for some reason is being more generous for onshore too. In the Nordics it's all merchant already, same in Iberia. Old assets will continue to get their EEG or whatever sure, they got generous tariffs in 2000/2010s. Now we largely dont need it anymore
In more mature markets hydro needs insurance for accidents, liability, pollution etc. I doubt they need in Albania or other emerging markets where this was practically always handeled by the government directly.
We don't have much insights in most markets where nuclear economics are available, largely only NA and Europe. but apart from Vogtle, HPC, FV3, OK3 are all financial disasters.
project duration is not just construction but all planning on top. Announcement to COD is way longer than construction.
"Saying that a portfolio of renewables and storage can be installed anywhere, derisked is quite the bold claim. Can you provide any exemple of a renewable production plant built without it offshoring its intermittence-related revenue risk to a generous third-part."
The point of a portfolio is diversification, the same way for stocks and bonds. we wrote on it here https://climateposting.substack.com/p/diversity-is-strength
Batteries are highly profitable actually, it's the hype of the last 18 months. Similar to solar this will probably normalise once cannibalisation becomes an issue. Grid services is a legitimate business case and batteries do it cheaper than conventional plants. In mature markets these value pools are largely already exhausted and new batteries make their money in arbitrage. Co-located batteries can often not even provide grid services so it's arbitrage only.
yes, good catch. Probably inverted the statement
Intermittency of renewables is part of the business case and planned for. If an NPP is delayed, that's not planned for. This kills the business case for the investor but also leads to costs to society reflected in higher prices to account for the risk. You can see this implied for instance in electricity futures markets when Finish winter power had big premia baked in for OK3 start up delays, but also Belgian power markets notoriously had price premia accounting for their less reliable plants.
LCOE has it's obvious shortcomings, but it does have a usecase to illustrate lifetime cost per unit energy.
Well the EPR has its 4th reactor in construction (I think one in china with 2 reactors, one in Finland, HPC and FMV in construction) and costs have only been increasing. After HPC they really need to show that they can deliver Sizewell C (announced in 2010) or the industry is dead
not on a global level but many markets will be at 80% in the 2040s, Britain for instance is planning for some nuclear in the mix of a very wind heavy portfolio.
The more people you have working on one thing the more externalities you will get, such as a workforce of nuclear scientists or engineers. It's not a must but there's definitely benefits to adjacent industries.
"Figured it our and scaled it insane level"
Mhhh, if only we had done the same to another technology in the 70s !
"Simplest form of energy in terms of risks" What ? The financial risk is so big that there almosr zero projects which get financed without a CfD or a PPA, meaning that they aren't viable if they can't offset that risk for free to a third party. Least risky is probably the good old turbine gas (not CCGT), less fixed costs, more variable. But ofc it sucks for the environment.
"How much do they have to reduce safety standards" Not necessarily much, the biggest blow to nuclear has been the state-manufactured loss of knowhow.
" Will that level be accepted by the population" 99.9999% of the population has no clue of what nuclear safety standards are and wouldn't give a flying f... if we reduced the number of auxiliary diesel units from 4 to 3.
"Albeit reducing efficiency" Uh ? The cold water temperature doesn't change, the Carnot efficiency is the same.
"Risk for the current fleet" So far the only risks are 10% reduced generation during summer anticyclonic conditions. That is, exactly when solar panels are doing their best.
> Pretty heavy transmission issues
Coastal areas have higher population density than the rest of a country. And that would still cost way less transmission issues than developing 100% RE which requires transmission capacity for renewables overcapacity.
> Underground storage is expensive
But you don't need much space. France has a single underground storage project and that thing is sized to handle the entire country's waste for ages.
"Who will pick up the tab" We haven't even yet figured who will pick up the tab for mass deploying storage capacity in 100% RE grids. Complaining about not deciding who will pick up the tab a thousand years from now for nuclear is a bit ridiculous in comparison.
"No such technology exists for nuclear waste" Uh ? Nuclear breeders exist. They aren't mass deployed, partly because natural uranium is cheaper, but they exist.
"No recycling facility"
I checked on my Maps app and La Hague was still there
> 130 bn Sellafield
Which isn’t a storage project but the British government fixing a British fuckup. That’s like saying that the price of a dam is the price of the damage from some 1950s dam collapse event. Comparing two different numbers.
