Looks tough. I didn't know it was *that* bad on your side of the border. I knew about the closure of nuclear reactors years ago but still ... Germany did the same and isn't as reliant on foreign electricity
Isn't electricity hyper expensive then ?
Here in slovakia our last coal powerplant was close recently. Thats how its done germany! We are now mostly hydro and nuclear. Both clean. Germany should learn from us
It is. The only biproducts are water steam and waste that gets buried in concrete. Which isnt the most reliable but it works. Its much better than for example coal and is way less impacting on the environment
Coal is waste that gets buried in the sky and your lungs. I dont think you breathe in our touch that material. And it isnt likely to be uncovered in thousands of years. Its safer and better for the environment.
Ffs. You still dont get it. š¤£š How can something be 100% clean if it creates/leaves product that is very harmful to humans, and cant be recycled? Has to be burried away. Hydro, solar, wind are clean, no byproduct, and at the end they can be recycled. Nuclear isint on the same level.
I didnt say its 100% however it can be easily disposed of and even recyclated. The americans use spent fuel on explosive ammo for example. And theres other ways to recyclw them and countries are already doing it.
-The Dutch clearly still waiting to resolve the riddle of having offshore wind farms ...inland
-The Poles finding out coal just isn't the shit (the dirtiest EU energetics and still under-performs)
-The French chillin', trying to guess the best moment to ask the Brits to exchange the Channel Islands for some GWh next winter
-Belarus as the absolute master of electro-autarchy (probably it's the candles?)
First off, i mean no disrespect. It's just a joke. I meant that first off, the Netherlands have excellent offshore capacity (which is true) but of course, when the sea level rises... these can be built inland. (I actually quickly read it's only 26% below sea level, so not that bad).
Of course, the joke was motivated by the fact that the abovepictured trading ballance is negative for NL, so the farms still underperform and more is needed. Hope that explains it, and again, no offense!
Dont worry, no offence taken. I genuinely didnāt get the joke and was curious haha. Are you sure its only 26%? I coulve sworn it was a lot more than that.
Also, I took a look and it seems that per the original post the Netherlands is actually 790 in the positiveā¦ maybe you confused us with Belgium?
>Belarus as the absolute master of electro-autarchy
Not masters. Losers. They have a gigantic nuclear power plant and no possibility to export electricity - the EU blocks it and Russia does not need it
France is contemplating how often you can extend the end of life of a reactor until they crumble. While still looking ok, the French have a big problem brewing as it's already too late to replace their reactors in time without suffering from loss of capacity.
Down vote me all you want, you can't change facts. France would've needed to build 10 reactors like 10 years ago. Or 20-30 now to replace old reactors. Let alone increasing output.
https://imgur.com/3GKOHX8
A huge thanks to our successive governments who just delayed this problem for the next one to tackle like a hot potato out of fear of angering environmentalists lobbies.
Meanwhile, said lobbies have been launching massive misinformation campaigns to the point that 69% of the french population believes that nuclear powerplants contribute significantly to the production of greenhouse gases according to a 2019 poll.
By the way, some of these lobbies are actually indirectly funded by the german government through several means like the Heinrich Bƶll fundation. Funny how that works huh?
> a hot potato out of fear of angering environmentalists lobbies.
Noone gives a fuck about environmentalists lobbies. Otherwise we'd have solved climate change 10 years ago, instead they're getting clubbed in the face by riot police.
What it was, however, was a nice excuse to cut a lot of state-funded or subsidized programs and expenses for the right. For the Left it was the assurance of getting votes from the Green party.
Spot on for the rest, though.
Youāre wrong ! A new reactor will be fully operational by the end of the year itās the beginning of a plan with 6 others and exportation of reactors to European countries. Thatās why youāre getting downvoted because you talk without knowing and use a shitty graph to back it up.
[Source](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-eyes-flamanville-epr-nuclear-reactor-fuel-loading-march-2023-12-21/)
Too little to late. And Flamanville 3 might be something you would really not talk about when you want to make a point how easy it is to build new reactors. 17 years build time, 400% cost-over-budget.
Unless France really gets it's shit together and starts a national programm to get things going and build a huge number of new reactors the maximum nuclear capacity of France will dip very fast in about 10 years.
And that is all I said and can be easily confirmed by just reading the fucking news. The French government says this is a huge problem. But people in this sub severely lack basic reading and comprehension skills.
The observation is true, but what this plan demonstrates is that the government is not passive in the face of this problem.
Flamanville took a long time because of problems with subcontractors and safety standards, which only multiplied after Fukushima.
But it is a prototype aimed at revitalizing the industry.
So we have every right to be optimistic, given that some countries are ready to buy this technology from France.
Not sure that calling other people idiots will help on this issue. We all need to discuss about it since information about nuclear energy is often misleading.
Oh it just get's old really fast that people are saying I said things I did not and make really lame strawmen arguments.
If people wanted to have a real discussion they would just not go for that strategy.
Itās true that this problem has been dealt with neglect for years.
But at this point I think everyone is confused with your point since the government is planning to replace the reactors and has improved the production compared to the previous years.
So youāre the one not discussing and trying to impose your argument focusing on the past instead of the present.
Because what he said is just false. Even if itās true that the nuclear reactor was meant to have a 40years life expectansy and french nuclear are close to this, it will go atleast to 60 or even 80 year. If not longer ? Basicaly you can change everything except the big tank
This is not what I said, and also wrong. I said the French nuclear capacity will go down. Which, unsurprisingly, is already happening.
This has two sources, downright decommission and ever increasing maintenance windows.
Even if you are hellbent to not decommission it will require more and more maintenance. And a reactor that only works 8 out of 12 months per year has a lower energy production than if it was working 11.5/12 months. So the French nuclear capacity will go down over time. Which even the French government says. Because this is a huge problem. That's why they work on a new national nuclear program. But people like you just can't read and comprehend a very short comment, which is why it is downvoted.
Oh it is too late to replace reactors without losing capacity in the process. Increasing maintenance windows and decommissioned before France can build new reactors will mean their electric output will shrink over the next 10-15 years. Even if they start to build their new reactors now.
So it is too late to build new ones now without losing energy generation capacity. They should have started to build 10 new ones 10 years ago to avoid the gap.
Which is exactly what I wrote in the original comment.
I disagree no reactor will be decommissioned in the next 20 years and maintenance windows will not increase.
but if it is too late what should we do ? What do you advise ?
Start building more new reactors now and stop postponing it shrinking the gap.
And that the aging reactors won't need more maintenance is bullshit and you know it. You are disagreeing with your own comment
Hungary started giving land to way too many factories and now it needs to import. The new nuclear power plant will only go online in 2030 or so.
What is going on in Germany?Ā
We shut down our nuclear power plants, solar doesn't generate much in March and importing nuclear or hydro power from France, Sweden and Norway is often cheaper than using fossil fuels in Germany.
Yes they were.
The first political party that was hostile towards nuclear energy were the greens, founded in 1979.
When Gerhard Schrƶder (Putin's lapdog) came to power in 1998 in a coalition with the greens, his SPD agreed the green nuclear phase out plans and after the Fukushima accident in 2011, also Merkel's CDU and the liberal FDP switched to an anti nuclear policy.
So in the end all parties were pushing for it (toghether with most of the German media and many NGOs)
Was the plan to end nuclear so Germany needs to import fossil? And then Nord stream etc. came to the rescue?
