If it costs 10X dollars upfront to build a nuclear central that can produce 10X energy, then if you run it at 100%, it will cost 1 dollar per 1 unit of energy. If you follow the demand, you will not produce 10X, but let's say to illustrate maybe 5X, and it will cost 2 dollars per 1 unit of energy.
You are right about storage as a way to help with demand following, but if you build enough storage capacity, then you basically have solved "for free" a big part of the problem linked to the intermittence of renewables. In this case, you have the choice between building an expensive nuclear central and a distributed cheaper renewable generation.
I'm not saying it demonstrate renewables are better, but that it is true that nuclear is not the obvious winner it looks like before we look into the practical details.
So basically, you can put some battery next to every nuclear plant and otherwise use the same grid.
For renewable you need a much more complex grid with much more battery.
The next problem comes from incentives. Why should anyone with solar or storage buy this expensive grid based nuclear electricity?
Why should their neighbors not buy surplus renewables and instead pay out of their nose for expensive nuclear powered electricity?
EDF is already crying about renewables cratering the earning potential and increasing maintenance costs for the existing french nuclear fleet. Let alone the horrifyingly expensive new builds.
And that is France which has been actively shielding its inflexible aging nuclear fleet from renewable competition, and it still leaks in on pure economics.
The forced EDF to sell nuclear at very cheap prices to fossil fuel companies and then buy it back at much higher price.
The French forced EDF to give subsides to solar even when that actually hurts their economics.
The French randomly in the 2010s decided to replace nuclear in a short time-frame (completely 100% unrealistic) but it sounds good to politicians. And they decided to delay all maintenance and didn't do any of the upgrades many other nations did.
Once of the secrets of French nuclear is, that their grandfather were so good in providing them these nuclear plants, the french absolutely suck at running them. Other countries like the US and ironically Germany managed to run their reactors at higher factors.
The problem is the solar is cheap when its being produced and makes the economics of base lose worse, without actually solving base load. Solar has been cross subsidized this way for a long time. And has been more explicitly subsidized. But its a private good, it helps only private people, it is negative on a system level.
Once you think on a systemic level, how to provide reliable energy for a whole country, nuclear is not more expensive and France saved a huge amount of money buy doing what they did.
> Why should anyone with solar or storage buy this expensive grid based nuclear electricity?
If somebody privately wants to build solar/storage that's fine, but they should get no support. Also prices should be adjust to actually reflect peak demand. Historically the way the system operated is with much simpler pricing models because it was understood that everybody shares in this infrastructure. In such a situation, the majority of people wouldn't build solar and batteries.
But really, the question we should ask, what the best thing to run a modern economy on and the German solution of 'lets build a massive electricity pipeline to solar farms in Greece' isn't a great model.
All this new energy transfer infrastructure is incredibly expensive. It cost at least as much as the generation itself, and sometimes more.
Then when asked what method to price in the Swedish nuclear fleet having ~50% of capacity offline multiple times last year and France famously having 50% of the capacity offline during the energy crisis I always get crickets for answers.
It’s apparently fine when nuclear plants doesn’t deliver, but not renewables.
The difference with renewables is that it’s even easier to manage. Their intermittency is entirely expected and the law of large numbers ensure we never have half the capacity offline due to technical issues at the same time.
> Once you think on a systemic level, how to provide reliable energy for a whole country, nuclear is not more expensive and France saved a huge amount of money buy doing what they did.
Given that new built nuclear power costs 18-24 cents per kWh and won’t come online until the 2040s what you’re trying to tell me is that multiplying the current electricity cost 3-4x and creating a self made energy crisis isn’t so bad.
The French made a good choice half a century ago. The equivalent choice in 2026 are renewables and storage.
Just look at the proposed EPR2 fleet. A 11 cent per kWh CFD and interest free loans. Summing up to over 20 cents per kWh for the electricity. With the first reactor coming online at the earliest in 2038.
It’s just complete insanity at this point.
> All this new energy transfer infrastructure is incredibly expensive. It cost at least as much as the generation itself, and sometimes more.
The 10 GW HVDC links being built costs €20B. That’s equivalent to the subsidies needed for one new large scale reactor. Then you have the market price of electricity on top of that.
Are you starting to realize the conundrum?
Also, the claim that nuclear is slow to change is a limitation of current nuclear plants, more modern plants could be far better. Some designs are very much load following.