> Highly contagious
... are we talking about nuclear waste or a virus ?
> Build our own lines
Actual transmission lines or just the tiny bit going from your local DC/AC inverter toward the closest grid inverter / HV line direct connection ? Big difference.
And that’s still not paying for the rest of the grid needing further investments.
Here in France each regional office of RTE (national electricity transmission operator) applies a producer-pays model for extra infrastructure. Infrastructure needs are sized by surveying the projects currently in the pipes + investigating areas with low infrastructure but high renewables potential, and then divides the bill by the number of MW. In places like South-western France the bill now reaches 80k€/MW which starts to significantly eat the producers’ margins. I doubt that other places in the world do same considering how much it impacts the projects’ CAPEX.
> Aren’t a cost but an investment
Which will end up being paid for by the consumers and increasing the end price. Call it as you want that’s a cost, necessary to compensate the negative externality of renewables intermittency.
"Deals we are working on"
Now be honest. How many of those batteries are in project only thanks to frequency reserve compensations ? I was in the industry man, we both know we don’t yet have batteries working on their own. It’s all frequency reserve to push the returns rate up or a decorative add-on to make it more acceptable to local authorities.
"Such CfDs don’t really exist anymore"
Lol. Europe is on track to end 2024 with something like 12 GW contracted under PPAs. Since no one does purely market selling (no bank would finance that) it’s guaranteed the rest is CfD, feed-in and a bit of home consumption for solar. For a reminder we are forecasting something like 60 GW of solar and 17 GW of wind in net additions this year. That's a bit more than 12 GW. But if my memory is right you are working in Spain right? Spain is the leader in PPA so that could explain the bias.
"It's all merchant already in the Nordics and Spain"
Spain still runs CfDs auctions
"Now we largely need it anymore" Unsure. Even if the economic part goes in renewables favour there is still the issue of offsetting the intermittency revenue risk. And with wholesale prices rising like crazy this year on low renewables hours PPAs future isn’t so bright. Renewables will need to bring price down in order to incentivize its consumers to take on the intermittency risk if they want to keep working as they do right now. And if market prices are already low when the sun shines and increases significantly in the evening, you really need to bring the contracted price down if you the PPA to be interesting. The pool of companies who buy renewables PPA for the sake of saying they are green and buy renewable electricity is shrinking.
Project planning phase can be significantly faster if nuclear companies are free to invest without having the risk of getting their project randomly cancelled or being attacked in the courts by five different NGOs.
"The point of portfolio is diversification" And also affordable electricity generation. That's even the main point. Building solar panels in the middle of the desert for the sake of it is ridiculous and only done by the madmen in Jeddah.
"Batteries are highly profitable actually" Oh come on cut the crap we both know they aren't. Otherwise there would be way more battery project development and the Chinese battery cell manufacturing sector wouldn't be in overcapacity.
"Grid service is a legitimate business case" That I can agree on but the total european market for capacity reserve is 5 GW. So, you know, that’s quite limited. But it would be movely indeed to have that covered by batteries, it’s probably less expensive than having nuclear reactors not use their full capacity.
"In mature markets they now make their money and arbitrage"
Not sure where I read that, I think it was a Lazard report, but Californian batteries still make half of their total revenue in grid service alone. California is by far the most developed battery grid on Earth.
"Part of the business case and planned for" Pretty easy to do when some benevolent third parties offset the intermittency risk for free. Except for below-zero-hours mecanisms in CfDs there is no intermittency risks in solar financial plans.
"Costs for society due to a risk" Mmmh, that reminds me of an energy strategy where current producers aren’t putting a single cent toward storage investments and it’s all going to be paid for by the end consumers.
"Price premia due to NPP delays"
Do you really want to step on the field of wholesale prices stability ? Lol
LCOE is like the GDP of energy. Simple, works great, but it’s too simplistic. Not taking negative externalities into account when investing and consuming is literally what got us a in climate crisis to begin with.
EPR 1 is already dead and buried. HP C and Sizewell will likely keep on being a shitshow and EDF probably popped a few hectolitres of Champagne when FV3 was finally finished. The real deal will be EPR 2 with works starting in Penly in 2026 for a pair of reactors. That’s where we will see if France is still capable of building something bigger than a bakery.