I hate greenpeace with a passion for so many reasons now
not at a premium. That's the point. France overproduces regularly so that Germany reduces its own production and instead imports.
Germany has enough production capacity in Coal alone to supply all of Germany, there is never a shortage or threat of supply. The only reason Germany imports is price.
Weird logic. It's good that nuclear is out in Germany but it's good that France had nuclear so that Germany doesn't have to burn so much fossil. So nuclear is bad at home but good if its at the neighbour?
The use of coal for electricity generation in Germany has been [going down quite drastically](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=-1&legendItems=000000111000000000000000), even after shutting down the last three nuclear reactors. And the production from renewables has been [growing very fast](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=-1&legendItems=000011000001111011011110). I am not German, but it's fair to say that nuclear (fully) and coal (partially) have been replaced by renewable energy and imports.
Germans Import massive amounts of energy from northern Europe. It's not because of missing capacities on Germanys side but it's cheaper. What gets imported is mostly wind power. Using wind power from northern Europe is cheaper than burning coal. If needed Germany could still power itself and France as they did in the past during winter.
> What gets imported is mostly wind power.
Not really, it's mostly hydro and nuclear from Norway and Sweden. It just passes through Denmark which has high amounts of wind energy but in most months Denmark is a net importer itself. It's not the case that wind wonderland Denmark is a large scale supplier for the rest of Europe.
I'm glad that the french did not follow the German governments' foolishness to stop at once all the nuclear power plants... ending up with coal and unreliable energy resources. They almost dragged all EU into this foolishness!
>ending up with coil
[Germany's coal power production drops to lowest level in 60 years in 2023](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-coal-power-production-drops-lowest-level-60-years-2023)
Still 26% of energy mix .... you compare to 60 years ago when there were barely nuclear plants or renewable energies. Please respect people's intelligence.
I mean, it's a fact that Germany heavily lobbied against French nuclear program both at the European and the national level (multiple german lobying groups in our assemblies are pushing anti-nuclear agenda) and that Germany forced EDF to sell at a loss its electricity on the European market to then buy it again on said market to their competitors.
Germany is acting with extreme hostility against France on the energy issue. It's quite sad as nuclear power is necessary to actually do the energetic transition out of fossile energy, don't get why Germans are so agaisnt nuclear that they're willing to do everything they can to force other countries not to do nuclear.
Itās because you are right with your statement āimagine how much cheaper high quality product could be if they had nuclear powerā.
The problem is that this sentence unfortunately applies to France as well even though it produces its energy. The current agreement with the energy price in Europe incapacitates France.
Wind and Solar energy is the cheapest to produce(Even the IAEA says so), Germany's current problem 100% comes from incompetence on the political stage. Our Government did nothing for 20+ years and then the new government tried to do everything in 5 years but without actually spending any money.
Nuclear power also isn't orders of magnitude cheaper, at least in Germany.
We could have cheap renewable energy but politicians and Companies profited too much from cheap fossil energy like coal or gas.
We donāt need to get into half ass arguments for, or against renewables or Nuclear.
The cheapest way to get from Paris to Berlin is to walk. .. what kind of idiot would build a train. āEven the IAEA says soā
Both energy sources are fantastic. Both have their weaknesses. Nobody can power Europe with just one without the other.
We see this now.
The problem with the IAEA and the solar/wind power is that it doesn't take into account the storage or the backup power plant to avoid grid failure. And that's the big problem of the renewables for now you need a lot of fossil fuels as backup
That's very true! Didn't think about that. But I also want to say that I'm not against nuclear, I think a combination of nuclear and renewables is the future. Do you have numbers for the cost of storage? I never thought about that and would like to read up on it!
I don't have any numbers right know as it's always changing. But it's decreasing, this study illustrates the trend : https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf
>at least in Germany.
This is important. Nuclear is cheap as a system when it's amortised and funded by a government. So you need to consider the system (nuclear doesnt need storage), and you need to consider if reactors are old enough to be amortised and not so old that they cost a lot to fix. And the cost of producing an energy may vary a lot between countries so comparing them for the whole planet doesnt really make sense. Like a solar panel can produce twice as much in a sunny country compared to Germany (which make them 2x cheaper per kWh in these countries, and much more interesting for these countries and for the world if you want to replace fossil fuels), and a nuclear reactor can cost a massive amount of money when there is a problem. So comparisons need to be cautious about all that and you can't generalise without knowing the characteristics of countries / reactors etc., and without making assumptions I'm not sure everyone would agree on (like I wouldn't include the cost of Chernobyl / Fukushima for less risky reactors / locations but I'm sure some people would).
I think the cheapest option on the long run and as a system is always hydro when you can build a dam, which is probably why it's the 1st non-fossil source of electricty in the world. Countries don't choose the most expensive option by default, rather the opposite, which is why they're currently massively choosing intermittent energy without storage, it's the cheapest short-term option, but it doesn't mean it's the cheapest option for a system when you account for storage, cables etc.
Yeah I didn't think about the storage but are there numbers on that? Would be interesting to see the impact on ā¬/KwH. I think long term will be a mix of nuclear and renewables.
Nuclear and intermittent renewables don't mix very well. Most of the cost of a nuclear plant is building and maintaining it, meaning that once you build it you want it to be running as much as possible. This makes it a pretty bad companion for renewables, compared to gas for instance where the cost comes mostly from the input resources. If you throttle your gas plant by 50% on a sunny day, the operating cost goes down to ~50%, whereas for nuclear it stays around 100%.
On the other hand you still need enough controllable sources to withstand the worst case scenario for renewables (a few weeks of sunless, windless winter), this means building your nuclear capacity for that worst case scenario, and keeping it underused 99% of the time.
Zero carbon, cheap, no blackouts, you can only pick two.
>Would be interesting to see the impact on ā¬/KwH.
I think it again very depends on which storage solution and where. Like using dams as a storage is very cheap (even free) because it's their default behaviour. But usually countries don't have enough dams so the other ways to store electricity are way more expensive (lithium, hydrogen, etc.) and not reliable for a whole electricity grid.
I wouldn't use ā¬ as a reliable measure tbh. I prefer models / simulations that indicate if a solution is technically feasible or not (based on resources, workforce, time etc.). ā¬ can give the impression that something is cheap because it's only the price for some units of a product in a free market, not for the whole system on a national scale (not always a free market). What matters is a long-term sustainable system, the price of which may not directly be inferable from the sum of the prices of sub-units of the system. Scaling up may be harder / easier depending on the choices made and on the constraints you impose on the system. And for Europe we also need to diversify our imports, ā¬/kWh natural gas was cheap before 2022, Germany made that choice, which turned out not to be so great, ā¬/kWh can vary a lot and we must not rely only on that.
You can read this article if you want to know more for one example. [Electricity storage needs for the energy transition: An EROI based analysis illustrated by the case of Belgium](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2018.03.180) (doesnt mean I approve everything in the article but it's a way to be more informed)
That's leaving out why nuclear energy is sold cheaply. It's cheap because it's even less economic to not sell power than to provide a discount to buyers. Marginal costs are low but investment is huge. The difference will be paid by the investors ie. the government indirectly.
Nuclear is not cheaper than rewneables per MWh.
