Germany drops opposition to nuclear power in rapprochement with France
Germany drops opposition to nuclear power in rapprochement with France
www.ft.com
Germany drops opposition to nuclear power in rapprochement with France
34 comments
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And I assume the energy companies will be footing the bill from construction till deconstruction and long term storage, the later two as a trustee deposit, on their own without any state subsidies. Given that all the pro-nuclear folk always tout so many benefits to nuclear, this should be a non-issue and be very profitable.
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And I assume the energy companies will be footing the bill from construction till deconstruction and long term storage, the later two as a trustee deposit, on their own without any state subsidies. Given that all the pro-nuclear folk always tout so many benefits to nuclear, this should be a non-issue and be very profitable.
I don't really see profitability being a factor if there is already a universal understanding that reducing carbon emissions will always come at a cost anyway. Or am I misunderstanding your point?
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The point is that no sane company touches nuclear with a ten-mile pole unless heavily subsidised, because it's economically very challenging (if not impossible) to get it to run at a profit. It's essentially a big money sink that also produces power.
Whereas alternatives, like renewables, cost a lot less and have a much more immediate return. It's why companies do like to invest in those.
Nuclear as an option is badly outclassed economically.
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Lindner: haha nein.
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Here's the issue: do other power sources need to do this? Coal doesn't. It puts CO2 into the air and we all pay for it later. Solar mines and refines material that polluted the environment, and we have no method of recycling, but they don't pay for it. Wind has no method of recycling the blades, but they don't pay for what happens when they're done.
I think they should all be on equal footing. They should all have to pay for their waste, and they should all be subsidized equally based on energy produced. However, only nuclear contains and stores all of its waste, which is good an important but unfair that other sources don't have to.
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It's a fair point to argue from that perspective. But at least in Europe I don't hear a lot of people planning to build new coal power plants. Germany certainly wants to continue mining coal for some asine reason but definitely no new plants. Solar requires materials but recoupes relatively quickly and wind has also quite a few noise and light pollution issues. But they are both better alternatives to any nuclear generator, even if we add the energy storage on top.
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I doubt the point will be to build traditional old style reactors. I assume they'd be for Gen 4.
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Those are not unsolvable problems though, and they stem from political issues rather than the technical problems we still have with the scale of energy storage that we will need with 100% renewable.
And that is not to say that we shouldn't use renewables, we should just also use nuclear.-
What "political issues" do you mean? Requirements to safety and environmental standards? Sure, nuclear energy could be way cheaper if those pesky politicians would just allow to forgo safety standards and to dump nuclear waste into landfills, but that cannot seriously be what you're suggesting.
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We mostly do not need too much storage today. For that we first need an overproduction of renewables at certain points to actually store and that is unforuntatly not the case today.
As for scale the key technoliges seem to be batteries for shorter storage and hydrogen for longer dunkelflaute. The first is pushed mainly by EV developement, which is going to push down the price for battery packs and built enough factories to have the scale necessary. Hydrogen as a product is needed for chemical and steel production anyway. So we need to built the infrastructure for that including some storage. But development cost will mainly be meet by that.
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Idk for germany but nuclear power is super profitable in france. In fact its soo cheap that our producer of electricity is obligated by EU to sell a part of his production to other brand of electricity to equilibrate with other companies who produce electricity with gas.
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Nuclear Power is heavily subsuidezed in France. Most in france related to nuclear are state institutions. Including the Energy Company EDF and the scientific institute CEA. It is often phrased as a state-in-state with a lot of undisclosed structures and money funds. They were created when France saw in the 60s that they need also a nuclear bomb and hence developed a state-close structure that until today in not giving out too much informations. The French citizens pay with their taxes for their nuclear power plants. Heavily. And they hide it behind a lot of structures. Who is paying for the construction? The Repair? The Decomission? - Right: French citizens. If if calculate all these cost into the bill, Nuclear energy is one of the most expensive energy forms there are.
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It is heavily subsidized by the french taxpayer, including price fixing for new plants to guarantee the profits.
You are being played.
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Idk for germany but nuclear power is super profitable in france
it's fucking not
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Your old reactors are producing "cheap" energy if we ignore indirect subsidies like state guarantees for project risks and replacing insurance for uninsurable power plants, costs of eventual decommissioning, waste storage etc. . But many of them are end of life. They are kept running because building new ones even to replace the existing capacity takes ages and is far too expensive to be profitable under the price regulation (i.e. Flamanville, which would require 12-17 cents/ kWh to be profitable while the regulated price is 7 cents which wind and solar can achieve natively. Similar problems with international EDF projects like Hinkley Point).
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How much does electricity cost per kWh in France?
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Berlin’s concerns in part stemmed from concerns that French industry would gain a competitive edge thanks to its 56-strong fleet of reactors, while German industry still struggles with the impact of high gas prices following the cut-off from cheap Russian fuel.
How about we force the French to finally build proper links to Spain so that their nuclear plants have to compete with Iberian renewables.
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Thank God.
34 comments