This rolls back to here: “Each time you build a wind farm you hurt the viability of other electricity sources.”
If you say nuclear is a fine 70% solution, what’s the other 30%? If it’s wind then 70% nuclear is no longer viable because that was already the limit and it just became less viable. Thus the core problem, wind and solar cost less per kWh, but as you add them they push out nuclear. Essentially what mix actually works? If say 70% wind and solar 25% nuclear 5% hydro is economically cheapest nuclear needs a very special power purchase agreement designed to support it.
Which gets to the hart of the matter, much of the problem with the current grid is power purchase agreements. No utility wants to sign a power purchase agreement for the lifetime of a power plant which pays nuclear even when it’s off. Even 35 years after construction means the power plant needs to compete on the open market in ~40 years. Which means subsides.
PS: “France doesn’t subsidize” among other things it’s agreed to limit liability in the event of a major disaster. That’s incredibly valuable, suppose you wanted insurance for a 1 in X per year per 1GW reactor risk of a 500 billion dollar failure what does that cost? Well X becomes really important, we have had what 2 major disasters in what 441 current reactors * ~70 years of operation = 1 in 16,000ish. Now I think a reasonable argument can be made that French reactors are safer than that, but napkin math says even if it’s 1 in 50,000 per year you’re still looking at ~10 million per year per reactor * 56 reactors or 1/2 billion per year for insurance. Even if their 100x as safe as historic examples it’s still significant money.
Comments
This rolls back to here: “Each time you build a wind farm you hurt the viability of other electricity sources.”
If you say nuclear is a fine 70% solution, what’s the other 30%? If it’s wind then 70% nuclear is no longer viable because that was already the limit and it just became less viable. Thus the core problem, wind and solar cost less per kWh, but as you add them they push out nuclear. Essentially what mix actually works? If say 70% wind and solar 25% nuclear 5% hydro is economically cheapest nuclear needs a very special power purchase agreement designed to support it.
Which gets to the hart of the matter, much of the problem with the current grid is power purchase agreements. No utility wants to sign a power purchase agreement for the lifetime of a power plant which pays nuclear even when it’s off. Even 35 years after construction means the power plant needs to compete on the open market in ~40 years. Which means subsides.
PS: “France doesn’t subsidize” among other things it’s agreed to limit liability in the event of a major disaster. That’s incredibly valuable, suppose you wanted insurance for a 1 in X per year per 1GW reactor risk of a 500 billion dollar failure what does that cost? Well X becomes really important, we have had what 2 major disasters in what 441 current reactors * ~70 years of operation = 1 in 16,000ish. Now I think a reasonable argument can be made that French reactors are safer than that, but napkin math says even if it’s 1 in 50,000 per year you’re still looking at ~10 million per year per reactor * 56 reactors or 1/2 billion per year for insurance. Even if their 100x as safe as historic examples it’s still significant money.