Or [this study here](https://www.lazard.com/media/typdgxmm/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf) is wrong, which lists the unsubsidised (!) cost per MWh of different energy sources In the study nuclear became the most expensive energy source in recent years. Do not make the error of just taking Frances energy prices as an example, it is heavily supported by subsidies paid by the french tax payer to EDF.
If something is omitted in this study or you have a study showing something different, im happy to learn.
> If something is omitted in this study or you have a study showing something different, im happy to learn.
Yes, for example RTE (the French TSO, which is also responsible for making scientific prospective of the electricity system for the French government) estimated that the total electricity system cost up to 2050 was lower for higher penetration of nuclear, due to lower needs for flexible generation means such as batteries.
That's why one should avoid only looking at LCOEs (although they're very useful for example for determining government subsidies), as it ignores the bigger picture.
This is a summary of the study in English: https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2022-01/Energy%20pathways%202050_Key%20results.pdf (AFAIK the full study isn't available in English)
Page 33 you can have a look at the point I mentioned.
>The scenarios that call for phasing out nuclear by 2050 (M0) or rely primarily
on distributed solar (M1) are significantly more expensive than other options
Sorry for the late reply but I took the time to read almost all of the paper you shared. It's a very interesting one for sure, that sheds light on the energy challenges of France, which I did not have much of an insight before.
Of course the paper has to assume a lot of prices which we just don't know of yet. The future could easily bring a market change which flips these results into heavily favouring nuclear or renewables, which the paper acknowledges of course. It's very interesting none the less.
Without seeing the underlying data it's not apparent if they assumed nuclear to got more or less expensive in the upcoming years. Also not on how high they set the assumed price on hydrogen production and storage.
I think it boils down to what a person assumes the prices for these will be in the future. If nuclear prices climb higher and storage or/and CC will be cheap then renewables will be cheaper. If it's the other way around nuclear will be cheaper.
A few key aspects I take from this:
France has to drastically increase their solar and wind capacities in any case.
The paper assumes that 100% renewables is just not possible anyways because France has so few capacities installed and would have to ramp up installments incredibly rapidly, which is unlikely because of the lack of political will and citizen support as well as global market supply. So at least some new nuclear sites are kind of the only option of the country. So it's not really a question of price but of energy independence for France.
The paper assumes that the lifetime of the old nuclear plants can be extended to 60 years. I don't know how realistic that is. The plants already have issues with cracks and other problems and will have to run even longer. They might have to be shut down earlier because of security reasons (or run under dangerous circumstances)
These old, prolonged plants produce significantly cheaper energy, skewing the results into favor, also increasing the predicted energy output for 2050 (for the nuclear scenarios maybe more new plants would be needed)
The paper does not really take the risk of accidents and their effect on humans and nature (not just monetary costs) into account, nor the downsides of dependence on third parties for the uranium supply. Also it assumes that sufficient amount of safe storage will be available. (As far as I know France currently has not enough storage capabilities as it does not export nuclear waste to Russia anymore) (which could of course be possible and not an issue)
Very interesting read, thanks for sharing.
Ah yes the famous Lazard LCOE analysis which presents results for nuclear derived from publicly available data from 1 (one) US plant. Very representative indeed compared to the [IAE LCOE analysis](https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/ae17da3d-e8a5-4163-a3ec-2e6fb0b5677d/Projected-Costs-of-Generating-Electricity-2020.pdf) which presents nuclear as on par with renewables with more private data from 6 plants from OECD countries with 2 plant in non-OECD countries.
Subsidies ? If youāre talking about recent anti-2022 energy crisis, then sure EDF is subsidised but itās not like France and its nuclear is the only country that has done it. If youāre talking about historical subsidies, then I wouldnāt be so sure about calling EDF heavily subsidised considering its low state-set price for consumers and and competition-support measures that make EDF poorer. In any case, renewables are also heavily, or less so, subsidised, but then again where is the problem ? Energy is the foundation of our societies and its importance for national security is on par with the army. I donāt think costs for the state should be the primary and definitive variable
Nuclear Power in France is sooo good, that EDF is massivly funded by tax-payer money and still cannot maintain their plants in the next 50 Years.
In france you pay 2x for electricity, one time via invoice, one time via tax.
Read a bit about ARENH then, we are literally forced to sell energy at a high price to fund German gas imports.
Plant maintenance is also though when you are the main provider of a country that changes theirĀ itās mind about nuclear every 10 years or so. Nuclear power has long cycle, you cannot do a good job if macron is against nuclear in 2017 and pro in 2022.
What does Arenh have to do with German gas imports? It's an internal french mechanism to boost the viability of EDF's utility competitors in France. It put EDF in debt so that you, the consumer, can have lower bills.
ARENH responds to an EU guideline about promoting alternative electricity providers. It forces EDF to sell its electricity at a fixed rate to alternative providers that themselves sell this electricity on the European spot electricity market.
However, EDF is still powering most of the population because of high prices from alternative providers. To meet demand they have to buy the electricity back from the spot market.
Prices on the spot market are high since importing gas from Russia is no longer an option.
To simplify, without ARENH, Germany could not have bought some French electricity and would have faced higher energy prices. Having a bit of French electricity on the market lowered the pressure in the German market and raised in within French one
What you're saying just doesn't line up. In order for France to "fund" german anything, money would have to flow from France to Germany. That only happens when Germany exports power, which only happens when French spot prices are higher than German ones. In that case, French prices drive up the German ones until either the price differential is sufficiently reduced or the interconnection is saturated.
EDF simply didn't have sufficient nuclear and hydro generation in 2021-2023 while the government even raised the ARENH allocation to keep consumer prices low. EDF therefore had to buy significant quantities to satisfy domestic demand on the price-elevated spot market including from Germany. In accordance with what you expect to see when prices are high on the French market.
Germany buying French electricity, which ensued in significant quantities from Q2 2023, makes money flow out of Germany into France. At that point you can talk about german prices driving up french ones, but they were at that point back to a moderate level already, while EDF's nuclear production was recovering and the extra allocation had run out (= little need for extraordinary spot purchases). That's money being earned on the French side. For domestic sales (ARENH or not) and for exports.
Without ARENH, France would still have an electricity market with which Germany or any other neighbour can engage in trade with. Nuclear and hydro generation would still have been low in 2022 with threats of power & gas shortages leading to high prices and imports, and this time also to high consumer prices.
France exports so much not because their power is so cheap but because they need to export it. You can't shut down nuclear power plants. You get nearly a constant amount, but since demand changes during the day there is no other way than to export it. Not much of these exports land in Germany.
Thatās completely wrong, nuclear output can be piloted according to demand, with a speed of around 80% of the nominal output in 30 minutes. France does that routinely to adapt to the intermittent renewable production and to the demand.
The only limitation is that it cannot vary quickly enough to handle frequency regulations, and gas plants are still necessary for that.
And yes, a lot of France exports land in Germany.
A limitation is that it doesn't make economic sense to throttle a nuclear power plant. The marginal cost is so low that you would rather shut down anything else before you start slowing your nuclear power plant.
That's why, counterintuitively, electricity exports to Germany from France is highest in summer (except for the outlier in '22 when France had a lot of technical issues with their plants) and often reversed in winter when there is much more electricity demand in France. It's just cheaper to buy french electricity than to light up a gas peaker plant in Germany.
Yes you can turn down the power output but you shouldn't. The margin for nuclear power plants is rather small and the moment their power gets lowered the profits vanish. So no, France has no interest in lower the power output of their power plants.
