- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
After years of wrangling, France has set out a new energy law that slashes its wind and solar power targets and drops a mandate for state-run energy provider EDF to shut down nuclear plants.
What alternatives? Gas? Coal?
Solar and wind are amazing for reducing the need for other power generation when they’re working, but there aren’t any realistic alternatives if you want power on a winter night. You need several Frances worth of solar panels to provide power in January, for example.
Yes, there are numerous days when solar can run a country, overproducing power that could be stored. But there are also plenty of days it doesn’t, and you need a solution for that too. Would you prefer it to have its waste in barrels, or pumped into the air?
Nuclear is expensive because it’s the only energy source that works 24/7 and takes care of all of its waste. Solar is great, but if you include all the batteries needed to run 24/7, that 20k investment for a house becomes a 500k investment. Fossil fuels are only cheap because they don’t include the absolutely insane cost of climate change. Wind is great but suffers from the same problem as solar, plus its much more location limited. Hydro and geothermal are amazing, but its orders of magnitude worse than wind for scale and placement.
Leaving us only with nuclear power, which is actually diet cheap once you include the externalities of the other alternatives.
This is a myth. France also does not exist in isolation. It is perfectly possible to get enough energy from solar and wind combined with storage and energy trade
That’s a great supported argument. The only argument I made that requires a source is the one about the house. I based that 20k and 500k on my own (dutch) house, which runs net-zero spread over the entire year, but produces less than 1kWh per day in january. I would need aproximately 7 more rooftops to cover my power needs during winter, or about ~400k in lithium cells (plus charge controllers, converters, etc) to store power for half a year. Exluding the emotional cost of my fire insurance laughing in my face when I propose this.
Would you like to explain why this is a myth, or where exactly I’m wrong?
Also, France is currently one of the largest electricity exporters specifically because of super cheap nuclear power. They indeed don’t exist in isolation.
That could not be further from the truth.
There are temporary solutions for the waste at most.
Tell me you don’t understand waste handling without saying you don’t understand waste handling. There are “temporary” solutions for ALL waste ever.
Nuclear waste is such a tiny little problem, that stacking every spent fuel rod ever, inside it’s storage cask, in one pile wouldn’t even fill a decent soccer stadium. If you just looked at the fuel itself, the same waste wouldn’t even reach your knees. If you powered your entire life with nuclear power (and I mean transportation, manufacturing, heating, lighting, etc) with nuclear power, the resulting spent nuclear fuel for your entire family would be slightly less than a 1-inch cube.
I can’t stress enough how nuclear waste is a total non-issue that was invented by the fossil fuel industry and misguided idiots who understand neither basic physics or (much less basic) general waste handling.
Without sinking to your level I will limit myself to say:
I am not the idiot here.
I wasn’t refering to you personally.
I was refering mostly to the anti-nuclear crusaders from the 70’s and 80’s who were so anti-war, they figured “Nuclear bomb bad, so nuclear bad”, and decided that civilian powerplants were building bombs without any evidence (or even basic understanding) and thus everything related to nuclear power was the devil and needed to stop.
Of course, if you do believe that or their propaganda, I actually was talking to you. The maths aren’t hard though, you can do them yourself. The nuclear industry is incredibly transparent and you can google almost anything. That, of course, makes it very prone to lies and deliberate misinterpretation, for example when people say there are huge amount of nuclear waste! (which is sort-of-true, but the overwhelmingly vast majority of it is low-level).
You speak of lies and misinterpration and yet you say waste is a non-issue. And even low-level radiation waste (which is a lot of material if you tear down the whole plant at some point) has to be dealt with. Thats expensive and that’s part of the cost of nuclear energy. Even if the operators will try to push that to the taxpayer.
But yes, they are transparent. So much so, that even the operators publish lists of reasons about why they don’t want to build new plants or continue to run the existing ones:
German source
solar + wind + batteries + gas
solar + wind + batteries are the cheapest option 97% of the year link
the rest will have to be filled in with gas, which is flexible
So, “the cheapest option” if you live in Los Angeles AND you lie about cost of nuclear power. It would cost 135 euro/mWh in Birmingham, which is comparable to Paris in sun-hours. Call it 120 to be nice. Nuclear power in France costs 70 euros/mWh
And those French nuclear plants are all running at 70%, this solar solution would be fully capped out.
Yea*, because the French state as the sole owner of EDF told them so. And is providing them with a multitude of subsidies for their activities. Hence, the true costs of nuclear power are hidden with cross-subsidisation.
*Rather, the price can very well exceed 70€, but is then taxed more
From what I can find, with my limited french skills, EDF isn’t getting much in the way of subsidies. The 70 euro soft-ceiling was a massive raise to fund new reactors, it used be ~40 euro’s for 25% of power and they ran fine on that.
They didn’t run fine on that at all. The blanket 45€ cap ensured very cheap electricity in France, but also led to EDF being indebted by approx 65 billion € in 2022.
That’s when the French state decided to fully step in and increased their share in the company from 80ish to 100% for another 10 billion € taxpayers money/national debt. I’d call that a subsidy.
That also means that the debt of EDF is now fully covered by the French state, giving the company more leeway despite being so indebted. That also qualifies as a subsidy.
Further, the planned new EPR2 reactors will include a clause that will guarantee EDF a minimum price. Should prices fall below that, the difference is covered by the French state. That could be a subsidy.
Also, the French state will provide favourable loans and guarantees for the construction of these reactors, giving that EDF themselves don’t have the funds to tackle this huge investment. That’s a clear subsidy.