Nuclear in France
Nuclear in France
Posted Jun 14, 2024 14:43 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727)In reply to: What about the gas guzzlers? by paulj
Parent article: Opt Green: KDE Eco's New Sustainable Software Project
I happen to know a bit about the French nuclear market, and it's also an outlier when it comes to the cost of nuclear, because the vast majority of their reactors were subsidized by the DGA - France wants to be self-sufficient when it comes to producing nuclear weapons, and in the 1960s and 1970s that meant having domestic reactors that can be repurposed to provide bomb-making materials. It also has a second tier of subsidy for nuclear power because it wants to be self-sufficient in energy, and doesn't have enough fossil fuels to make that practical without nuclear.
Similarly, Japan and China are both outliers because their national governments are willing to heavily subsidise nuclear power in order to avoid having to import power or fuel from outside the country; in Japan's case because it's nuclear or imports, and in China's case because they're aware that burning fossil fuels is a massively time-limited exercise and want to be ready for when it's no longer practical to do so.
Indeed, the only country I can find that has no direct state subsidy for nuclear power, and yet a significant civilian nuclear power industry, is the USA. Even other countries with a dysfunctional nuclear industry (like the UK and Germany) have state subsidy for nuclear.
I have theories as to why this is, but this is very off-topic for LWN, so I'll stop here.
Posted Jun 14, 2024 16:31 UTC (Fri)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
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Further, if we want to compare a hydrocarbon plant built without subsidies, to a nuclear one paid for by the state, are we taking into account the fact that the market as it stands generally have no way to price in the cost of the CO2 emissions. I.e., the HC plant is getting that for free - effectively a subsidy too, against the ongoing and future costs incurred to the rest of society by climate change from CO2. Many arguments I've been in do not account for that cost.
If CO2 is going to cause catastrophic damage to large parts of the planet, then the fair present cost of CO2 emissions is basically infinite. If a near-0 carbon electricity system requires nuclear to achieve it, then any subsidy TO ANY LEVEL is _worth it_!
For France, in terms of the annual operational basis I thought EDF were running on a commercial basis. They have an agreement with the french state to provide a certain amount of electricity at minimum, capped to a certain price, and they have to meet their operational costs and extract profits within those parameters. That was my understanding when I went and read EDF reports on this on their costs, as part of a similar debate I was having with someone else.
Who cares if it took subsidies to build the plants. Unless you believe there exists some monetary value past which the damage of CO2 emissions is OK, then this is irrelevant - given the technology available today that is proven to be able to provide reliable, abundant base-load capacity.
On the US market question, you're saying basically everyone else is an outlier. Maybe that's true on "unsubsidised" energy markets, but.. who cares about that? If:
- nearly all energy markets across the world work on a "state subsidises builds in order to get sane planning" (not least because true competition in energy networks and physical delivery is basically impossible; along with market difficulties in building plants in a pure market-competition way)
Then the "pure" market with no subsidies is indeed both dysfunctional and inefficient, on that view. And the US is indeed the outlier.
Posted Jun 14, 2024 16:55 UTC (Fri)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link]
EDF are now operating on a commercial basis, but their fleet of nuclear plants was gifted to them at privatisation, and the state has agreed to cover the cost of insuring the plants against major incidents other than those caused by operations, and the cost of decommissioning the plant at end of life. This is a major subsidy to nuclear.
Your point about hydrocarbon plants is reasonable, but note that once you account for the subsidy they're given in terms of being permitted to emit CO2 without penalty at the price that Climeworks and other such companies can currently remove CO2 at a profit, hydrocarbon plants come off more expensive than nuclear, but note that renewables and sufficient battery storage to cover the base load comes out cheaper than nuclear for most inhabited parts of the planet (some parts of Siberia are an exception).
And that's the problem with nuclear as it exists today; if you account for the subsidies, while it's cheaper than fossil hydrocarbon plants, it's more expensive than the combination of wind and solar with NiMH or Li battery chemistries to cover peak use. This only gets worse when you take into account the ability to site batteries near both demand and supply, reducing the need for expensive transmission network upgrades, whereas siting nuclear or hydrocarbon plants in residential areas is problematic simply because they're industrial plants (ignoring fears around nuclear waste etc).
Note, too, that the energy industry has a huge blind spot when it comes to small-scale battery and renewable installations; in most of the world, any battery or renewable installation that's not connected to the high voltage grid (132 kV and above for my location) is treated as part of demand for energy, not part of supply. As a result, we're fairly confident that the projections that say you "need" nuclear for base load are completely and utterly wrong - they're based on the assumption that every single house you see with solar panels on it does not generate any electricity locally, and that batteries attached to houses (Tesla Powerwalls and similar) charge from the grid and turn that energy into heat, rather than supplying it (minus losses) to the house at a later point in time. These are known to be bad assumptions, but actually changing them runs into quagmires about how exactly to account for them.
Disclaimer: I actually work in the electricity sector, and I'm basing some of the above on industry insider information, not on public sources.
Nuclear in France
- every energy market simply is dysfunctional anyway simply on the basis of having no (or near no) ability to correctly price in the societal/global cost of CO2 emissions (which then can only be corrected by state planning, likely by use of subsidies if it wishes to devolve implementation to commercial companies)
Nuclear in France