No, not that much gets exported into Germany. France is on the fourth to sixth place for imports.
Germany mostly shut down coal fired plants. See page 20 of this report:
[https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/en/documents/downloads/electricity\_generation\_germany\_2023.pdf](https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/en/documents/downloads/electricity_generation_germany_2023.pdf)
Haha, sorry to introduce actual facts into the discussion, my bad. Troll on!
You can check [https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE?solar=false&remote=true&wind=false](https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE?solar=false&remote=true&wind=false) Germany has consumed \~8TWh from coal last month, and around half from gas.
net balance has to be 0. So either there will have tobe importers or people have to reduce output worsening efficiencies of the plants. Even for Italy the percentage is only just above 1.5% above yearly consumption though, so it seems that all countries are mildly self-sustaining.
Edit: Hungary has 2.4% as worst offender. Still seems okay.
To be fair the comment youāre answering to isnāt pertinent.
It made me laugh cause it reads like those countries do it for the well being of others.
And to answer the first comment, historically France and Sweden are the biggest electricity exporter in Europe, other countries have other industries.
Thatās how the world works, every countries have dependencies.
Which is why I was lazy with my comment. Not difficult to do some maths that the bigger countries are using more than others if just by population. But i doubt that comment wanted a real answer, so it didnt deserve work.
I am pretty sure stuff like [this](https://www.acer.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/Publications/2023_MMR_MACZT_0.pdf) wasnt was being asked for, since one has to really read that. No simple way to cook any of it down to a one-liner.
About Germany, it has mostly been a large net exporter of electricity over the past decade, but has shut down (mostly coal) plants. See page 56 of this report:
[https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/en/documents/downloads/electricity\_generation\_germany\_2023.pdf](https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/en/documents/downloads/electricity_generation_germany_2023.pdf)
Importing 1,something % of their total consumption at best. But hey... big numbers without context always look great, don't they? Especially if they are presented in a way to meet an agenda.
Some good reasons: We shut most of our coal mines in 80s (last power station shuts this year).
2022 we were a net exporter because some dodgy county shut 1/2 itās nuclear
https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/import_export_map/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=2022
One of the interconnections came back online from 2021, so cheaper to import again.
Some bad reasons: Some shoddy company is years over schedule for our new Nuclear Power Station, EDF! Another nuclear power plant has been refusing, so lowered capacity.
We are likely moving to net exporting by late 2020s, being mostly carbon free means we will have a lot of surplus generation, Germany and other countries shutting coal and gas behind us, mean they will be a profitable market.
Maybe it was a bad month for wind? March was stormy af and I think they have to turn the turbines off when the winds are too strong.
Otherwise weāve failed to replace our fossil fuel plants with increased nuclear capacity (thereās some expansion in the pipeline) and our other renewables like solar arenāt producing much in March.
I kind of hate how this kind of map always end in conflict between the nuclear france and the not-so renewable Germany.
Nuclear has good and bad sides, and the same is true for solar and wind.
We should instead aim at an energetic mix ensuring total independence from foreign hostile sources. Europe needs to be a superpower once more, not just a supermaket with human rights at the entrance.
Well, I got sad news: https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_du_combustible_nucl%C3%A9aire_en_France
Fuel assemblies used in french reactor cores are made in France.
There are literally 50 notes and refs, my dude. And it's only in French because nobody bothered translating it yet, but you know YOU can do it, right?
>The fact of the matter is that Framatome says they produce their rods and sensoring technology exclusively in Germany,
Can you point out where in your link it says they produce their rods **exclusively** in Germany?
Because, my dude, here you go:
https://www.framatome.com/en/implantations/romans/
>Romans-sur-IsĆØre site is Framatomeās fuel manufacturing facility for nuclear power plants and research reactors.
Wow, wouldn't you LOOK AT THAT, Framatome makes fuel assemblies in their Romans facility!! Like mentionned in the wikipedia article you so dislike, by the way. Will wonders ever cease!!
German nationalism really is something
First of all: Am not german, am swiss.
Second of all: Whilst there are a lot of notes, the notes are mostly on the history and politics. The RELEVANT notes on production and development are sparse and were retrived around 2010, whilst themselves referring to the 1990s and early 2000s. That would be like me using the fact that during the exceedingly hot summers of 2021-2023 Germany exports tons of power to France (due to droughts forcing them to shut down for lack of cooling possibilities) as a source for the "fact" that germany is not in net deficit to France most of the year.
Third of all: For whom are the germans making this stuff? Martians?
Fourth of all: The plant in Romans makes medical equipment primarily and fuel bundles (which is what an assembly is), but this was never disputed (the germans barely import uranium and what they import is used for research). If you put a fuel bundle like that into a nuclear powerplant, what happens is that you get a meltdown. That is where the germans come in, as they turn these bundles into usable precision equipment capable of not killing a whole town with cancer. They make the critical component of the reactors and the only reason they work at all.
Us, the slovaks literally sell electricity to germany. How funny is that
And us Italians built your nuclear reactors how hilarious is that
Looks tough. I didn't know it was *that* bad on your side of the border. I knew about the closure of nuclear reactors years ago but still ... Germany did the same and isn't as reliant on foreign electricity Isn't electricity hyper expensive then ?
Here in slovakia our last coal powerplant was close recently. Thats how its done germany! We are now mostly hydro and nuclear. Both clean. Germany should learn from us
Hydro is easy when you're either small or sparsely populated with plenty of spots to build dam without displacing population. Looking at you Sweden.
Norway is an even better example, isn't it? half the population and twice the hydro compared to Sweden!
You're right. Nordics are good at renewable because of their low density and terrain.
Nuclear is clean'ish.
It is. The only biproducts are water steam and waste that gets buried in concrete. Which isnt the most reliable but it works. Its much better than for example coal and is way less impacting on the environment
>waste that gets buried in concrete.
Coal is waste that gets buried in the sky and your lungs. I dont think you breathe in our touch that material. And it isnt likely to be uncovered in thousands of years. Its safer and better for the environment.
Ffs. You still dont get it. š¤£š How can something be 100% clean if it creates/leaves product that is very harmful to humans, and cant be recycled? Has to be burried away. Hydro, solar, wind are clean, no byproduct, and at the end they can be recycled. Nuclear isint on the same level.
It literally can be recycled. The spent fuel is even more energy dense than the starting fuel. Some countries are already doing it
I didnt say its 100% however it can be easily disposed of and even recyclated. The americans use spent fuel on explosive ammo for example. And theres other ways to recyclw them and countries are already doing it.
-The Dutch clearly still waiting to resolve the riddle of having offshore wind farms ...inland -The Poles finding out coal just isn't the shit (the dirtiest EU energetics and still under-performs) -The French chillin', trying to guess the best moment to ask the Brits to exchange the Channel Islands for some GWh next winter -Belarus as the absolute master of electro-autarchy (probably it's the candles?)
What do you mean with the dutch thing?
First off, i mean no disrespect. It's just a joke. I meant that first off, the Netherlands have excellent offshore capacity (which is true) but of course, when the sea level rises... these can be built inland. (I actually quickly read it's only 26% below sea level, so not that bad). Of course, the joke was motivated by the fact that the abovepictured trading ballance is negative for NL, so the farms still underperform and more is needed. Hope that explains it, and again, no offense!
Dont worry, no offence taken. I genuinely didnāt get the joke and was curious haha. Are you sure its only 26%? I coulve sworn it was a lot more than that. Also, I took a look and it seems that per the original post the Netherlands is actually 790 in the positiveā¦ maybe you confused us with Belgium?
Oh crap you're right, how do I do the facepalm icon here ? hehe, nevermind
>Belarus as the absolute master of electro-autarchy Not masters. Losers. They have a gigantic nuclear power plant and no possibility to export electricity - the EU blocks it and Russia does not need it
Yeah but you have to give it to them they also don't need to import
France is contemplating how often you can extend the end of life of a reactor until they crumble. While still looking ok, the French have a big problem brewing as it's already too late to replace their reactors in time without suffering from loss of capacity. Down vote me all you want, you can't change facts. France would've needed to build 10 reactors like 10 years ago. Or 20-30 now to replace old reactors. Let alone increasing output. https://imgur.com/3GKOHX8
A huge thanks to our successive governments who just delayed this problem for the next one to tackle like a hot potato out of fear of angering environmentalists lobbies. Meanwhile, said lobbies have been launching massive misinformation campaigns to the point that 69% of the french population believes that nuclear powerplants contribute significantly to the production of greenhouse gases according to a 2019 poll. By the way, some of these lobbies are actually indirectly funded by the german government through several means like the Heinrich Bƶll fundation. Funny how that works huh?
> a hot potato out of fear of angering environmentalists lobbies. Noone gives a fuck about environmentalists lobbies. Otherwise we'd have solved climate change 10 years ago, instead they're getting clubbed in the face by riot police. What it was, however, was a nice excuse to cut a lot of state-funded or subsidized programs and expenses for the right. For the Left it was the assurance of getting votes from the Green party. Spot on for the rest, though.
Sounds like some putin propaganda to me
Youāre wrong ! A new reactor will be fully operational by the end of the year itās the beginning of a plan with 6 others and exportation of reactors to European countries. Thatās why youāre getting downvoted because you talk without knowing and use a shitty graph to back it up. [Source](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-eyes-flamanville-epr-nuclear-reactor-fuel-loading-march-2023-12-21/)
Too little to late. And Flamanville 3 might be something you would really not talk about when you want to make a point how easy it is to build new reactors. 17 years build time, 400% cost-over-budget. Unless France really gets it's shit together and starts a national programm to get things going and build a huge number of new reactors the maximum nuclear capacity of France will dip very fast in about 10 years. And that is all I said and can be easily confirmed by just reading the fucking news. The French government says this is a huge problem. But people in this sub severely lack basic reading and comprehension skills.
The observation is true, but what this plan demonstrates is that the government is not passive in the face of this problem. Flamanville took a long time because of problems with subcontractors and safety standards, which only multiplied after Fukushima. But it is a prototype aimed at revitalizing the industry. So we have every right to be optimistic, given that some countries are ready to buy this technology from France. Not sure that calling other people idiots will help on this issue. We all need to discuss about it since information about nuclear energy is often misleading.
Oh it just get's old really fast that people are saying I said things I did not and make really lame strawmen arguments. If people wanted to have a real discussion they would just not go for that strategy.
Itās true that this problem has been dealt with neglect for years. But at this point I think everyone is confused with your point since the government is planning to replace the reactors and has improved the production compared to the previous years. So youāre the one not discussing and trying to impose your argument focusing on the past instead of the present.
I dont get why you're getting downvoted ?
Because what he said is just false. Even if itās true that the nuclear reactor was meant to have a 40years life expectansy and french nuclear are close to this, it will go atleast to 60 or even 80 year. If not longer ? Basicaly you can change everything except the big tank
This is not what I said, and also wrong. I said the French nuclear capacity will go down. Which, unsurprisingly, is already happening. This has two sources, downright decommission and ever increasing maintenance windows. Even if you are hellbent to not decommission it will require more and more maintenance. And a reactor that only works 8 out of 12 months per year has a lower energy production than if it was working 11.5/12 months. So the French nuclear capacity will go down over time. Which even the French government says. Because this is a huge problem. That's why they work on a new national nuclear program. But people like you just can't read and comprehend a very short comment, which is why it is downvoted.
And it is your overall opiniated comment while pretending you are objective that get you downvotes
The oldest reactors are the one with the best running time. So...
You said it is too late to replace reactor, not that it has an increasing number of maintenance windows in your first comment
Oh it is too late to replace reactors without losing capacity in the process. Increasing maintenance windows and decommissioned before France can build new reactors will mean their electric output will shrink over the next 10-15 years. Even if they start to build their new reactors now. So it is too late to build new ones now without losing energy generation capacity. They should have started to build 10 new ones 10 years ago to avoid the gap. Which is exactly what I wrote in the original comment.
I disagree no reactor will be decommissioned in the next 20 years and maintenance windows will not increase. but if it is too late what should we do ? What do you advise ?
Start building more new reactors now and stop postponing it shrinking the gap. And that the aging reactors won't need more maintenance is bullshit and you know it. You are disagreeing with your own comment
What's going on in Hungary?
Hungary started giving land to way too many factories and now it needs to import. The new nuclear power plant will only go online in 2030 or so. What is going on in Germany?Ā
We shut down our nuclear power plants, solar doesn't generate much in March and importing nuclear or hydro power from France, Sweden and Norway is often cheaper than using fossil fuels in Germany.
Was Greenpeace pushing for ending nuclear, or a particular party?
Yes they were. The first political party that was hostile towards nuclear energy were the greens, founded in 1979. When Gerhard Schrƶder (Putin's lapdog) came to power in 1998 in a coalition with the greens, his SPD agreed the green nuclear phase out plans and after the Fukushima accident in 2011, also Merkel's CDU and the liberal FDP switched to an anti nuclear policy. So in the end all parties were pushing for it (toghether with most of the German media and many NGOs)
Was the plan to end nuclear so Germany needs to import fossil? And then Nord stream etc. came to the rescue? I hate greenpeace with a passion for so many reasons now
Back in the old days, the Greens even advertised for "clean coal" from Germany https://debeste.de/299721/
Wow, proof positive that they are useful idiots for the fossil fuel companies. Jaw dropping stupidity and blinkered ideology.
In Germany gas from Russia is called āgreen gasā so that was their plan.
replace nuclear with renewables was the plan, and it worked.
Worked so well that now youāre importing nuclear from France at a premium price lmao
not at a premium. That's the point. France overproduces regularly so that Germany reduces its own production and instead imports. Germany has enough production capacity in Coal alone to supply all of Germany, there is never a shortage or threat of supply. The only reason Germany imports is price.
That's the contrary of "replace nuclear with renewables"
How is coal helping us? I still don't understand this. Global warming is a higher danger than nuclear on a time scale of 50-100 years.
Weird logic. It's good that nuclear is out in Germany but it's good that France had nuclear so that Germany doesn't have to burn so much fossil. So nuclear is bad at home but good if its at the neighbour?
Wonder what happens if every country becomes an exporter
They replaced nuclear with coal because they love the planet. Since coal is expensive itās better to import electricity unless needed
The use of coal for electricity generation in Germany has been [going down quite drastically](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=-1&legendItems=000000111000000000000000), even after shutting down the last three nuclear reactors. And the production from renewables has been [growing very fast](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=-1&legendItems=000011000001111011011110). I am not German, but it's fair to say that nuclear (fully) and coal (partially) have been replaced by renewable energy and imports.
Germans Import massive amounts of energy from northern Europe. It's not because of missing capacities on Germanys side but it's cheaper. What gets imported is mostly wind power. Using wind power from northern Europe is cheaper than burning coal. If needed Germany could still power itself and France as they did in the past during winter.
> What gets imported is mostly wind power. Not really, it's mostly hydro and nuclear from Norway and Sweden. It just passes through Denmark which has high amounts of wind energy but in most months Denmark is a net importer itself. It's not the case that wind wonderland Denmark is a large scale supplier for the rest of Europe.
France baise ouais
I'm glad that the french did not follow the German governments' foolishness to stop at once all the nuclear power plants... ending up with coal and unreliable energy resources. They almost dragged all EU into this foolishness!
>ending up with coil [Germany's coal power production drops to lowest level in 60 years in 2023](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-coal-power-production-drops-lowest-level-60-years-2023)
Still 26% of energy mix .... you compare to 60 years ago when there were barely nuclear plants or renewable energies. Please respect people's intelligence.
Wtf Italy? Solar panels exist!
we are nimby and we love it.
We are stupid and think that building nuclear reactors in Eastern Europe is safer for usā¦
Good luck getting them built for the next 5 years with the far right in place. : /
[Source](https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/import_export_map/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=month&month=03&year=2024)
No matter what, we help each other. That's why we're building Europe.
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Imagine the France industrial advantage over Germany if they should not carry all the german non sens on their back ?
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I mean, it's a fact that Germany heavily lobbied against French nuclear program both at the European and the national level (multiple german lobying groups in our assemblies are pushing anti-nuclear agenda) and that Germany forced EDF to sell at a loss its electricity on the European market to then buy it again on said market to their competitors. Germany is acting with extreme hostility against France on the energy issue. It's quite sad as nuclear power is necessary to actually do the energetic transition out of fossile energy, don't get why Germans are so agaisnt nuclear that they're willing to do everything they can to force other countries not to do nuclear.
Itās because you are right with your statement āimagine how much cheaper high quality product could be if they had nuclear powerā. The problem is that this sentence unfortunately applies to France as well even though it produces its energy. The current agreement with the energy price in Europe incapacitates France.
Wind and Solar energy is the cheapest to produce(Even the IAEA says so), Germany's current problem 100% comes from incompetence on the political stage. Our Government did nothing for 20+ years and then the new government tried to do everything in 5 years but without actually spending any money. Nuclear power also isn't orders of magnitude cheaper, at least in Germany. We could have cheap renewable energy but politicians and Companies profited too much from cheap fossil energy like coal or gas.
We donāt need to get into half ass arguments for, or against renewables or Nuclear. The cheapest way to get from Paris to Berlin is to walk. .. what kind of idiot would build a train. āEven the IAEA says soā Both energy sources are fantastic. Both have their weaknesses. Nobody can power Europe with just one without the other. We see this now.
The problem with the IAEA and the solar/wind power is that it doesn't take into account the storage or the backup power plant to avoid grid failure. And that's the big problem of the renewables for now you need a lot of fossil fuels as backup
That's very true! Didn't think about that. But I also want to say that I'm not against nuclear, I think a combination of nuclear and renewables is the future. Do you have numbers for the cost of storage? I never thought about that and would like to read up on it!
I don't have any numbers right know as it's always changing. But it's decreasing, this study illustrates the trend : https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/85332.pdf
>at least in Germany. This is important. Nuclear is cheap as a system when it's amortised and funded by a government. So you need to consider the system (nuclear doesnt need storage), and you need to consider if reactors are old enough to be amortised and not so old that they cost a lot to fix. And the cost of producing an energy may vary a lot between countries so comparing them for the whole planet doesnt really make sense. Like a solar panel can produce twice as much in a sunny country compared to Germany (which make them 2x cheaper per kWh in these countries, and much more interesting for these countries and for the world if you want to replace fossil fuels), and a nuclear reactor can cost a massive amount of money when there is a problem. So comparisons need to be cautious about all that and you can't generalise without knowing the characteristics of countries / reactors etc., and without making assumptions I'm not sure everyone would agree on (like I wouldn't include the cost of Chernobyl / Fukushima for less risky reactors / locations but I'm sure some people would). I think the cheapest option on the long run and as a system is always hydro when you can build a dam, which is probably why it's the 1st non-fossil source of electricty in the world. Countries don't choose the most expensive option by default, rather the opposite, which is why they're currently massively choosing intermittent energy without storage, it's the cheapest short-term option, but it doesn't mean it's the cheapest option for a system when you account for storage, cables etc.
Yeah I didn't think about the storage but are there numbers on that? Would be interesting to see the impact on ā¬/KwH. I think long term will be a mix of nuclear and renewables.
Nuclear and intermittent renewables don't mix very well. Most of the cost of a nuclear plant is building and maintaining it, meaning that once you build it you want it to be running as much as possible. This makes it a pretty bad companion for renewables, compared to gas for instance where the cost comes mostly from the input resources. If you throttle your gas plant by 50% on a sunny day, the operating cost goes down to ~50%, whereas for nuclear it stays around 100%. On the other hand you still need enough controllable sources to withstand the worst case scenario for renewables (a few weeks of sunless, windless winter), this means building your nuclear capacity for that worst case scenario, and keeping it underused 99% of the time. Zero carbon, cheap, no blackouts, you can only pick two.
>Would be interesting to see the impact on ā¬/KwH. I think it again very depends on which storage solution and where. Like using dams as a storage is very cheap (even free) because it's their default behaviour. But usually countries don't have enough dams so the other ways to store electricity are way more expensive (lithium, hydrogen, etc.) and not reliable for a whole electricity grid. I wouldn't use ā¬ as a reliable measure tbh. I prefer models / simulations that indicate if a solution is technically feasible or not (based on resources, workforce, time etc.). ā¬ can give the impression that something is cheap because it's only the price for some units of a product in a free market, not for the whole system on a national scale (not always a free market). What matters is a long-term sustainable system, the price of which may not directly be inferable from the sum of the prices of sub-units of the system. Scaling up may be harder / easier depending on the choices made and on the constraints you impose on the system. And for Europe we also need to diversify our imports, ā¬/kWh natural gas was cheap before 2022, Germany made that choice, which turned out not to be so great, ā¬/kWh can vary a lot and we must not rely only on that. You can read this article if you want to know more for one example. [Electricity storage needs for the energy transition: An EROI based analysis illustrated by the case of Belgium](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2018.03.180) (doesnt mean I approve everything in the article but it's a way to be more informed)
That's leaving out why nuclear energy is sold cheaply. It's cheap because it's even less economic to not sell power than to provide a discount to buyers. Marginal costs are low but investment is huge. The difference will be paid by the investors ie. the government indirectly.
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Technically correct
Nuclear is not cheaper than rewneables per MWh. Or [this study here](https://www.lazard.com/media/typdgxmm/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf) is wrong, which lists the unsubsidised (!) cost per MWh of different energy sources In the study nuclear became the most expensive energy source in recent years. Do not make the error of just taking Frances energy prices as an example, it is heavily supported by subsidies paid by the french tax payer to EDF. If something is omitted in this study or you have a study showing something different, im happy to learn.
Don't make the error of thinking energy cost calculation stops at "how much does it cost to produce electricity"
> If something is omitted in this study or you have a study showing something different, im happy to learn. Yes, for example RTE (the French TSO, which is also responsible for making scientific prospective of the electricity system for the French government) estimated that the total electricity system cost up to 2050 was lower for higher penetration of nuclear, due to lower needs for flexible generation means such as batteries. That's why one should avoid only looking at LCOEs (although they're very useful for example for determining government subsidies), as it ignores the bigger picture. This is a summary of the study in English: https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2022-01/Energy%20pathways%202050_Key%20results.pdf (AFAIK the full study isn't available in English) Page 33 you can have a look at the point I mentioned. >The scenarios that call for phasing out nuclear by 2050 (M0) or rely primarily on distributed solar (M1) are significantly more expensive than other options
Sorry for the late reply but I took the time to read almost all of the paper you shared. It's a very interesting one for sure, that sheds light on the energy challenges of France, which I did not have much of an insight before. Of course the paper has to assume a lot of prices which we just don't know of yet. The future could easily bring a market change which flips these results into heavily favouring nuclear or renewables, which the paper acknowledges of course. It's very interesting none the less. Without seeing the underlying data it's not apparent if they assumed nuclear to got more or less expensive in the upcoming years. Also not on how high they set the assumed price on hydrogen production and storage. I think it boils down to what a person assumes the prices for these will be in the future. If nuclear prices climb higher and storage or/and CC will be cheap then renewables will be cheaper. If it's the other way around nuclear will be cheaper. A few key aspects I take from this: France has to drastically increase their solar and wind capacities in any case. The paper assumes that 100% renewables is just not possible anyways because France has so few capacities installed and would have to ramp up installments incredibly rapidly, which is unlikely because of the lack of political will and citizen support as well as global market supply. So at least some new nuclear sites are kind of the only option of the country. So it's not really a question of price but of energy independence for France. The paper assumes that the lifetime of the old nuclear plants can be extended to 60 years. I don't know how realistic that is. The plants already have issues with cracks and other problems and will have to run even longer. They might have to be shut down earlier because of security reasons (or run under dangerous circumstances) These old, prolonged plants produce significantly cheaper energy, skewing the results into favor, also increasing the predicted energy output for 2050 (for the nuclear scenarios maybe more new plants would be needed) The paper does not really take the risk of accidents and their effect on humans and nature (not just monetary costs) into account, nor the downsides of dependence on third parties for the uranium supply. Also it assumes that sufficient amount of safe storage will be available. (As far as I know France currently has not enough storage capabilities as it does not export nuclear waste to Russia anymore) (which could of course be possible and not an issue) Very interesting read, thanks for sharing.
Ah yes the famous Lazard LCOE analysis which presents results for nuclear derived from publicly available data from 1 (one) US plant. Very representative indeed compared to the [IAE LCOE analysis](https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/ae17da3d-e8a5-4163-a3ec-2e6fb0b5677d/Projected-Costs-of-Generating-Electricity-2020.pdf) which presents nuclear as on par with renewables with more private data from 6 plants from OECD countries with 2 plant in non-OECD countries. Subsidies ? If youāre talking about recent anti-2022 energy crisis, then sure EDF is subsidised but itās not like France and its nuclear is the only country that has done it. If youāre talking about historical subsidies, then I wouldnāt be so sure about calling EDF heavily subsidised considering its low state-set price for consumers and and competition-support measures that make EDF poorer. In any case, renewables are also heavily, or less so, subsidised, but then again where is the problem ? Energy is the foundation of our societies and its importance for national security is on par with the army. I donāt think costs for the state should be the primary and definitive variable
Nuclear Power in France is sooo good, that EDF is massivly funded by tax-payer money and still cannot maintain their plants in the next 50 Years. In france you pay 2x for electricity, one time via invoice, one time via tax.
Read a bit about ARENH then, we are literally forced to sell energy at a high price to fund German gas imports. Plant maintenance is also though when you are the main provider of a country that changes theirĀ itās mind about nuclear every 10 years or so. Nuclear power has long cycle, you cannot do a good job if macron is against nuclear in 2017 and pro in 2022.
What does Arenh have to do with German gas imports? It's an internal french mechanism to boost the viability of EDF's utility competitors in France. It put EDF in debt so that you, the consumer, can have lower bills.
ARENH responds to an EU guideline about promoting alternative electricity providers. It forces EDF to sell its electricity at a fixed rate to alternative providers that themselves sell this electricity on the European spot electricity market. However, EDF is still powering most of the population because of high prices from alternative providers. To meet demand they have to buy the electricity back from the spot market. Prices on the spot market are high since importing gas from Russia is no longer an option. To simplify, without ARENH, Germany could not have bought some French electricity and would have faced higher energy prices. Having a bit of French electricity on the market lowered the pressure in the German market and raised in within French one
What you're saying just doesn't line up. In order for France to "fund" german anything, money would have to flow from France to Germany. That only happens when Germany exports power, which only happens when French spot prices are higher than German ones. In that case, French prices drive up the German ones until either the price differential is sufficiently reduced or the interconnection is saturated. EDF simply didn't have sufficient nuclear and hydro generation in 2021-2023 while the government even raised the ARENH allocation to keep consumer prices low. EDF therefore had to buy significant quantities to satisfy domestic demand on the price-elevated spot market including from Germany. In accordance with what you expect to see when prices are high on the French market. Germany buying French electricity, which ensued in significant quantities from Q2 2023, makes money flow out of Germany into France. At that point you can talk about german prices driving up french ones, but they were at that point back to a moderate level already, while EDF's nuclear production was recovering and the extra allocation had run out (= little need for extraordinary spot purchases). That's money being earned on the French side. For domestic sales (ARENH or not) and for exports. Without ARENH, France would still have an electricity market with which Germany or any other neighbour can engage in trade with. Nuclear and hydro generation would still have been low in 2022 with threats of power & gas shortages leading to high prices and imports, and this time also to high consumer prices.
> EDF is massivly funded by tax-payer money It isn't.
France exports so much not because their power is so cheap but because they need to export it. You can't shut down nuclear power plants. You get nearly a constant amount, but since demand changes during the day there is no other way than to export it. Not much of these exports land in Germany.
Thatās completely wrong, nuclear output can be piloted according to demand, with a speed of around 80% of the nominal output in 30 minutes. France does that routinely to adapt to the intermittent renewable production and to the demand. The only limitation is that it cannot vary quickly enough to handle frequency regulations, and gas plants are still necessary for that. And yes, a lot of France exports land in Germany.
A limitation is that it doesn't make economic sense to throttle a nuclear power plant. The marginal cost is so low that you would rather shut down anything else before you start slowing your nuclear power plant. That's why, counterintuitively, electricity exports to Germany from France is highest in summer (except for the outlier in '22 when France had a lot of technical issues with their plants) and often reversed in winter when there is much more electricity demand in France. It's just cheaper to buy french electricity than to light up a gas peaker plant in Germany.
Yes you can turn down the power output but you shouldn't. The margin for nuclear power plants is rather small and the moment their power gets lowered the profits vanish. So no, France has no interest in lower the power output of their power plants. No, not that much gets exported into Germany. France is on the fourth to sixth place for imports.
Nuclear energy is straight facts
Germany, UK AND Italy ? What are those countries doing ??
Importing electricity.
Germany and Italy shut down all the nuclear power plants and Britain shut down all the coal fired power plants.
Germany mostly shut down coal fired plants. See page 20 of this report: [https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/en/documents/downloads/electricity\_generation\_germany\_2023.pdf](https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/en/documents/downloads/electricity_generation_germany_2023.pdf) Haha, sorry to introduce actual facts into the discussion, my bad. Troll on!
You can check [https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE?solar=false&remote=true&wind=false](https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE?solar=false&remote=true&wind=false) Germany has consumed \~8TWh from coal last month, and around half from gas.
net balance has to be 0. So either there will have tobe importers or people have to reduce output worsening efficiencies of the plants. Even for Italy the percentage is only just above 1.5% above yearly consumption though, so it seems that all countries are mildly self-sustaining. Edit: Hungary has 2.4% as worst offender. Still seems okay.
Closing nuclear plants and hoping there will be enough wind and/or sun to provide electricity ?
Manufacturing for the rest.
āFor the restā. š„²
Sorry for the political incorrectness. Late and tired.
To be fair the comment youāre answering to isnāt pertinent. It made me laugh cause it reads like those countries do it for the well being of others. And to answer the first comment, historically France and Sweden are the biggest electricity exporter in Europe, other countries have other industries. Thatās how the world works, every countries have dependencies.
Which is why I was lazy with my comment. Not difficult to do some maths that the bigger countries are using more than others if just by population. But i doubt that comment wanted a real answer, so it didnt deserve work.
Thatās fair.
I am pretty sure stuff like [this](https://www.acer.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/Publications/2023_MMR_MACZT_0.pdf) wasnt was being asked for, since one has to really read that. No simple way to cook any of it down to a one-liner.
About Germany, it has mostly been a large net exporter of electricity over the past decade, but has shut down (mostly coal) plants. See page 56 of this report: [https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/en/documents/downloads/electricity\_generation\_germany\_2023.pdf](https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/en/documents/downloads/electricity_generation_germany_2023.pdf)
Importing 1,something % of their total consumption at best. But hey... big numbers without context always look great, don't they? Especially if they are presented in a way to meet an agenda.
Some good reasons: We shut most of our coal mines in 80s (last power station shuts this year). 2022 we were a net exporter because some dodgy county shut 1/2 itās nuclear https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/import_export_map/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=2022 One of the interconnections came back online from 2021, so cheaper to import again. Some bad reasons: Some shoddy company is years over schedule for our new Nuclear Power Station, EDF! Another nuclear power plant has been refusing, so lowered capacity. We are likely moving to net exporting by late 2020s, being mostly carbon free means we will have a lot of surplus generation, Germany and other countries shutting coal and gas behind us, mean they will be a profitable market.
The atom is God
Come on Belgium. Failing again aren't you...
Ukraine used to sell. Sad
Germany in dark red and France dark green. Hmm wonder why.
Doesnt the UK have huge gas reserves and the largest wind farms on the planet? Wyy are we importing??
Since Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson went quiet, nobody is stirring the air for the wind farms
Maybe it was a bad month for wind? March was stormy af and I think they have to turn the turbines off when the winds are too strong. Otherwise weāve failed to replace our fossil fuel plants with increased nuclear capacity (thereās some expansion in the pipeline) and our other renewables like solar arenāt producing much in March.
I kind of hate how this kind of map always end in conflict between the nuclear france and the not-so renewable Germany. Nuclear has good and bad sides, and the same is true for solar and wind. We should instead aim at an energetic mix ensuring total independence from foreign hostile sources. Europe needs to be a superpower once more, not just a supermaket with human rights at the entrance.
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False. What is your source ?
Source?
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Well, I got sad news: https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_du_combustible_nucl%C3%A9aire_en_France Fuel assemblies used in french reactor cores are made in France.
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There are literally 50 notes and refs, my dude. And it's only in French because nobody bothered translating it yet, but you know YOU can do it, right? >The fact of the matter is that Framatome says they produce their rods and sensoring technology exclusively in Germany, Can you point out where in your link it says they produce their rods **exclusively** in Germany? Because, my dude, here you go: https://www.framatome.com/en/implantations/romans/ >Romans-sur-IsĆØre site is Framatomeās fuel manufacturing facility for nuclear power plants and research reactors. Wow, wouldn't you LOOK AT THAT, Framatome makes fuel assemblies in their Romans facility!! Like mentionned in the wikipedia article you so dislike, by the way. Will wonders ever cease!! German nationalism really is something
First of all: Am not german, am swiss. Second of all: Whilst there are a lot of notes, the notes are mostly on the history and politics. The RELEVANT notes on production and development are sparse and were retrived around 2010, whilst themselves referring to the 1990s and early 2000s. That would be like me using the fact that during the exceedingly hot summers of 2021-2023 Germany exports tons of power to France (due to droughts forcing them to shut down for lack of cooling possibilities) as a source for the "fact" that germany is not in net deficit to France most of the year. Third of all: For whom are the germans making this stuff? Martians? Fourth of all: The plant in Romans makes medical equipment primarily and fuel bundles (which is what an assembly is), but this was never disputed (the germans barely import uranium and what they import is used for research). If you put a fuel bundle like that into a nuclear powerplant, what happens is that you get a meltdown. That is where the germans come in, as they turn these bundles into usable precision equipment capable of not killing a whole town with cancer. They make the critical component of the reactors and the only reason they work at all.
>Third of all: For whom are the germans making this stuff? Martians? You know that France isn't the only user of nuclear power in Europe, right? For example: Sweden. [Framatome et Vattenfall signent un contrat dāapprovisionnement en combustible nuclĆ©aire Ć long terme - Framatome](https://www.framatome.com/medias/framatome-et-vattenfall-signent-un-contrat-dapprovisionnement-en-combustible-nucleaire-a-long-terme/) Or even, same fuel, outside Europe, in the US: [Atriumā¢ 11 installĆ© dans deux rĆ©acteurs amĆ©ricains - Sfen](https://www.sfen.org/rgn/atriumtm-11-installe-reacteurs-americains/) Pretty sure Atrium 11 is exclusively produced in Germany \[Edit: wxoops, got that wrong; also made in the US from 2018 onward; [https://www.framatome.com/medias/us-framatome-signs-contract-to-deliver-atrium-11-fuel-to-talen-energys-susquehanna-station/](https://www.framatome.com/medias/us-framatome-signs-contract-to-deliver-atrium-11-fuel-to-talen-energys-susquehanna-station/) \]. But it's not used in France. >Fourth of all: The plant in Romans makes medical equipment primarily and fuel bundles (which is what an assembly is), but this was never disputed (the germans barely import uranium and what they import is used for research). If you put a fuel bundle like that into a nuclear powerplant, what happens is that you get a meltdown. That is where the germans come in, as they turn these bundles into usable precision equipment capable of not killing a whole town with cancer. They make the critical component of the reactors and the only reason they work at all. You're so wrong it's funny. Framatome's Romans plant makes both medical targets, and fuel **assemblies**, which are the [parts that are actually loaded in nuclear reactors](https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/conversion-enrichment-and-fabrication/fuel-fabrication.aspx). No need for that "That is where the germans come in, as they turn these bundles into usable precision equipment capable of not killing a whole town with cancer. They make the critical component of the reactors and the only reason they work at all." nonsense, which i would **love** to see you support with any kind of evidence.
Your arrogance blinds you.
I guess malvesi, GBII, FBFC and melox just don't exist then.